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As we begin the play, Euripides tells us
that Dionysus is angry.

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He,
His divinity is not being fully recognized

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and that makes him upset.
The Olympians don't like it if we don't

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fully recognize their divinity.
That leads him to get started, in this

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group at Thebes making sure that his own
purview, his own world is going to receive

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admiration reverence from human beings.
Dionysus compels the women to celebrate

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his rights, rights on Mount Cithaeron and
that begins, Pentheus is hostile to this.

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He doesn't like that this is happening,
despite the fact that Cadmus and Tyresius

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are both telling him it's okay.
You should let this happen, it's a good

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thing.
Pentheus resists, and that resistance is

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going to prove his undoing.
Euripides pushes the limits of tragedy by

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having Dionysus actually appear as a
character on stage.

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It's not the very first time in all of
tragedy this has happened.

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We saw this with Aeschylus, in fact, with
Athena and Apollo. but Dionysus has a, a

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really earthy kind of role here.
He doesn't just sort of show up just

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embodied.
He's a physical character in the play

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who's achieving physical ends through
manipulation and through, kind of, kind of

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mind control when it comes to Pentheus.
Dionysus causes Pantheus is to bind a bull

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instead of him,
Right?

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Pantheus was up to, wants to try to bind
Bacchus to, to prevent him from getting

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involved out on, the hillside. But,
Dionysus instead binds a bull and at that

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point his disillusion kind of starts.
there's an earthquake, lightning comes his

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whole palace falls down this is just in
the middle of the play, right?

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Where its working up. and the, the, we
hear great conflagration as things

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collapse.
Pentheus is now very much disturbed, he's

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really unsure what's happening.
A messenger comes in and talks about all

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these women going bazerk out on the
hillside.

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And then, Dionysus starts his kind of mind
control, gets inside of Pentheus's head,

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convinces him it will be a good idea to
change his own gender to go from being a

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male to becoming at least his outward
appearance a female and go blend in with

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those women out on the hillside.
He then sets him up in a tree and has him

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spy on the rights that he sees.
When he does, he is goes from being the

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spier to being the spiee, he gets seen.
And when he does, his mother spots him as

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potential quarry for a Dionysian backoned
revelry.

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They then grab him, rip his head off as
though they have the head of a lion, and

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tear him up as a living sacrifice in the
way Dionysus likes.

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Argovae then bears the head to theives in
triumphs.

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She thinks she's got a lion.
Hooray for her.

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Cadmus's family then is banished from
Thebes by Dionysus.

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Awful things because of the resistance of
Pentheus come to be visited on this tribe

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at Thebes. Despite the involvement of,
again, Cadmus and Pentheus or Cadmus and

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Tiresias, trying to tell Pentheus that
this is going to be the right thing to do.

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Multiple themes here excuse me,
Multiple themes important in the play.

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I'll just touch on a couple of them.
First of all, there is a, Greek, adage

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that is so famous, it's inscribed above
the temple at Delphi, that says, nothing

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too much.
Don't do anything to too strong of a

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degree.
Pantheus's resistance to Dionysus's

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worship is characterized here as something
too much.

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Dionysus is resisting too strongly.
He sets himself up on a pedestal as though

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his judgment is better than everyone else
around him, even including people like

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Cadmus and [inaudible].
Tiresias. Dionysus then takes this person,

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Pantheus, who's putting himself up on a
pedestal,

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And kind of does that for him by putting
him up on the branches of a tree in front

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of his own revelers.
Now, when those revelers, the Bacchans,

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get an eye of this quarry up in a tree,
they grab and pull him down and rip him

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apart.
His haughtiness then, is redefined as and

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refigured as him being up in a tree and
now also becoming vulnerable.

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Standing out above everybody is going to
make him vulnerable.

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Another theme that's already kind of built
in to this treatment of a theme of nothing

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too much is the inversion of hunter and
hunted.

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This comes up in Cadmus's family
regularly.

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It's true across the family.
Actaeon is torn apart by his hunting dogs.

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Remember, we talked about, when we're
talking about the lineage of that exists

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in, among Cadmus's daughters.
Ino was hunted down by her crazed husband

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like she's a quarry.
Semele is emulated like an animal

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sacrifice, and then especially here,
Pentheus is hunted down by his own mother

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and ripped apart as though he is a quarry,
as though he is a beast.

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The hunter and hunted slippage that gets
worked into this play is likely to be a

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deep working out of probably just a
suggestion. But, I might suggest, a kind

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of anxiety that any hunting people would
imagine.

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Bringing down a large mammal is not always
a happy thing.

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And you've got to imagine that humans
wonder when they do such a thing, is this

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the right kind of thing to do?
The story of Dionysius here I think is

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introducing us to the story of, and
Cadmus's family is introducing us to the

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ongoing sense that when humans hunt, they
are doing something that could conceivably

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be offensive. could be some kind of awful
thing.

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We realized that when we go from being
hunter to hunted we see the awfulness of

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the situation that we ourselves are
engaged in.

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Pentheus is physically dismembered, that's
important for us to see. This disillusion

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of self such as we see, saw it in
Oedipus's play are, is here brought to

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very graphic realization.
The disillusion of his dismembered self

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in, in the face of the utter strength of
the god, Dionysus.