Animal World, Animal Representation, and The Hunting-Model - Between Literal and Figurative in Euripides' Bacchae - Thumiger

Animal World, Animal Representation, and the "Hunting-Model": Between Literal and
Figurative in Euripides' "Bacchae"

Author(s): Chiara Thumiger
Source: Phoenix, Vol. 60, No. 3/4 (Fall - Winter, 2006), pp. 191-210
Published by: Classical Association of Canada
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20304609
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ANIMAL WORLD, ANIMAL REPRESENTATION,
AND THE "HUNTING-MODEL": BETWEEN LITERAL
AND FIGURATIVE IN EURIPIDES' BACCHAE
Chiara Thumiger
J. his article focuses on a particular aspect of the verbal level in Euripides'

last play: the representation of the natural world as an expression of a crisis. This
natural world is mainly embodied by animals but is also negatively represented,
through its denial, in the motif of miracle. The human exigency to establish or
restore order is also linked to the perception of nature, and epitomised in the
"hunting model" and the dynamics of "binding" which recur throughout the play.
Much has been written on these topics. In particular, the motif of wilderness in
opposition to the political centre of the city and of hunting and its implications
in the Bacchae have been thoroughly addressed by Charles Segal in his various
discussions of the play, especially in his book.1 Segal's research, notoriously,
emphasises the dialectic between inside and outside, prison/palace and mountain,
openness and closure, with Dionysiac action interpreted as blurring the boundaries
which separate these opposing poles.2 Segal's approach certainly offers precious
insights, but it is of limited value for any enquiry into the views offered by a single
play. His reading tends to bypass the limits of the individual text but at the risk of
caprice, often without due respect for Bacchae as single, unique microcosm, with
a beginning and an end,3 and characteristically with regard to a wider frame of
reference (such as structural anthropology or some version of a dogmatic idea of
"the Dionysiac") which is assumed and not argued for. What I undertake here is
an analysis of the verbal clusters and patterns of imagery in the Euripidean text
and only there. I am especially interested in features different from, rather than
common to, analogous or contemporary literary representations.
In considering the representation of the relationship between man and the
natural world in the play, my analysis focuses on the two aspects of content and
presentation. In addition to the overwhelming accumulation of verbal references
to the animal world and to the activity of hunting per se (content), the play blurs the
literal and metaphorical levels when it comes to these references (presentation).
1 Segal 1961 and 1978; Segal 1997: 27-54 and passim.

2 Segal 1997: 78-124. See, for example, 97: "As Dionysus invades and destroys the sheltered space
of the house, so even more radically does he open the bounded limits of the city to the forces of the
wild alien to it... Euripides evokes the otherness that the city must exclude. That exclusion involves
a struggle between 'man-and-/>?/w-centred rationalism and god-and-nature-centred emotionalism,
between acculturation and instinct, nomos andphysis\n quoting Wassermann 1953: 563.
A reading of "the total corpus of myths ... synchronically ... as a 'megatext' [displaying]
the network of more or less subconscious patterns of 'deep structures' or undisplaced' forms" was
advocated by Segal (1983: 52).
191
PHOENIX, VOL. 60 (2006) 3-4.
192 PHOENIX
This blurring influences the audience's, and indeed the reader's, perception of the
"natural world" in the play and of man's interaction with it. Let us begin with the
first aspect, the referential presentation of nature.
Generally speaking, the romantic problem of a definition of "nature" is not one
of the issues raised by the extant Greek tragedies.4 I do not mean that tragedy
is all about the city, with nature coming into play only in a subsidiary fashion.
However, the thematic problematisation of nature in itself, as opposed to the
political or social organisation of man, is never foregrounded, arguably because
such an opposition was not felt; nature is, somehow, taken for granted} It is
correct to say that the external world is problematised and objectified when a
solid belief in its order is missing. As Sale (1977: 104) noted in his application
of "existentialist psychology" to Bacchae: "the better a tool is working, the less
conscious of it are we. It disappears, as Heidegger says, into usefulness.. But
when equipment breaks, when the thing is no longer useful but is just there, ...
the broken instrument, like the word of art, demands awareness." The Bacchae
implies a scepticism in the possibility of ever fully understanding or accepting the
reality in which we live.
In the play nature is a domain in which world-order is denied and becomes a
"broken instrument." This does not happen at the expense of nature as opposed
to the city: a "journey to the wild" is in fact a well-known province of Dionysiac
cult, and not a Euripidean novelty. Moreover, the opposition in the play between
wilderness and civilisation admits no reconciliation, nor does it represent an
order in the human world that can be upheld by allowing the irrational and
the instinctive the role they deserve.6 The civilised world shows itself as more
4 Segal (1997: 31) argues that Euripides in Bacchae sets himself against the "philosophy of the fifth
century," which asserts "man's independence from nature," a tendency epitomised (on Segal's reading)
in Sophocles' famous ode in Antigone (332-352), by the "voice of a countercultural, counterrational
longing in which Western man has repeatedly sought an alternative to his attitude of domination
and control." Such an abstraction of "nature" seems to me alien to the Sophoclean passage. What is
notable in the Antigone ode is the unproblematic way in which the human environment is presented:
the sea (335-338), the earth (338-341), animals (342-352), civilisation (353-356), and diseases
(363-364). These are all features of an organic world of which man is part and with which man
has a straightforward relation in the forms of navigation, agriculture, animal-rearing, politics, and
medicine respectively. These elements of human environment are among many specified ?eiva, but
with o??sv ... ?eivoxepov than man (332, 333). The difference between Euripides' vision in Bacchae
and this conventional Greek vision lies neither in overcoming an ideal of man dominating nature,
nor in a triumph of nature over man, but in a crisis in the relationship between the individual and a
comprehensible world: as we shall see, conventional modalities of man's relation to "nature," such as
rearing and hunting in particular, are presented in an original, even chaotic, way here. For a different,
existential interpretation of the nature/man conflict in Bacchae, see Tschiedel 1977.
Cf. Flaumenhaft 1994: 62 on the unsuitability of Romantic categories for Bacchae: "the Bacchic
attitude is very different from that of the poet who self-consciously looks at the natural world [e.g.,
Wordsworth]. The Bacchantes have never seen a landscape."
6 Henrichs (1990: 259-260), discussing "Dionysiac articulations of the city/country," rightly
remarks that there are "aspects of the Attic Dionysus not found in the Bacchae and rarely considered in
LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE IN EURIPIDES' BACCHAE 193
irrational and incomprehensible than the wild, and the unfolding of events is
characterised by a mimesis between the two, such as to empty the opposition of
any constructive implication. Nature in Bacchae is felt negatively in its suspension
in favour of the miraculous. The suspension or distortion of natural processes is
indeed a normal feature of divine activity in Greek religion; however, in Greek
myth it tends to present itself aetiologically, so that thunder, for instance, is
explained as the manifestation of Zeus and plague (in, e.g., II. 1.43-52) as the
manifestation of the arrows of Apollo. Famine, epidemic, mass-sterility, and
other natural calamities are interpreted as divine interventions in the world-order.
