Confinement and Release in the Bacchae

It is commonly said that Bacchae is a play of reversal. Another notable theme, however, perhaps even more so than reversal, is that of transgression and confusion of boundaries of gender, social norms, and identity. [1] The underlying notion that makes transgression, even confusion, possible, is mobility as prerequisite for change; and, in this turn, change requires the capacity to abandon a previous state and acquire another. This is liberalism, and as such, it is difficult to restrict it in a singular manner. The sense of mobility is constant throughout the play. Dionysus moves from one country to another, crossing geographical boundaries, just like the womanly band that follows him; the women move from the socially—and, according to Pentheus, morally—organized environment of the polis to the extremely liberal environment of nature crossing the boundaries of both space and gender, [2] and almost every major character of the play, Pentheus, Dionysus, Cadmus, Teiresias, Agaue, is at some point, even if temporarily, transformed into something visually different crossing the boundaries of form.

In a dissertation thesis awarded by the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015, Marina Goggin argued about the metaphorical, rather than literal, questioning of boundaries in the play. She investigated aspects of freedom, pointing out that Dionysus does not care about liberating slaves, and even though he breaks down social identities, he leaves social hierarchies securely in place. [3] One might readily agree with the non-radical intervention of Dionysus in established norms such as slavery, though it is difficult to conceptualize social hierarchy as being unscathed at the end of the play. However, there is no denying the essential function of liberalism in the play, and what remains as a field for further investigation is the mechanisms, visual, verbal, and semantic, of liberation from conventional forms and norms. I set out to investigate these mechanisms of release from confinements both of form and identity, but also from the confinements of logic and conventionality, which stand for a sense of restriction and constraint.

In 2014 Saxonhouse explored the theme of liberalism through the prism of mobility of forms in the Bacchae of Euripides and in the third and tenth book of Plato’s Republic. She focuses on the “escape from form—that liberal ideal of the freedom to identify ourselves according to our own choices— in an effort to explore the consequences for the city of this freedom and to highlight the challenges that it poses for living in a world that treasures the freedom to re-create ourselves.” [4] She acknowledges fluidity in forms and an inner will to change, which may be destructive for the state in the case of Dionysus’ Thebes, and dangerous in the case of case of Callipolis. Forms can be not only restricting, but also protective, as long as we embrace the multiplicity within them. [5] This is a very interesting approach, as we can definitely see that every identity transformed in the play is ultimately destroyed; with one notable exception: Dionysus, who describes the journey through lands and forms right at the beginning of the play:

Τhe first word of the text carries within it the concept of mobility and change. Τhe verb ἥκω implies that the god has arrived from some other place. What is remarkable is that the sense of transition will become even more discernible as transformation in line 4, where the lightning-bearing fire is described as having delivered Dionysus, who has exchanged (ἀμείψας) his divine form with a mortal one. The extraordinary delivery of the infant literally releases the god from the confinement of the human body. He was delivered/liberated by the fire of a lighting, as Semele was λοχευθεῖσ᾽ ἀστραπηφόρῳ πυρί (line 3). He is fathered by Zeus, but is not a god yet, as all offspring who are born by a god and a mortal. The god once more endures enclosure in a second womb resembling a tomb, as αὐτίκα νιν δέξατο θαλάμαις Κρονίδας Ζεύς, κατὰ μηρῷ δὲ καλύψας (immediately he was received in special chambers by Zeus, son of Cronus, who had him covered in his thigh, lines 94–96). God is born but, in a sense, dies again, as the participle καλύψας signifies burial. [6] Even after the unmistaken divine intervention of celestial lightning, he must endure a second death, re-birth, dismemberment, exile and repatriation. Exile and return are almost literal in lines 3 and 4. Dismemberment, σπαραγμός, [7] is not stated but it is a detail of the god’s history well known to the audience of Euripides. Σπαραγμός could be interpreted through a variety of approaches. Interpreting the ritual through the lens of the Freudian Oedipus complex, Maxwell identifies sparagmos as a form of castration, particularly in the case of Orpheus. [8] Historically, it is presumed that women celebrating the rites of Dionysus did not actually dismember animals or eat raw flesh, [9] although it is believed those acts still had some basis in maenadic ritual. [10] I believe that dismemberment is the ultimate deconstruction of form, but also of the self. One needs to have completely and irreversibly suffered disentanglement, in order to acquire the new self, or to experience failure during the process. The semi-divine infant Dionysus was reborn from Zeus, dismembered by the Titans and re-assembled by Zeus and Athena who thus constituted him not only complete but altered, as he comes back to existence as immortal. [11]

