Euripedes Bacchae

Analysing mythology can be a powerful tool to reveal the psychology of an archaic heritage. In appreciation of its mythos and stories we can fully appreciate the culture’s shared unconscious. Jung’s archetypes expose the many universal symbols within the unconscious mind, independently of time and place. The observation of patterns in myths across cultures represents mankind’s essential spiritual and symbolic nature. Jung’s archetypes do not derive from personal subjective experience, but a collective unconscious inherited along the line of primeval animal instinct. Tim Moore justly elucidates this idea:

Myths, in this tradition, are the fruit of the primordial mind: at once a door to understanding the primitive forms of experience, to which

In the tragedies of Euripedes takes a more symbolic status however should not be considered fundamental truths, but rather stories that deal with important aspects of humanity. Plots in Euripedes’ Bacchae attempt to inform their society through didactic stories of duality, rather than to be represented as expositions of historical truth. Euripedes observed the incursion of Near Eastern and Asian influences on religious and cultic practices, with Dionysus highlighting the invasion of Greek tradition by Asian religions in the Bacchae’s prologue. The implicit message of the play involves the balance between control and freedom in Greek society without claiming to reveal any hidden truths from god to man. Euripedes seemingly employs a forewarning of blasphemy and deviation from the functioning tradition of Greek religion in the heavy punishment of Agave who dared to question Dionysus’ divine origin . Whilst there are numerous charter myths told by Euripedes in the Bacchae, he doesn’t explicitly articulate his moral position within the play. Rather, the moral ambiguity indicated by Euripedes alludes to the absurdity associated with putting ultimate faith upon the knowledge of Gods and what they have pre-ordained. The inherent implications of moral effects are contextualised by the same criticism of Xenophanes, by which it was shameful that Hesiod and Homer "have attributed to the gods all sorts of things that are matters of reproach and censure among men: theft, adultery, and mutual deception." These tragedies regardless explore ubiquitous aspects of human and societal importance through the demonstration of opposing