By contrast the miracle, a gratuitous addition of something to the natural order
without analogical connections, seems to be an uncharacteristic modality, in
tragedy in particular. Dionysus' miracles in Bacchae belong to this second, untragic
type: the vine growing on Semele's tomb (11-12), the streams of water, milk,
and honey (142-143, 704-711); the appearances of the (|)?cj|ia (630); and the
ensuing palace miracle, the suspension of nature before the killing of the king
(1082-85)?all of these are gratuitous.8 The elements of the miraculous also tend
to imply a kind of deconstructive sparagmos of the human world, which, in literary
terms, determines that polylogism of different viewpoints, different versions of
facts, which remain unresolved until the end of the play.9
contemporary scholarship," in particular as far as his "coming from the outside" is concerned. Various
literary and non-literary evidence confirms Bacchae's presentation of "the divinely induced perversion of
an actual cult" (257, my italics): Antigon?s fifth stasimon (1115-52), for instance, offers us a "benign
and salutary [Dionysus] ... in comparison with the vengeful and violent homecoming of the god
dramatised in Euripides' Bacchae' (265).
7 A reading of the play centred on the "intolerable question: is the rational world of Pentheus
the sufficient truth?" (Dyer 1964: 21) seems to me too simplistic. The rational world of Pentheus
is denied an autonomous existence throughout the play, and the king's behaviour, from his inmost
psyche, follows the same modalities of wild irrationality as the outdoor mysticism of the Maenads, as
we shall see in the mutual exchange of hunting keywords between characters.
For this reason it is perhaps ungenerous to say that "miracles cannot happen in Pentheus' ordered
world," as Blaiklock (1952: 217) puts it: miracles in Bacchae are not the ordinary tragic expression of
the divine.
9 Does the palace-miracle really happen? Is the c[)?a(ia an apparition, is Dionysus really
transforming himself into a bull, or is it merely evidence of Pentheus' derangement? This kind of
doubt comes with a loss of conviction about the world as an ordered system. The chorus, as an
objectifying presence, normally plays an important role in limiting ambiguity in the text; in this
respect, it is interesting to recall Foley's connection between the unusual position of the chorus in
our play ("they stand between us and the more extreme perspective of the maddened spectators to
Pentheus' tragedy on the mountain") and the "creation of multiple audiences," which makes "the
spectators conscious that they are viewing and interpreting the god's actions through a series of
subjective perspectives and performances" (Foley 1980: 112); cf. also Goldhill 1986: 278. This scene
has engendered a variety of different interpretations of the actual^/* happening onstage which have
no precedent in any other play. Modern readers have been split between literalists?the palace actually
falls apart and Pentheus actually sees "two suns over Thebes" (see Seaford 1987)?and those preferring
an illusionistic reading, whereby the earthquake is only a product of the stranger's hypnotic power
(especially Verrall 1910; Norwood 1908, with a correction in 1954) and Pentheus' double view is
194 PHOENIX
If nature is felt negatively in Dionysiac "gratuitous" miracles, it is felt positively

in the representation of the animal world.10 In the play this world comprises first
the relationships between human and animal; secondly, rearing and (especially)
hunting as images of these relationships; and finally, the negation of the orthodox
relationships of power between hunter and hunted through the actions of Diony
sus. As we shall see, the motifs of binding and freeing are also scarcely separable
from the issues of control and the chase that shape human relationships in the
play.
The analysis of these features by Segal contributes much to our understanding
(indeed exhausts the subject) of the blurring of boundaries between conventional
polarities, such as city/wilderness and man/beast.11 What concerns me here
is to decipher the meaning of Segal's pattern for the representation of man.
Interpretation of Bacchae often overemphasises the negative (what does Bacchae
deny? what does Bacchae break or blur?) in the name of Dionysus as god of
transformation and ambiguity, "the elusive god" of Segal's formula. Let us not
forget that this "elusiveness" was never conceived, in Greek Dionysiac cult, merely
as a force destructive of order, but rather as a reinforcement of order through
reversals. The lack of this reinforcement in Bacchae, and the abortive character of
Dionysiac experience there, has to do with the deeper purpose of the Euripidean
play and with the world-frame within which its Dionysiac experience takes place,
rather than with the nature of the god Dionysus himself.12 Analysis of the animal
world in Bacchae reveals that the traditional opposition between man and beast
is deprived of a safe reference for human identity. The typical roles of the rearer
and, above all, of the hunter as controllers of animals are deprived of stability. We
shall see that the world of the play is dangerously dependent on the characters'
caused by the arts of the stranger. A shrewd commentary on this dichotomy is offered by Castellani
(1976), who argues for a symbolic and prophetic reading of Dionysus' presentation of the facts (see also
Fisher 1992 and, similarly, Kitto 1961: 381). Hamilton (1974), supported by Coche de la Fert? (1980:
207), argues that the palace-miracle accomplishes Dionysus' plan by enacting "the birth epiphany of
Dionysus ... the epiphany predicted in the prologue" (145-146), where "the palace is personified as a
Maenad and, like Semele, is destroyed." This fails to convince. The parallel between the god's birth
through Semele's death and the destruction of the palace to free the imprisoned god is suggestive;
however, there is no glory or constructive teaching in the miracle itself, either for Pentheus or for the
Asian Maenads, and it is difficult to find any proper "epiphanic" quality in it. However, the response
of the reader cannot completely escape the open-endedness displayed by the text, in which a stable
understanding of reality is finally lacking. The special status of the chorus, which does not collaborate
with the characters, and is excluded from a full understanding of events, plays a key role here.
Likewise in the representation of the flora and other "landscape" elements of nature, but these
will not be analysed here, as they impinge much less on human characterisation than the animal world
does. For a list of references to the green world, see Dyer 1964: 18-19.
11 Segal 1997: 27-157.
12 Cf. Hoffman 1989: 102: "all [reversal-cults] concern the dangers of unleashed forces and the
restoration of order that is symbolised by the temporary condition of the world in reverse." See
also Lada-Richards 1999: 60-68 on "initiatory role reversals" in Greek culture, and Henrichs 1990:
257-258, emphasising, again, the uniqueness of cult in our play.
perceptions and therefore that the "natural world," formerly a stable frame within
which human civilisation inserts itself, is no longer a static site of definition.
First, animals are present in the play, both in its imagery and in its literal
reference, more extensively than in any other tragedy. They are mainly, but
not exclusively, Dionysiac animals. There are snakes: crowning the Maenads at
101 (?paKovTCov); at 539 where the chorus calls Pentheus 8K(|)V)? ye ?paicovxo?
(likewise at 1155); at 698 and 768, licking the women's cheeks (?(|)ecTi and
?paKovxs?); at 1017-18 as a form of the god (7io>-OKpavo? ... ?pcuo?v); at 1026
connected to Thebes' origins by the second servant (?paicovxo? ... oîo?);13 for
Cadmus' and Harmonia's metamorphoses at 1330 (?paKcov) and 1331 (o(|)eo?)
and again at 1358 (?paKcov ?paKaivn?). There are foals and fawns in the
chorus's imagery: nSfkoc, at 165 and 1056; and ve?poc escapes the hunter's net
at 866-876. There are bulls: Dionysus is defined as xaupOKspcov by the chorus
at 100; a xaupo? appears at 618, victim of the king's frenzy in the stable before
the palace-miracle; xctGpoi ... u?piaxai at 743, in the Maenads' sparagmos of
the cattle; âvrjOi xaupo? at 1017, as manifestation of Dionysus invoked by the
chorus; xaupo? ... ?okci? and xexa?pooaai, in Pentheus' perception at 920 and
922; and as Pentheus' guide, xaupov 7ipor|yf|xr|pa, at 1159. There are various
cattle in the herdsman's report: ?ysâ?a ... ?oaKfpax' at 677 and uuKfpctO'
... Kepo(|)op(?v ?ocov at 691; veuouivai? ... uoaxoi? at 735-736; 7i?piv at 737;
8a|a(itax? at 739; and a "herd of Maenads," ?ys?,r|, at 1022. There are gazelles
and wolf-cubs breast-fed by the women at 699, ?opica?' f| gkujivou? W)koov.