This is not the only form Dionysus will assume. The image of the bull-like horned god at his birth only heightens the sense of his multimodal depiction, which cannot be reduced to a conventional understanding of his transcendent existence.

Finally, the freedom with which Dionysus moves between forms is epitomized in his transgendered appearance, which perplexes Pentheus right from the beginning, [13] while also seeming to have an almost erotic effect on him. [14]

Form becomes permeable in the play, contrary to its immediate perception of static. However, there is a different kind of metaphorical enclosure, permeable as any other limitation: age. As A. Saxonhouse points out, the aged prophet Teiresias and Cadmus, grandfather of King Pentheus, comically reveal Dionysus’s power, which enables them to escape from the appearance of old men as they, dressed in fawn skins like the women, transform themselves both into bacchants and into young men honoring the god. Moreover, old become young. “I will try the dance,” says Teiresias (190). Cadmus delights, “with pleasure we have forgotten of our old age,” (ἐπιλελήσμεθ᾽ ἡδέως / γέροντες ὄντες, 188–189), to which Teiresias adds, “the god draws no distinction between young and old to tell us who should dance, and who should not.” (206–207). By forgetting our assigned form, we can be or do anything. We can be free. [15]

The transgression of age is of course only behavioral, although the explicit reference to their appearance enhances the notion of change. The two old men are not physically transformed into youths; they merely forget their age, as Cadmus declares. The deviation from the established norm of behavior according to their age leads to them being ridiculed by Pentheus, although this seems to be the only consequence it bears upon them. They are not punished, at least not in the same harsh way that Pentheus or the women are punished.

Τhe transformation of women in the play is even more impressive, as both pictorial and linguistic means are employed by the playwright, in order to highlight the notion of liberation from both form and norm. [16] In the parodos (64–169) the collective voice of the female followers of the god begins being audible with a participle that resembles the first word uttered by Dionysus at the beginning of the play (1: ἥκω) and it echoes the same participle used by the god (4: ἀμείψας): ἀμείψασα, precisely meaning “having crossed land,” or “exchanged a previous state with another,” [17] reinforces the notion of transgression. Even the metric structure, in a mixture of anapaests (⏑ ⏑ –) and ionic feet (⏑ ⏑ – –), helps us build the feeling reinforces the anticipation of something exciting going on here. [18]

This collective flight is not only a matter of the foreign ensemble of the god. The women of Thebes have also abandoned the city and this might be interpreted as an act of freedom, yet what kind of freedom is imposed? Dionysus admits that he has forced all the women out of their homes inflicting madness upon them (καὶ πᾶν τὸ θῆλυ σπέρμα Καδμείων, ὅσαι / γυναῖκες ἦσαν, ἐξέμηνα δωμάτων, 35–36). Although this sounds like the most paradoxical case of liberation at first, one might interpret irrationality as the necessary means to free oneself from the shackles of conventional thinking, the very one that defines the social roles of women by including them in the clearly socially defined context of the city.

