Euripides, the Bacchae, Term Paper Example

To what extent was Dionysus justified in his revenge on the family of Cadmus?

According to Dionysus, the god of the wine, religious ecstasy, prophecy, and fertility, her mother, Semele; who used to work as a princess in the royal Theban house of Cadmus received evil treatment from Zeus with whom she had an affair. Zeus was the king of the gods at the time he had a relationship with Dionysus’s mother. When the wife of Zeus, Hera realized the affair between her husband and Semele, she decided to take revenge. She tricked Semele by asking her husband to appear in his divine form. Since the appearance of Zeus was too powerful to be withstood by a mortal man, he appeared as a bolt of lightning from the sky and burnt Semele to a cinder (Euripeses, 2019). However, Zeus managed to rescue his unborn son, stitching him into his thigh. Zeus then instructed the Chorus who were the Lydian bacchants to walk around the palace beating drums and to make sure that Pentheus and his father saw them. The family of Semele thought that Semele had been struck by lightning for lying about Zeus and that her son Dionysus had died with her during that time. Therefore, people were made to hate her for such an act, and they rejected the young god Dionysus (Euripeses, 2019).

As a result of the falsehood created following the story of the death of Dionysus’s mother, Dionysus was angry, and he returned home to revenge against the family of Cadmus for the treatment they had given her late mother and for refusing to offer sacrifices to him. Cadmus, who was Semele’s father had handed over the kingdom during the time Dionysus was away, to his arrogant and proud grandson Pentheus who then banned the worship of Dionysus by the people in Thebes. I believe that it was right for Dionysus to punish the family of Cadmus for failing to adhere to the norms and for handing over the kingdom to a person who did not rightfully deserve to lead it.

Dionysus, who was a god, also had to revenge because of the kind of treatment he received. As a god, he was supposed to be worshipped and treated in a proper and dignified manner, which was not the case. According to Burnett (1970), the divine punishment, which could result in destruction indicated an offended divinity of a man who had engaged in war with a god.  From this perspective, participating in the war with gods is not something that was expected to go unpunished. For this reason, Dionysus had to revenge as a way of punishing his offenders.  The people who had made him angry had to experience his wrath. Thus he had made up his mind to punish the defiance (Burnett, 1970). Burnett also indicates that when Dionysus returned from his travels across Europe and Asia in disguise, the people were still speaking ill of his mother as they did not recognize him as a god. His efforts were to show that his mother was not a liar since her sister had indicated that she did not give birth to Zeus’s child. Thus he wanted to change those people’s perspective (Arrowsmith, 1959). The act of refusing to worship Dionysus was against the rules and the legal codes which regulated the Theban society. It, therefore, means that the refusal to worship Dionysus was an unauthorized attempt to escape these codes and law which deserved punishment.

Dionysus revenge was a form of restoration for his mother’s right name. The attack was also justified because it was the only way Dionysus had to enable himself to establish his rights as a god in the city where he was born. According to Heystee (2014), “Dionysus returns to his family to correct some grievous errors.” He also states that the sisters to his mother had slandered her and had denied him his divinity. The retaliation was even justified since the people had turned away from true worship and did not reverence Dionysus as a god.

The people of Theban society had developed unbelief. The god justified his cruel revenge against the Cadmus family by stating that the disbelief the Theban society had was an insult to him. At the mountain when people were called to worship the god, Pentheus entered the place and stated that he did not believe in Dionysus since he thought that Semele’s son had been burnt by lightning together with his mother (Johnston, 2015). Pentheus had evil thoughts about Dionysus to a point where he thought that the women who had followed Dionysus at the mountain did so for them to have illicit sex with him. Although Pentheus tried to be warned by Teiresias of being arrogant and disrespectful to Dionysus, the god, he could not listen. He then went ahead and ordered the desecration of the Teiresias’ shrine, where people went to worship the god. It was a sign of disrespect which angered Dionysus. Later, he ordered his soldiers to seize Dionysus, whom he referred to as the Lydian stranger and then arrested him (Johnston, 2015).

According to Johnston, (2015), Cadmus family was only concerned with protecting itself and used religion as a way of making it appear more valuable. Therefore, none of them displayed a genuine reverence to the faith, and the mysteries of life passed to them. When Dionysus got arrested, he began to plan how to kill Pentheus.  Pentheus’ punishment and revenge were also justified because he had spoken ill of the gods and tradition. Pentheus had also told Cadmus and Teiresias that the stranger (Dionysus) was a charlatan, and he arrested the women who were on the mountains worshipping him (Arrowsmith, 1959).  These were enough reasons why Dionysus would take revenge against Pentheus. When Pentheus ordered the stranger (Dionysus) to be chained, he found it impossible. Also, during the exchanges between Dionysus and Pentheus, Dionysus tried to warn Pentheus to abandon his destructive path which he did not relent. As a result of his arrogance and pride, Pentheus was attacked by the women and killed. From this story of the unsound rule full of unbelief, arrogance, and pride, I believe that the punishment by Dionysus to the people of Thebes and the Cadmus family was justified. The people deserved punishment for refusing to turn away from their evil ways and their unbelief, and they were also supposed to show respect to the god. More so, the punishment was justified in that the people, including their ruler, Pentheus had refused to heed to the warnings that the god, Dionysus, had given to them.

References

Arrowsmith, W., (1959). The Bacchae. Euripides (c. 480-406). University of Chicago Press.

Burnett, A. P. (1970). Pentheus and Dionysus: host and guest. Classical Philology, 65(1), 15-29.

Heystee, B., (2014). The ????? and its destruction in Euripides’ The Bacchae. Pseudo-Dionysius, 16(1).

Euripedes, (2019). The Bacchae Summary

Johnston I. (2015). Euripides Bacchae.The Internet Classics Archive, Perseus Digital Library