Then there are birds: at 957, Pentheus plans to spy on the Maenads, fancying
they are "in the thickets like birds (opviOa? co?) held in the most pleasant nets
(?v epKSGiv, 958) of love-making"; at 748, in the first messenger's speech, the
frenzied women are likened to a flock of birds in flight, ?ax' ?pviOe? ?pGe?aai
8p?|H(p; similarly, at 1090, they "break loose like startled doves" (ffeav mXsiaq
?KOxrjx' o?% f]Qaovs?). At 1364-65 Cadmus says to his daughter,
xi fi' an(|)i?aAA?ic %?po?v, x?A,aiva nax,
?pVl? OTCCO? KT|(|)??Va 7TO?AOXPC?V KUKVO?;
"Poor child,
Like a white swan warding its weak old father,
Why do you clasp those white arms about my neck?"
comparing himself and his desperate daughter to a young swan protecting an

older bird. There are dogs: obuocnxoi aKO?ctice? at 338 (referring to the fate
of Actaeon); ?pouu?e? ... kuvs? at 731, where Agave calls the other Maenads
her "hounds"; 8p?|urma kuvcov at 872, in the fawn-hunt image; Goal Auaaa?
KOV8? at 977, for the women of the chorus; KUve? at 1291, where Cadmus recalls
Actaeon's fate again. And then there are lions: êcuva? ?? xivo? at 990, where the
chorus accuse Pentheus of having been brought forth by a lioness; Ttuptc^?ycov ...
131025-26 del. Middendorf.
196 PHOENLX
^w?cov at 1018-19, where Dionysus is invoked by the chorus in his lion-form; and
more lions at 1141-42 and 1196, products of Agave's delusion.
There are also general terms used for animals in the play, and several instances
of the vocabulary of rearing and hunting. In both cases literal and figurative are
present, but the figurative predominates. The words used for wild animals in
general are aypa (with derivatives ?ypio?, ?ypc?xri?) and 0fp.14 Notwithstanding
the presence of actual animals in the play, the terms usually refer to god or hero,
occasionally to Dionysus but mainly to Pentheus.
To this blurring of the demarcations between man and animal, figurative and
literal, there corresponds a complication in the use of hunting and animal-rearing
imagery. Among the chief human activities, these two involve the main characters
as hunter and hunted, breeder and bred. The second sphere is less in evidence,
but still significant: Dionysus describes Pentheus as "feeding on hope" (??Juaiv
8' e?ocjKSTo) at 617 and leads him as a bull leads the cattle (1159); the women
raise or tend the wild animals (700), but butcher the cattle (737-745); Pentheus
tries to confine the stranger in the stable (509-510) and attacks a bull (618-619);
Agave, too, leads her companions like a pack of hounds (731; cf. also 689-690,
1092-94,15 111416 ). In some cases, even if no animal association is made explicit,
the pattern is implicit: Dionysus "will easily lead" Cadmus and Tiresias to the
mountain at 194; the thiasos/?y?Xa is led on the mountains by the god, who plays
the role of hound-master (1022-23); Cadmus' request to Tiresias, a blind man,
that he lead him on the mountain at 185-186 (?^nyou au jnoi y?pcov y?povxi),
may also also be included among the numerous allusions to leading animals in the
pky*
Hunting is more in evidence than rearing, again in a mixture of roles. The
terms involved are ?ypeuco (aypeujua, ?ypeu?)17 and 0npaoo/0r|psuco (euGrpoc,
Onpaypeorn?, Gipa);18 to the same group also belong Kuvrjy?rn? (Kuvny?a,
ûyKuvayo?, kuc?v),19 and instances of verbs of catching, articulating the drive
14aypa: eight occurrences, one referring to snakes (102), one to Dionysus (434), and six to
Pentheus (1146, 1183, 1196, 1199, 1201, 1203). aypio? refers to wolves (700), once to Harmonia's
metamorphosis (1358), and to Pentheus (361). ?ypicorto? refers to Pentheus (542). aypaxrcac
(?ypcoaxa? Blaydes; ?ypcoxa? LP) refers to Orpheus' creatures (564). 0r|p: twelve occurrences,
referring three times to animals (564, with Orpheus; 727, beasts running in the Bacchanal; 1085,
silent before the sparagmos), twice to Dionysus (436, 922), and six times to Pentheus again (1108,1183,
1190, 1204, 1210, 1237); 0r|pOTpo(|>oc twice refers to the thiasoi of the Bacchants (102, 556-557).
151091 deleted by Paley, 1091-92 by Diggle.
16 Only at 731 is Agave presented as leading dogs; in the other lines cited, however, she displays
the same masterful attitude towards the other women.
1 aypeuoo is used once by the chorus (138), once by the first servant (434), and twice by Agave
(1204, 1237). aypeuua is used by Agave (1241); aypeu? is used to refer to Dionysus (1192).
9?p?co/9r|ps?co is used ten times by Pentheus (228, 459), the herdsman (688, 719), Agave (732,
1215, 1278), Dionysus (839), and the chorus (890, 1005-6). 0r|pa recurs in imagery (869) and in
connection with Agave's killing of her son (1144, 1171); e?0r|po? is used by Agave (1253).
19Kuvay8xac: 871, 1189; Kuvayia: 339; ûyKUvay?c refers to Dionysus: 1146; k?cov: 731, 872,
977, 1291.
to chase and capture which inspires Pentheus and other male characters, like the
herdsmen. Some significant instances of the common verb A,au?ava>, and of
?p7ia?co (auvapTr??co), u?pTixa), and êuyoo ((|)uyr|), are pertinent here.
The ?yp- group pertains above all to Agave. We have ?ypeuoo at 1204,
"come and see the prey we have hunted"; "the hunting of wild animals!" at 1237;
aypeu|ia, "exulting in my hunting" at 1241. Dionysus is defined as ?va?, ?ypeu?
by the chorus at 1192; the chorus call themselves hunters at 138-139 ("hunting
goat-killing blood," ?ypeucov a?ua xpayoKx?vov). The first servant returns from
his mission "having hunted the prey" (the stranger) at 434, aypav ryypeuK?xec.