Although in the case of Pentheus’ visual transformation into a woman it is very easy to detect rituals of transformation, these are always related to men, not women. [19] In the Bacchae, however, we are presented with the detailed description of the (ritual?) masculinization of women. Women break free from socially informed gender roles, by taking on qualities that have been associated with the masculine. Agaue rejoices at breaking loose from domestic roles and assuming male characteristics (τὰς παρ᾽ ἱστοῖς ἐκλιποῦσα κερκίδας / ἐς μείζον᾽ ἥκω, θῆρας ἀγρεύειν χεροῖν, 1236–1237). [20] The woman in Cithaeron turns into a hunter, a warrior, and a group leader. [21] Language of hunting is spread throughout the play, not only in relation to Pentheus who wants to hunt down the women and Dionysus, but also in relation to women. In line 1171 Agaue calls upon women to see the hunting prey (θήραν), which she has caught with her own hands without hunting-nets, and at the end she calls out to her son, to nail on the walls of the palace the prey which she has hunted (θηράσασ’, 1215). Language of war is also associated with women. Pentheus needs to raise an army, in order to fight not a mere ensemble of women, but a female army. [22]

Agaue finally enters the realm of male supremacy in the civic environment: leadership. When the messenger describes the women on the mountain, he describes not merely a θίασος, but three orderly groups of women, ὧν ἦρχ᾽ ἑνὸς μὲν Αὐτονόη, τοῦ δευτέρου / μήτηρ Ἀγαυὴ σή, τρίτου δ᾽ Ἰνὼ χοροῦ (681–682). Even if one sees in Semele’s three sisters the ritualistic role of chorus-leaders, the verb ἦρχον has undisputed political connotations, and any doubt about this collapses when these women give battle orders [23] and lead an army of women armed (with very effective thyrsoi) to fight armed men and defeat them (763–764). [24]

The ultimate norm is that of the collective depiction of women. Despite Pentheus’ almost obsessive fear of women’s moral and erotic corruption on the mountain (215–223), women exhibit the quality of orderly congregation in an open space freed by social constraints, away from the oikos; θαῦμ᾽ ἰδεῖν εὐκοσμίας, as reported by the amazed messenger in line 693. This might allow us to consider their congregation not only as a θίασος, but as an ecclesia of women. Liberation does not imply promiscuity or impunity; on the contrary it allows for a new kind of community where everything is plausible and becomes possible under the gaze of the ἄναξ of ἄνω κάτω (602).

Pentheus’ visual transformation into a woman not only reveals to the audience one of the most renowned dramatic conventions—the fact that all female roles are acted by men— but it also echoes rituals of transition, during which man is temporarily freed from the constraint of biological and social identity and briefly adopts the status of the other. [25]

The dressing scene is not relevant only to the disguise, but also to the assumption of characteristics that men traditionally attribute to women. Pentheus acts in a manner completely opposite to the mentality he expressed until then; at least until verse 810. Pentheus is released from the shackles of social gender not by free will—rather, he is forced by Dionysus. A most powerful vowel (which we have no idea how it was uttered on stage), “A!,” in line 810 marks Pentheus’ total transformation. From the almost understandable reservation of a legitimate leader to accepting uncritically one who calls himself a god and disrupts the existing social order by forcing women to flee from the polis, to one that now expresses complete acceptance of this stranger, in the same way that the god is accepted by the women led by him (“lead me through the city of Thebes,” 961); from the manly decision to openly fight women with an army, now he agrees to disguise himself and secretly spy upon them (953–954). By employing emotion instead of logic, secrecy instead of bravery and passivity instead of leadership, he exhibits traits that belong to the realm of the feminine. [26]

A careful re-consideration of the above cases reveals a pattern: Cadmus, Teiresias, Pentheus, the women, even Dionysus at the beginning and throughout the play, assume a different form, in order to transgress a norm associated either by their gender, social status or nature. They are temporarily released from the restrictions of shape, status or identity and when they reassume their previous state, they have gained a kind of sofia—something more than acquired knowledge, but rather a deep awareness of the (sometimes literally) dismembering catalytic power of the divine.

