The Bacchae

The Bacchae can be a challenging play to interpret, inviting a wide range of readings and debates. In part, this may be due to Euripides reflecting on his own social and historical context. The play was performed in 405 BCE, after the poet’s death around 407/6 BCE, This would place its likely time of composition during the waning years of the Athens-Sparta war that broke out officially in 431 BCE and had, by the time of Euripides’ death, ground on for more than a generation. By 406 BCE, Athens seemed unlikely to win the war. Its fortunes had dwindled considerably. They had optimistically launched not only the war but also an expedition to expand their empire, but it ended in almost complete annihilation for the Athenian navy. The evening before the expedition launched, a series of protective statues (called herms) that were placed around the city were vandalized, which many took as a bad omen.

In other words, the Bacchae was composed when the Athenian empire was collapsing. The city’s dramatic reversal of circumstances may be reflected in Pentheus, Agaue, and Cadmus’ own dramatic reversal of circumstances. Agaue voices this explicitly, saying to

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