Terms with the root 0r|p- are used more often. Again, the character most
associated with such usage is Agave. We get 0r|paa> at 732, "we are hunted by
these men"; at 1215, "the lion I have hunted"; and at 1278, "a lion, as my fellow
hunters say," referring to her companions. Oipa is used to refer to her deeds by
the second servant at 1144, "rejoicing in her ill-fated hunt," 0ipa ougttOxîg), and
at 1171 she calls hers a "blessed hunt," laoucapiav 0ipav. Pentheus is connected
to this group of terms at 228 ("I will hunt them from the mountains") and at
459, where he accuses Dionysus of "hunting Aphrodite with your beauty" (echoed
at 688 by the herdsman: the women were not, as the king thought, "hunting
Aphrodite in the wood"). At 839 Dionysus suggests to the king that to spy is
"wiser than to hunt down evils with evils," koikoi? Orjpav Kaic?. At 1253 Agave
ironically wishes Pentheus were as ?00r|po? as she is, when he hunts on the
mountains (Orjpc?v, at 1255). Finally, the chorus at 869 recall the image of the
hunted fawns; at 890 they claim that gods hunt down the impious (GrjpcoGiv x?v
aasTixov); at 1005-6 they rejoice in hunting (xaipco 0r|peoouaa); and at 1020 (it
may be) they call Dionysus 0r|paypeuxr|<;.20
The lexical group based on the ku- stem also centres on hunting. The chorus
at 872 use a negative piece of imagery, "the running of the hounds" hunting a
fawn (?pafir|(ia kuvcov); at 977 they call the Maenads Auaaa? KUve?; Dionysus
is called Kuvaysxa? at 871, and at 1146 cûyKuvayo? and %uvepyaxr|v aypa?
Agave at 731 calls her fellow-hunters "running hounds." The episode of Actaeon
is repeatedly recalled.21
Finally, other terms contribute to the dynamic of hunting: ?pTca?co and
auvapTia?co, used at 443 for Pentheus ("the women you took away," auvrjp7iac?a?,
20 Text controversial: cod. here 0r|paypcoxa/?xa. Dindorf suggested On pay peux??. Other proposed
readings include Orjpaypexa (Tyrrell, commended by Dodds) and 0Tjp ?ypeuxq? (Kopff, Seaford,
Diggle), all with the same effect: the dative term would depend on rc?aovxi (1022-23) making the
hunted 0r|p hunt the hunter Pentheus. However, it is true that the king has already changed from
pursuer to quarry: perhaps P's 0-npaypcoxa should be retained as a vocative to modify ?aicxs, as
suggested by Neuburg (1987).
21 At 337-340 Cadmus compares his grandson to Actaeon and at 1291, talking to his daughter, he
finds the figura completed after the king's death. See also 230 and 1227: in both instances Autono? is
defined as "Actaeon's mother," with both an allusion to the theomachos hunter and to the mother-son
relationship, crucial to Pentheus' death (230 is deleted by Collmann, but accepted by Dodds and
Diggle).
198 PHOEND?
says the first servant), at 729 for the herdsman ("I jumped out with the aim of
seizing her," cb? auvap7caaai 0??,oov), and at 754 for the women ("they seized
children from their homes," f]p7ia?ov |u?v 8K ?oucov xsKva). There are also
instances of taxu?aveiv used in the specific sense of "catch" or "capture," mainly
in reference to Pentheus: in his own words at 226, "as many women as I have
caught," ocra? u^v ouv ?iXntya; at 239, "if I capture him [the stranger] within
this palace," ei 5' a?x?v ei'aco xfja?e Xr\\\fO[iax ax?yri?; at 355, "if you catch him,
bring him here," K?cvTiep A,d?r|xe, ??auiov 7tope?o~axe, and in Dionysus' words
addressing the king at 960, "you will catch them, if you are not caught first," Xr|vj/T]
8' Ygoo? G(|)a?, ijvGi) |ir| >uT|(()Gfi? Tcapo?. At 1102, Pentheus is finally "trapped
past escaping," acopia ?e?,r||iuivo?. The verb is also used by Agave in her proud
hallucination at 1196, "having caught a prey" (A,a?ouaav aypav), and at 1239,
"the prize I took for valour" (A,a?ouaa x?picxs?a). ja?pTrxco is also used by Agave
at 1173, "I seized without meshes."22 The counterpart to these verbs of catching
is offered by (j)8uycD and (|)uyr|.23 Words from this group are used ironically by
Dionysus at 627, "on the assumption that I had got away" (ob? ?juou Tceêuyoxo?),
referring to Pentheus' belief; at 659, when the god reassures him that "we will not
try to get away" (o? (()S?ô?jLis0a); at 792, when Pentheus tells the god "as you
have escaped from bonds, will you not stop instructing me?" (??cjuio? (|)uyc?v); at
436-437, in the first servant's narrative, "he did not pull back his foot in flight"
(ou?' ?m?aTcccasv (|>i)yf} tco?'); at 798, as Dionysus warns the king, "you will all be
put to flight" (<|)e?êG 0s rc?vxec); at 734 and 763-764, when the herdsman tells
how the women turned the men to flight (fjjLie?? (lev ouv (|>eoyovxe? ?^r| X?^coiev;
?xpaoâxi?ov K?7tevc6xi?ov (|)oyf? yuva?Ke? av?pa?). The term is present in a
positive sense in the fawn image offered by the chorus at 868. Arguably a hint
of Agave's animality is still there when, finally, at 1350 and 1363, in her mouth,
(|)i)yr| and (|)s?yco allude to exile.
This survey reveals an important aspect of the hunt motif in Bacchae, which
is the usage of key-words to problematize the image itself. The idea of hunting
and escaping shifts from positive to negative; the role of hunter and hunted, the
value of exile and salvation, and the status of man and animal are ambiguous too.
In addition to presenting Pentheus as persecutor of the victimised god, we see a
diffuse image of hunting and fleeing which involves all the characters in the play.
Far from offering a paradigm of divine punishment over the impious, the hunt
becomes a figure for an incomprehensible reality.
At the beginning of the play, Pentheus is presented as the bold, aggressive party
in his struggle with Dionysus. Terminology of tying, binding, and imprisoning
characterise the behaviour of the king?superficially but insistently?and, at
a deeper level, Dionysus' actions. Pentheus and most of the other human
22Xaja?avu) (I cite only the instances where the verb is connected to hunting/catching a victim):
226, 239, 355, 503 (Xa?onai), 960,1102,1125,1140, 1196,1221 (deleted by Nauck), 1239; ?P7u?<>:
754; auvapT??Cco: 443, 729; \i?pn*z&: 1173.
23(J)8?)yc?: 627, 659, 734, 792, 798, 868, 1363; (fruyn: 437, 763, 1350.
characters?servants, stranger, Agave, chorus?all carry out, or at least try to carry

out, an actual hunt: Pentheus, in his tyrannical fashion, through hopeless military
means, while the women do it proudly without weapons or nets (736, 757,24 1173,
1205-10). However, all three hunts are unsuccessful: Pentheus does not catch
the women nor does he actually take hold of the stranger; the herdsman and the
other men try in vain to seize Agave and the other Maenads; Agave herself and
her companions, although they manage to catch their prey, finally accomplish no
hunt. They first kill "a well-uddered bellowing young heifer," s?0r|A,ov Ttopiv
(737-738); then they snatch children from their homes, fjpTca?ov ji?v 8K ?ojicov
T8Kva (754); and finally, fulfilling the very figura of abortive hunting, they butcher
their leader's son. Moreover Pentheus, Agave, and the Maenads, as well as
Dionysus, are hunted at the same time?just as the chorus are both victimised and
claim to "rejoice in hunting":26 the women and the chorus are chased by Pentheus
and Pentheus by them, but implicitly, by Dionysus through them.
At this stage in our argument, we may note that the sparagmos scene (1043
1152) and its preparation in the fourth stasimon (977-1023) point, in part, to
the hunting of small animals, as, for instance, the hare-hunting which is evoked
with reference to Pentheus at Aeschylus' Eumenides 26: ?,ay<x> o?ktjv IlevOe?