Confinement within physical enclosures is a recurrent theme, as well as a theme that is constantly proven futile in the play right from its beginning. [27] The duality of space is explored through the contrast of foreign and Greek (Dionysus’ return from barbaric countries), polis and physis (Thebes and Cithaeron), but it also entails duality in the quality of life provided in the latter category. Thus, life in the polis stands for constraints within norms for both genders. Even man is not considered as “more free” in the city, just more powerful. This is reversed on the mountain. Constraints are a means of exerting power and control, something that Pentheus seems to be obsessed with. The flight of women poses a threat to the male-centered balance of the polis. “The representation of space in antiquity requires a center for direction to be established. The Maenads disrupt this fixed point and expose the possibility for the existence of an alternative direction. They have spatial access to a set of powers beyond men’s control. The Maenads cross every boundary of the body and of identity as a dissident community. They are linked through a queer collectivity.” [28] To apprehend them and to physically bind them with bonds might stand for their forced re-domestication, or their re-institutionalization.

The picturesque language of the women’s release from the norms and bonds of civic life is characterized by freedom of movement. When located away from the city, women act like animals that broke free from their harness. When the Θεράπων comes on stage he reports that Dionysus willingly let him and the others chain him and did not even change his appearance (meaning his complexion’s color) out of fear. However, the Bacchae who were forcibly brought back to the city (and domesticity) and thrown in bonds at the beginning of the play, are now automatically released from the bonds and returned to the place of freedom in exuberance, the mountain, “frisking” (σκιρτῶσι, 446), and calling on Bromios.

Τhe imminent meeting of the king and the god abounds with lectical references to bonds and constraint. In vain Dionysus attempts to share the secular given of god’s impossibility to be restrained. “Do not tie me up, say I, the wise one to you who are unwise,” he shouts at Pentheus, who responds in a hubristic vociferation of his superior strength.

Of course, it is not possible to apprehend the divine. Pentheus thinks that he has chained Dionysus (ὅτι με δεσμεύειν δοκῶν, 616), but he has never touched or caught him. Instead, in the words of Dionysus and just like the σφάγιον, the sacrificial animal that Pentheus will become, he “grazed upon hopes” (οὔτ᾽ ἔθιγεν οὔθ᾽ ἥψαθ᾽ ἡμῶν, ἐλπίσιν δ᾽ ἐβόσκετο, 617). When Pentheus sets his eye on the released prisoner, he is still unable to fathom the magnitude of the miracle.

And when the king expresses all the physicality of his mundane power, by ordering the closing of the gates, the god responds with the revelation of the transcendental power of the divine:

Τhe most impressive image of release in the play is yet physical, albeit not immediately perceived and it has to do with the space of the self. In 1988, Sara Lee Bartky of the University of Illinois at Chicago, studied the way that women comprehend their gender, internalize it, and attempt to literally embody it by constraining the movements of their body. [29] Marion Young gave the title “Throwing like a girl” in another article about the (self)limitation of the physical space a woman occupies with her movements. Tracing the complexities of embodied experience, Young examines the differences in feminine and masculine movement norms within a gendered and embodied phenomenological perspective and locates three traditional modes of women’s bodily existence in the world: ambiguous transcendence, inhibitory intent, and discontinuous unity. All of these are just an elaborate way of “throwing like a girl,” i.e. not using your whole body (using only the forearm instead of the whole torso, shoulder and arm), not believing you can do it and not following (abandoned halfway through the throw). [30] The perception of the social convention of the restriction of movements but also of the individual physical space occupied by the woman as approached by Young and Bartky can contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of the women of Thebes in the work of Euripides. The woman in the Bacchae occupies space by transcending space. She transcends the boundaries of the oikos and the polis and occupies not just the physical space of the non-city, that is, Cithaeron, but also the individual space of her physical self, defining it outside the limitations of the movements and appropriating dances of the Thesmophoria or any other female dances depicted on vases. She is depicted on vases reveling in dances where there is no coordination of movements, where the heads are thrown back in manic ecstasy and an absolute sense of liberation from all kinds of conventionality: [31] from the loose hair and the liberation from conventional clothing, to the free movement and liberation from the confines of the home, the woman of the Dionysian cult exudes this male privilege of freedom from social stereotypes—something that the man can enjoy by transcending the home and loosening social conventions at the (all-male) συμπόσιον every day. [32]

