The Vengeance of Dionysius

So much has already been written in the world about it that writing more may seem strange. But what matters is the way each of us sees it, and especially not the way the experts see it.

Still, I have a lot of feeling for the way Euripides described it 2600 years ago in The Bacchantes. Euripides' protagonist, Pentheus, denies the divinity of Dionysius, tries to jail him, to prohibit celebration of him, and as a result his mother tears him apart.

It probably takes a proper or developed love of Dionysius, the subconscious, the language of dreams and fairy tales and myths, to appreciate the symbolic way Euripides' describes the debacle but here goes (Hadas' translation):

Dionysius says:

“Young women, I bring the man who has cast ridicule upon you and upon me and upon our holy rites. Take vengeance upon him.”

Pentheus has climbed a tall tree “to get a perfect view of their wild obscenities” but “the Bacchic horde” uproots his tree:

“Then they applied countless hands to the fir and wrenched it from the ground. Down from his lofty perch, down whirling to the earth, falls Pentheus. Many and many were his moans; for he knew his hour was near. His mother attacked him – the priestess commencing the sacrifice...She seized the hand of his left arm and set her foot against the poor wretch's side and tore off his arm at the shoulder – not of her own strength; it was the god who made easy the work of her hands.”

The details of the description are as important, apt, brilliant, and powerful as are the details of a dream – the tree, the mother, the left arm. Pentheus was also wearing a disguise at the time of his comeuppance, dressed up as some kind of lion. How often have we seen that: "powerful" men posing as lions but actually the pathetic, despised, victims of their mothers, their pretences, their immaturities, their repressions!