Kaxapp?\|/ac u?pov, "contriving for Pentheus death as of a hunted hare." The
nature of this hunt is different in practice and social meaning from the more
dangerous and rewarding hunt of bigger animals, like boars, and deserves closer
attention.27 Kerenyi, interpreting the representation of a hunting god on a
Roman sarcophagus, identifies the god as Dionysus carrying pedum, stick, and
net, precisely the tools used to chase the hare.28 His observations on older
presentations of the god as hunter are useful for our reading of the hunt-motif
m Bacchae. Hare-hunting is not one of the heroic hunts celebrated in Greek
culture as offering men a chance to prove their courage. It is, rather, a safe,
everyday form of hunt. Its presence in Dionysiac iconography is linked, according
to Kerenyi, to the symbolic role of the hare in a number of rites of passage for
youths; hare-hunting has strong connotations of pre-adulthood.29 I suggest that
in Bacchae this reference to hare-hunting, and these connotations, are activated.
In an influential discussion, Vidal-Naquet has analysed the relation between
Athenian ephebia and ritual hunting.30 The characteristics he identifies as typical
of pre-adult hunting are present in Baccha?s allusions to the motif, with the
24 Unless Diggle, following Jackson, is right in supposing that o? xotX-KO?, o? cn?npo? belong after
261 and refer to the men's weapons.
Cf. 804, where the god suggests Pentheus can attain his objective ?tc?x?v ... di%a, "without
weapons."
26 Cf. 1005-6, and the whole fourth stasimon (977-1023).
27 On hare-hunting in ancient Greece, see Hull 1964: 59-75; Anderson 1985: 31-32.
28Kerenyil952.
29Kerenyi 1952: 137. See also Anderson 1985: 70 on the depictions of young men hunting hares
on fifth-century Attic funerary vases.
30Vidal-Naquetl968.
200 PHOENIX
difference that they do not concern one character in particular?Pentheus, as

one might expect?but the activity in itself. The characteristics in question are
precisely those that are rejected in Greek culture for mature hunting: Plato reflects
on the activity of hunting at Laws 7.822d-824a, explicitly condemning the use
of net and traps; at 824a, he says that "of this branch of hunting, the kind called
night-stalking, which is the job of lazy men who sleep in turn, is one that deserves
no praise"31 (cov f| \xzv xcov eu?ovxoov au Kotx? u?pr|, vuKxep8ia K?,r|0s?aa,
?pycav ?v?pcov, o?k a^?a eTta?vou). This hunting "typifies the adolescent": it is
carried out aveu cn?ipou, and by means ofa7r?xr|.32
In Bacchae the elements of ritual hunt as rite of passage for adolescents are
present, but fractured among different characters. Dionysus is ?uyicuvayo? (1146)
and Kuvccy?xa? (1189), the hound-leader who urges the hounds to chase the prey
into the net;33 the god pursues his prey through ?7iaxr| rather than by violence,
a strategy he also commends to Pentheus at 839 (spying on the women from a
hidden place is "wiser than hunting down evils with evils," ao(|)coxspov youv x\
koiko?? O?jpav Kaic?). The god here is the shrewd, fraudulent hunter as opposed
to the adult, heroic hunter. Yet other characters share these attributes: the
women hunt without the need of iron weapons,34 while nocturnal activity is one
of Pentheus' complaints against the stranger, which the latter readily confirms
(485-486). Pentheus, for his part, is handed over to the women by Dionysus,
at 848, with the words "our man now thrashes in the net we threw" (?v?p ??
?oA-ov KctO?axaxai), in preparation for the agon which this "young man" must
endure (974-975). On the other side, Pentheus himself tries to pursue his prey
(the women) by means of secrecy and tricks.
At 869-870, in the fawn image, the Maenads recall another hunting situation
(here in an explicitly negative sense), as they long to escape 8^co (|)D?,aKa?
8?7iX8Kxcov UTCsp ?pKucov ("clear of the ring of watchers, leaping the woven
nets"), where (|)uA,aKr| is the net-watcher.3 The chorus praise their lord, the
leader of the hounds, who has cast the trap around Pentheus (?poxov, 1021, and
already ?oXov, at 848),36 and who has led him towards the women, i>n ?y?Xav
31 Translation by Bury (1926).

32a7c?ir| is an element of great importance likewise in the Spartan Kryptia: see Vernant 2000:
151-186. Cf. also Barringer 2001: 55: "this quality of deception, of ignoble sportsmanship, of reliance
on cleverness or a ruse rather than on physical prowess and courage is inherent to the immature hunt."
33 See also 1089, where the daughters of Cadmus hear the Keêuauo? of the god and hurl
themselves at the prey, and 1078, where the voice of the god-leader rouses the women ((J)covr| ti?). No
animal is mentioned here, but the behaviour of both the god and the women recalls the hunt.
34 At 949-950 we have an involuntary parody of this in Pentheus' boast: poxô?? (j)?pcopev r\
Xspo?v avaarc?ac? Kopu(j)a?? U7co?aA,G)v ?auov r\ ?paxiova, "should we take crowbars with us? Or
should I put my shoulder to the cliffs and heave them up?"
35 The reference is perhaps to a hunting practice in which the hunter is armed with a throwing-stick
and cord (see Anderson 1985: 41).
The word ?poxoc, noose, recurs at 545, where the chorus fear that Pentheus may have trapped
the stranger in one; at 619, where Pentheus tries to use one against the bull, thinking it is the stranger;
finally, at 1173 where Agave boasts that she had managed to catch the "lion" without one.
(1022). The women, for their part, behave like hounds: first, they are roused by
their master at 1078-79 (eK 8' aiO?po? (|)G)vr| xi? ... avG?orjaev); they lift their
heads nervously, almost sniffing the air at 1086-87 (a? 8' obaiv r^v o? cja^co?
SeSeyuivai eaxnaav ?p0a\ Kai 8ir|veyKav Kopa?); then they are commanded
by Agave to surround the prey at 1106-8 (7tepicxaaai kukXcd ... x?v au?axrjv
0f?p ? 8?,00JU?V).
Thus there are in Bacchae various allusions to the hunting domain and amongst
them a pattern of nocturnal, adolescent, ritual hunting. This pre-adult, sacred
hunt does not reach its constructive aim. The prey is torn apart, its remains are
scattered in the forest, and its head is carried around. Whatever our reading of the
scene?hunt, sacrifice, or both?we have here a failed hunt and a failed sacrifice.
Both Pentheus and the god present "ephebic" characteristics: ironically in the case
of Dionysus, and abortively in the case of the king. Where Pentheus is concerned,
this implicit reference to the rituals of the adolescent who must reach adulthood
serves not to point to the definition of a character?contrast Hippolytus, for
instance?but to denounce the impossibility of the rituals themselves.
In fact, one might indeed object that "failed ephebi"?Vidal Naquet's "black
hunters"37?are not a novelty in tragic representations: the Euripidean Hippolytus
is one of many examples. Yet there are fundamental differences between the two.38
First of all, in Bacchae we do not have one character representing a failure of
ephebia, but, as we have seen, elements of pre-adult hunting shared, sometimes
parodically, between different characters; secondly, unlike Hippolytus, the young
Pentheus is no ephebe, but an established king; thirdly, in Hippolytus we have a
decisive closure to the ritual pattern, marked by Artemis' blessing and the painful
understanding of Theseus, while the "lesson" of our play is, in this respect, left
open.