The imagery of a head which moves unconstrained, echoes the words uttered by Cadmus at the beginning of the play, when he wonders where he and Teiresias can dance and κρᾶτα σεῖσαι πολιόν (shake the aged head, line 185). Loose hair as a sign of liberation from conventionality (possibly also of strength) is also characteristic of Dionysus, whom Pentheus criticizes for “beating the thyrsus and blowing his hair” (240–241), [33] in the same manner as the chorus had already described him rejoicing on the mountains τρυφερόν βόστρυχον εἰς αἰθέρα ῥίπτων (“throwing about in the air his tender locks,” 150); in the same manner that Pentheus has caused his wig’s locks to fall out of place, as he was dancing like a bacchant in the palace before coming to meet the god (ἔνδον προσείων αὐτὸν ἀνασείων τ᾽ ἐγὼ / καὶ βακχιάζων ἐξ ἕδρας μεθώρμισα, 930–931).

At the end, it seems that Pentheus is the one confined within walls of lies and misconceptions and he is finally liberated from false assumptions (such as women’s impurity, god’s falseness, his own sovereignty), as he becomes both witness and martyr of the god’s supremacy.

Confinement within physical enclosures is a recurrent theme, as well as a theme constantly proven futile in the play right from its beginning. In addition to physical constraints, there are constraints of the logic by which we perceive reality. Dionysus exemplifies the power to control logic and, in a sense, the power to liberate human perception of conventional rationality, as seen in several instances. This is why Dionysus himself declares that Pentheus needs to be taken away or freed from his right mind (πρῶτα δ᾽ ἔκστησον φρενῶν, 850), to be open for a new kind of perception. If human perception is not freed from mundane understanding, it might never achieve the state of transcendental awareness of the divine power.

The ἀγὼν λόγων after line 810 is the ultimate catalyst of σωφροσύνη, that is the assumption of the standardization of values that govern social organization and the evaluation of behavior according to them. [34] Pentheus is transformed visually, mentally, and emotionally into a woman. The distortion of reality is evident in his amazement as he starts breaking free from the orderly environment of the polis. He sees two suns and the city of Thebes as double (καὶ μὴν ὁρᾶν μοι δύο μὲν ἡλίους δοκῶ, / δισσὰς δὲ Θήβας καὶ πόλισμ᾽ ἑπτάστομον· 918–919). As for his leader-guide, he wonders whether the god has been a bull before, [35]

The power of control over mental functions is also evident in the case of control over men and women. As easily as he convinces the women that they see a lion on the fir tree, he toys with the sanity of Pentheus. And before that he has exchanged his imprisoned self with a bull, whom Pentheus regards as Dionysus and tries in vain to chain him, but he ends up spearing an effigy of the god which simply does not exist (629–631).

Illusions constitute a motif of Dionysian exertion of power over matter. I suggest that we should also interpret the earthquake described by the chorus in lines 585–603 as an illusion.

Despite the description of the earthquake breaking down Pentheus’ μέλαθρα and fire consuming the tomb of Semele and the palace, nothing seems to indicate that desolation when Agaue returns to the palace with the gory trophy (aristeia, 1249) of a son’s head in her bloodied hands. She does not seem to observe anything wrong in the μέλαθρα that she mentions in line 1170 or the τρίγλυφα of the roof (1214). Of course, this could be another illusion, a different reality seen by the disorientated Agaue. But no other description of desolated palace is given to us by Cadmus or the chorus until the end of the play, so we might assume that the earthquake and fire of lines 585–603 was yet another instance of Dionysus’ capacity to bring everything ἄνω κάτω (602) both in the order of the society and with regard to the minds of people.