Dionysus, for his part, enters the action of the play as victim and prisoner
under threat of being hunted down, at the head of a group of outcast women.
Through the appeals of the chorus, however, his status as Kuvnysxri? becomes
gradually apparent. By contrast the hunter Pentheus is presented (and, above all,
dressed) in a way which ridicules and denies his ambitions as hunter,39 led into
37Vidal-Naquetl968:63.
Contrast Bellinger (1939: 26-27), who underlines the similarities between the two plays and
finds in the two protagonists an "obvious likeness." Barringer (2001: 55) also ignores the differences
between the two, aligning the Aeschylean Orestes with Euripides' Hippolytus and Pentheus as
examples of "black hunters."
See Xenophon's recommendation about the hunters' dress: "let the net-keeper wear light clothing
when he goes hunting" (Cyn 6.5); "let the huntsman go out to the hunting-ground in a simple light
dress and shoes, carrying a cudgel in his hand, and let the net-keeper follow" (6.11). Pentheus, dressed
as a Maenad, accompanied by Dionysus and the servant, and brandishing the thyrsus, is a parody of a
hunter holding his ây(??oA,ov. Conceivably, an element of parody can also be detected in the use of
the verb ?vaxam?co for the tree on which Dionysus accommodates Pentheus at 1072, making sure
that it \xr\ GtvaxaiT?aeie viv. The verb literally means "throw the mane back," "rear up (and throw the
rider)" (<xv?, x??xr|): Pentheus is riding a tree's vr?xoic (1074). It is difficult to separate traditional
mythological elements from poetic invention in our play; however, the emphasis on Agave as the main
202 PHOENIX
the net by the god, and duly chased by the hounds. The god's eventual role as
both the bull leading the cattle and the Kuvrjy?xrj? leading the hunt is all too
clear.
How does this manipulation of categories impinge on the flawed relationship
between man and nature? In three ways: first, the cultural category of the "animal"
is seen to be neither clearly opposed to nor integrated with man; secondly, there
is a challenge to the status of basic civilised activities such as rearing and hunting;
thirdly, there is a crisis concerning, the values and the educational functions of
"social survival" that hunting in particular carries for Greek society.40 In Bacchae
the paradigm of the hunter is turned upside-down: the hunters are women and
a feminine-looking stranger, while the self-styled dominant character, Pentheus,
becomes the sacrificial victim or prey. This dynamic of reversals has been noted
by many scholars, in particular with reference to Dionysiac rites of passage.41 It is
true that the reversal between hunter and hunted seems to typify hunting myths.42
In Bacchae, however, this dynamic of reversals involves the very characterisation of
the main players, discrediting hunting as a traditional means of human survival,
as a social and educational institution, and as a fundamental framework for the
definition of the adult male. The play thereby calls into question a vital part of
the ideological parameters within which man, and therefore human character, is
defined.
So much, then, for the terms belonging to the animal world and to the activity
of hunting as far as their referential meaning is concerned. We may now turn
to consider the medium of these references. It is characteristic and significant
that the animals in the play are not confined to their natural domain, but are
used both as imagery and as literal (albeit striking) presences in the human world
(as with the snakes licking the women, the breast-fed cubs, or the slaughtered
calves). The first modality is hardly new?we may recall Homeric images from
the animal world used to express warrior-like fury;43 and the second, though here
unusually widespread, is not in itself extraordinary. Yet the two modalities tend
to be mutually exclusive: either animals are literally present or they are present
in imagery, but not both. Therefore, the insistence in the play on a literal and
agent of destruction and, most of all, the presentation of an unarmed Pentheus seem to be Euripidean
innovations. Webster (1967: 268-269) argued, on the evidence of vase paintings, for the novelty of
Pentheus' killing by Agave, followed by McKay (1970) and Oranje (1984: 130), who pronounces
"the god driving his adversary mad [as] Euripides' most important innovation." See more extensively
March (1989), who argues that Pentheus' madness, woman's dress, and death at his mother's hands
are Euripidean innovations.
40 See, for example, Anderson 1985: 17-20; both Xenophon {Cyn. 12.1-8) and Plato {Leg.
822d-824) assert the important role of hunting in the formation of the young man and citizen. "Social
survival" is emphasised by Barringer (2001, esp. 10-69).
41 For example, Vidal-Naquet 1968: 56-57; Hoffman 1989; Goldhill 1988; Segal 1997: 158-214;
Lada-Richards 1999: 60-68.
42 Barringer 2001: Chapter 3 ("Hunting and Myth"), esp. 156-161.
43 Out of many examples, see //. 12.41-48, 18.573-586.
a figurative usage of the animal element simultaneously makes the mechanical

distinction between vehicle and tenor problematic. Cadmus is condemned to
become a snake and we have seen (through the messenger's eyes) snakes interacting
with the Maenads; symbolic hounds of frenzy should be hunting Pentheus and
real cubs have been breastfed by the women; a bull or cow is not only an image
of Dionysus and a product of Pentheus' hallucination but also an actual animal in
the stable, a representative of the human activity of rearing animals, and an actual
victim of sparagmos (in the herdsman's narrative). Finally, words with the stems
0r|p- and ayp-, denoting animals, are used for the most part with reference to
human characters.
The last animal mentioned, the bull (xaupo?) as an attribute of Dionysus,
is particularly instructive in its suggestion of the ramifications of this blurring.
Dionysus is defined as xaupoicepcov by the chorus at 100; at 618 a bull appears in
lieu of the stranger, as a victim of the king's frenzy in the stable (xaupov); in the
Maenads' sparagmos of the cattle, we see the killing ofxaupoi... u?piaxai (743);
at 1017 the chorus invokes the god in this form ((()avr|0i xaupo?, "reveal yourself
a bull!"); Dionysus is a bull in Pentheus' perception (xaupo? ... Soks??, "I think
you are a bull," at 920; xsxaupcoaai, "now you are changed to bull," at 922) and
as Pentheus' guide in the chorus's description (xaupov Tiponyrixfipa, "a bull as a
guide," at 1159).
Such usage influences the representation of characters in the play on various
levels. The most superficial reading links the bull to Dionysus (via theological or
mythological association). Then, there is the similarity or opposition of Dionysus
and the king, so that the xaupoi ... u?pioxai killed by the women at 743 are
& figura of Pentheus, while the bull he tries to imprison at 618 is a substitute
for the god. Then again, we have the theme of doubling and disguise: at
100 and 1017, the god is invoked as able to take taurine form at will and at
920-922 Pentheus actually sees him transformed. Of these numerous allusions
to the bull, some instances are imagery in the ordinary sense (1159), some
are real facts reported literally (743), and some are, seemingly, hallucinations
(920).
Something very similar happens with the lion imagery: Dionysus is invoked
as a lion, Agave believes she has killed a lion, the chorus thinks a lioness must
have given birth to Pentheus. Perhaps the most telling instance of this blend
of figure and actuality is Agave's conviction that she is carrying the head of a
slaughtered lion, since it engenders not only a play between literal and figurai,
but even between image and literal hallucination, so to speak. The lion, as we
have seen, is frequently mentioned as a figure of Pentheus or as a symbol of
fierceness and violence; a tamed version of this figure, reversed in its helplessness
(a lion cub, slaughtered, and held like a baby in a mother's arms) is present in
Agave's derangement and connected by the audience to the previous imagery: its
significance stands out against the text and in the performance context, not within
the characters' awareness.
204 PHOENIX
We can make an instructive comparison with Aeschylus' practice. In Aeschylus'

poetic usage, imagery (metaphor and related mechanisms) is often used rhetorically,
in the sense that characters are liable to be aware of the imagery constructed in the
play through their own utterances; they use imagery as part of a shared common
idiom. There is a sort of a pact among the characters with the author and with
the audience. In this way, for instance, the chorus use a lion-metaphor at Ag.
140-145, in the prophetic image of the lion-cubs (]ua?,epcc>v A,8?vxcov, 141), and
at 717-736, referring to Paris as a lion-cub (?iovxo? ?viv, 717-718) received into
Troy with all honours and, once grown, doomed to bring death and destruction
to the city; at 827 Agamemnon calls the avenging action of the Greek army in
Troy ob|ur|axri? ??cov, "ravening lion"; at 1258-59 Cassandra calls Clytemnestra
"a two-footed lioness" (?ittou? tactiva) sleeping with the wolf ?iovxo? e?yevou?
aTcoua?a ("when her proud lion ranges far away"); and at 1224 she calls Aegisthus
"a cowardly lion" (X?ovx avct^Kiv). The lion is a recurrent image in the Ores teta?
and will return in Choephori (938) and Eumenides (193-194)?but it is recurrent
within the characters' idiom and only there. This has important consequences for
the depiction of these characters, which could be, perhaps prosaically, summarised
thus: they all know what a lion is; they all connect the idea of a lion to certain
characteristics (fierceness, cruelty, greed, violence); they all believe that the other
characters to whom they speak (and this therefore includes the audience as well)
will understand and interconnect the whole network of allusions and precedents
that the lion represents?the Trojan war, the violent curse of the family, the
slaughter of Iphigenia.44
In Bacchae, instead, the image is manipulated by the author in a manner
not sensed by the characters; moreover, we have a development of an image
parallel to the development of a character. For instance, the bird-image maps all
the aspects of the women's behaviour: peaceful, aggressive, military, and finally
helpless. Similarly, the line which separates Pentheus the king from Pentheus the
would-be bacchant is dangerously blurred by the images of fluttering repeatedly
connected with him. Finally, the foal and fawn images are connected to
the women as connotative of peace and nature (164-166), but also of fear,
hunting, and victimisation (866-876). In short, the role of animals in the play
is not determined by the common, received perception of them but by their
The richness and complexity of the lion imagery in the Aeschylean trilogy was explored by
Knox (1952), who saw in the lion cub parable "an elaborate pattern of imagery ... a complex knot of
suggestions which evoke simultaneously all the principal human figures of the Oresteia (18).
At 214 Cadmus sees him coming, and comments on his anxious, hot-tempered aspect: ?>?
C7iT?rjtai, "What a flutter he is in!" Again, attacked by his nephew, he warns him, vuv y?p 7iexn,
"now you are a-flutter" (332). The application of such an image to the character who, in his
intentions, embodies state control and stability of mind par excellence, hints from the beginning of
the play at a special weakness of the king's personality. Cf. also Seaford 1996: 170-171, ad 214
on "fluttering nervous excitement" as one of Pentheus' experiences which reflect initiation into the
Dionysiac mysteries: for initiatory Trionai?, Seaford compares Plut. Mor. 943c; Aristid. Quint. De
Mus. 3.25; PL Phd. 108b.l; Ar. Nub. 319.
specific characterisation in each different instance, which is changeable, often

unpredictable, and even contradictory.
Oscillation between the literal and the figurai seems to characterise our play
more generally. Another striking example of the blurring between the two levels
is the motif of binding and freeing in Bacchae^ which overlaps with instances of
hunting and chasing, both semantically and in its instability between figurai and
actual. Euripides' practice with this group of words reverses the blurring we saw
in his usage of animal terms. Animal terms appeared both in actuality and in
imagery, while at first sight tying/freeing is simply a datum literally described, or
staged. Yet, at a deeper level (political or psychological), this image, besides its
concrete meaning(s), evokes the themes of liberation and constriction which are
instantiated in the motifs of chasing and fleeing foregrounded by hunting. This
deeper sphere, however, is never presented explicitly: it is rather part of the matrix
in which the characters live without full awareness. What makes it apparent to
the audience are the suggestions conveyed by the play as a whole and, perhaps
more compelling an index, the contrast with the established usage of these words
in the previous poetic tradition.
The keywords of this polarity used in the play are ??ajaio?, ?eauo?, ?s?v and
ûe?v, apKu?, eipKxfV The adjective ?sajaio? is used by Pentheus against Tiresias
at 259: "if your white-haired old age was not there to save you, you would be
sitting tied up in the midst of the Maenads" (si jurj as yipac; l?okxbv sêppuexo,
KaGrja' dv ev ?aK%aiai ??auio? uiaai?, 258-259). The king had used the same
expression before, at 226, about the Maenads themselves, to the effect that he is
keeping them in prison "with their hands in chains" (?eauiou? %?pa?). Pentheus
also orders his servant, "bring me the stranger tied up" (osajiiov TCOpeuaaxe 8e6p'
auxov, 355-356) and reproaches the stranger "who has just escaped from his
bonds" (8?a|LUo? ((mycov, 792). The term is also once used by the chorus, worried
about their leader's imprisonment (615). The adjective, therefore, points to the
king's aggressive desire to imprison his opponents. We can see how it implicitly
characterises not only Pentheus' personality, but also his perspective of the world
beyond and his behaviour at large. His distorted view of the external world will
eventually be realised against himself, turning the one who imprisons into the
imprisoned.
The noun 8eap,o? is likewise used by, and in connection with, Pentheus
and also, once, by the chorus. This is interesting in that Pentheus seems to
be cut off from the level of reality on which the other characters act and the
tying/freeing motif colours his view of things. The chorus's use of the noun, given
their alienation from position in Thebes (and in the events), puts them close to
Pentheus as the only other characters who take his attempt at repression seriously.
The king is at first amazed because the stranger has freed himself from his chains
(642-643,8ia7t?(|)?UYr| \i o ^?vo?, o? apxi ?eauo?? fjv KaxrjvayKaau?vo?, "that
For an analysis of this motif, see also Ieran? 1991.
206 PHOENIX
stranger, the man I clapped in irons, has escaped" and 648, tt?Gsv ai) Seaju?
8ia(|)uy?)V eôo Tiepa?, "how did you escape?"); he had earlier been informed by a
messenger that the imprisoned women (443-444, a? auvfp7taaa? KaSnaa? sv
Seauo?cji, "those women you clapped in chains and sent to the dungeon") likewise
broke their chains (447-448, a?xojLiaxa 8' a?xa?? Seau? Sie?,u0r| 710800v K?,ij8??