An instance of literally bringing something up and down is that of the bent fir tree, where Pentheus is placed before being torn apart by his mother and kin. This is not described as an illusion, but it is a case of the manifestation of divine power that is free from constraints of matter. A different manipulation of matter might be detected in the cases where god seems to be able to control form: either his own form as he changes from god to human, from material being into an effigy of air (φάσμ’, line 630), or the appearance of form and the way others perceive it (Pentheus perceives him as a bull in line 930, Agaue and the women see Pentheus as hunting prey throughout their frenzy led by the god). Even the surrounding environment, the world around them is subject to the divine will and a matter of perception (the double suns that Pentheus sees as he exits logic and the city; and there is also the question of Cadmus to Agaue at the end of the play, as he calls her to take a look at the sky and ask herself whether it has changed; Agaue’s responds that it is brighter and clearer than before (ΚΑ. ἔθ᾽ αὑτὸς ἤ σοι μεταβολὰς ἔχειν δοκεῖ; / ΑΓ. λαμπρότερος ἢ πρὶν καὶ διειπετέστερος, 1266–1267). It is this sense of μεταβολή, alteration, that requires freedom in order to be achieved. When humans comprehend that this happens only within the freedom offered by succumbing to the supremacy of the divine, then their whole existence becomes διειπετέστερος.

Liberation in the Bacchae is represented by the acceptance of Dionysus’ unrestrictive faith and the rejection of the attempt by Pentheus and his rivals to limit and control him. This liberation requires acceptance of the unknown, uncertainty and risk that accompany change. However, this is liberation imposed. With the exception of Cadmus and Teiresias, none of the individuals or groups accept it voluntarily (we are not even sure about the women who follow Dionysus from the East), yet they finally embrace it. [36] The concept of transcendence is undoubtedly connected with liberation. In the Bacchae, geographical boundaries, boundaries of social identity, gender and even the human-divine status become permeable. It is important to note the limitation to the physical ends of the self: Dionysus is imprisoned in and released from a human body. Women go beyond the limitations of movement and appearance imposed on them by social imperatives. Pentheus is determined by his manly appearance, but his deconstruction is literal, not figurative. Notably, in the case of humans none of these releases is voluntary, but rather imposed by Dionysus, who hovers between the secular and the supernal. Furthermore, he manifests absolute power over matter, as he proves to control both the physical self and the physical world with the same ease with which he distorts logic at will.

One might also consider the same ease with which Euripides sets the genre free from its strict stylistic restrictions of seriousness and transforms it often into a frivolous farce, like in the case of the visual transformation of Cadmus and Teiresias and of course Pentheus’ ekdysia. [37] The pictorial power of language in the descriptions of liberation from the body reinforces interpretive approaches to issues of identity, as they arise during the course of the dramatic plot.

In conclusion, in Euripides’ Bacchae the themes of confinement and liberation or release are explored through conflicts (Dionysus and Pentheus, logic and irrationality, organized polis and unrestricted nature, sex and gender). One might see Pentheus as a representation of the forces of confinement and control, while Dionysus can be seen as the force of liberation and transformation. Undoubtedly, there are many interpretative approaches to the play, which cannot be narrowed down to one singular meaning. [38] However, it is possible to see in it a suggestion that attempts to suppress the human spirit and the forces of nature are ultimately doomed to fail. True liberation can only be achieved through connecting with the divine and with nature.

Moreover, the whole play attests to a sense of entropy; but this is merely the way of the world. It does not mean that it is falling apart. It is merely changing, liberated from the constraint of standardization by the god of supreme transcendence, Dionysus Eleuthereus. [39]