T ?vfJKav Gupexp', "the chains on their legs snapped apart by themselves ... the
doors swung wide"), and later that they did not need any ropes to carry anything
from the houses they raided (755, o? Seajicov uno, "untied"). The stranger
meanwhile warns Pentheus against constraining him in chains (518, f)|na? y?p
aSiKcov K81V0V ei? Ssguou? ?ysi?, "when you set chains on me, you manacle
him") and, talking to the chorus, calls his bondage "most bitter for him [Pentheus]
to see," 7iiKpoxaxou? ?8?vxi 8ecj|iou? xou? ?jiou? (634). In their final exultation,
the chorus are happy "at no longer cowering under the fear of chains," Seajuoov
uno <|>o?(p (1035).47
The symmetrical verbs 8eiv and ?,us?v also play an important role: Dionysus
speaks the language of freedom and release.48 At 498 (and similarly at 649),
the stranger speaking to Pentheus declares that "a god will free me" (A,uo~ei \x b
8ai|ucov a?xo?). At 445 a servant reports to the king the episode of the women's
flight: they are "released" (?,e?,uju?vai).49 8e?v, however, is exclusive to Pentheus'
own lexicon or else to his "area of influence": at 439, 444, 504, and 505 the verb is
used by the messenger, the stranger, or the king, but in all these cases referring to
Pentheus' orders. Finally, we have the words for "prison," "net," "trap." sipicxri,
"prison," is uttered both by Pentheus and by the chorus, the two poles of delusive
aggressiveness and foolish fear which partly share the same level of reality (497,
549). ?pKu?, "net," is again uttered by Pentheus twice and by the chorus (231,
451, 870).
The verbal insistence on tying/freeing, then, is very strong. It is also especially
significant, if we compare it to other verbal clusters which are important in the
play, such as mania, because of its relative marginality within the Dionysiac
tradition. Mania is a leading element in Dionysiac saga, and so to some extent
unavoidably central to the play. The element of tying/freeing; by contrast, is
Cf. also Kaxr|vayKaCT|u?vo(; at 643. aov?eaja' at 697, referring to the Maenads' belts, does not
seem significant for our analysis.
48 On the various articulations of Dionysus as "liberator," see Leinieks 1996: 303-325.
Cf. also, from the same semantic area: SiaX?co referring to the Maenads' liberation (447);
?A-?u0cp?co used by the chorus of the stranger's liberation (613); oiaêuyco (648, 642). (J)e?yco is used in
instances which represent the obverse of Pentheus' constraining impulses: at 734, when the messenger
narrates his escape from the sparagmos (ê?yco; sâA,?aKco); at 1363, when Agave laments her exile; at
659, when Dionysus says he will not leave Pentheus in his expedition to the mountain (aoi uevouuev,
o? (|)8u?,o?î80a, "we shall remain where we are, we will not run away"); and at 798, when Dionysus
comments on the Theban men who will be routed by the women. Cf. also (j)??ya> at 627, 868, and
903.
Cf. also (koiG) eipyco at 509, 618 and K?n?co at 653, always referring to Pentheus' action.
not so much concretely present in the Dionysiac saga, even though Dionysus is
traditionally "Lysios, and even though there are earlier depictions of men trying
in vain to put him in chains:52 the extended exploitation of the tying/freeing
motif to characterise Pentheus' fall is Euripides' choice. Moreover, all the tying
and freeing in the play is very concrete?imprisonment, chains, fleeing from
prison?although there is an uncomfortable discontinuity between concrete and
abstract. It is noteworthy that in tragic poetry before Bacchae, by contrast, the
vocabulary in question is often used metaphorically, as well as literally. S?auio?,
for instance, is used metaphorically by Aeschylus {Eum. 306, 332, 345) in the
expression S?auio? (|)pevc?v, with reference to the frightening song of the Erinyes,
which "binds the mind" of the listener. Ssajio? is used by Aeschylus, again, in
Cho. 981, with the meaning "plot against someone," Seajiov ?QXm Tcaxpi; it also
occurs in fr. 325, ax?(|)avo?, ... S?ajuo? apiaxo?, in a concrete, but metaphorical
usage, "a garland ... a bond of excellence." Elsewhere, Euripides himself uses the
noun with reference to "obligation," 8ea|Liov 8' aSsajiov x?v8' ?'%ouaa (|)uM,a8o?,
"holding these sprays of foliage, a bond that does not bind" (Supp. 32) and to the
"restraints" of necessity, ?v c?|)Ukxoigi ... Seauo?? (Ale. 984). The same pattern
is apparent with related words.54 It is remarkable, then, that in our play Euripides
avoids using any relevant word in a secondary sense, and further implications of
these literal usages are allowed to emerge from the development of the drama
itself. Euripides' avoidance of metaphor here, as opposed to Aeschylus' abundant
See Dodds 1960: 132 on 443-448, regarding liberation and traditional Dionysiac miracles.
52 See Hymn. Horn. Bacch. 12-15.
53The non-canonical nature of the motif engenders comments like that of Dodds (1960: 132):
"The liberation of the imprisoned women serves no obvious purpose in the economy of the play
beyond giving Pentheus the unheeded warning that the supernatural cannot be controlled by lock and
key."
54^6? is used of marriage for girls and losing one's virginity (Eur. Ale. 177, Tro. 501). It also
occurs in various phrases referring to bodily expressions: crying {Hipp. 290, CTxuyvT]v ?(j)p6v A,6aaaa,
"loosening your morose brow"); waking up (Rhes. 8, A-Gaov ?A,e(|)apcuV yopyotm?v e?pav, "unseal that
fierce eye from its repose"); letting out war-fury (Aesch. Sept. 396, Pers. 913); speaking freely {Hipp.
1060, xi ?rjxa xo?uov o? X?co axofia, "why do I not then open my mouth"); general relief from pain
or sorrow (Aesch. Pers. 594, Supp. 1064-65, 'Iw Tinuova? ??,uaax', "[he] mercifully freed Io from
pain"; Soph. Aj. 706, eXvaev aiv?v axo? an ofiu?xeov 'Apn?, "Ares has dispelled the cloud of fierce
trouble from our eyes"; Soph. Track. 181, okvoo ae X?aco, "I will free you from fear"?as already
Od. 5.397, 9eo\ KaKOxnxoc e'A-uaav, "the gods free [him] from his woe"; Pind. Pyth. 3.50, Xuaai?
?XXov ?X\oi(?v ?x?cov, "he released and delivered all of them from their different pains"), ??co is
used metaphorically by Euripides at Hipp. 160, ???exai \\fv%?, "her soul is bound." apicu? is used
metaphorically in the sense of "plot" or "snare" five times in Euripides {El. 965, koi?xo? otp' dpKuv
?? uiarjv 7iop8?8xai, "finely she walks to the middle of the net"; cf. IT 77, Cyc. 196, HF 729, Med.
1278) but never in Bacchae, though it displays the highest occurrence (three times, at 870, 231, 451).
It occurs three times in Aeschylus {Ag. 1116, Ch. 1000, Eu. 147) and once in Sophocles {El. 1476:
?pKuaxaxoi?, "nets"), always non-concretely. Contrast this reading o? Bacchae with Worman's analysis
(1999: 99) of the tying-motif in Euripides' Heracles as "steadily [alternating] between figurative and
referential demarcation."
208 PHOENIX
usage, may seem, at first sight, only to typify the well-known characteristics of
the two dramatists' verse styles.55 Yet, one may argue that in this way both
verbal motifs, tying/freeing and animals, are endowed with further significance,
insofar as a web of effects is created (tying as a metaphor, the overabundance
of animals in the play, and their superimposition on humans). Of these effects
characters cannot be aware, and they only emerge for the appreciation of an
audience.
In conclusion, in Euripides' Bacchae the ordered relationship between man and
the natural world is flawed. The animal world ceases to be a complement to
human life that man can control in two ways: in point of fact (as the analysis
of the reversal of hunting and rearing reveals) and at a conceptual level, where
animal imagery or similes are offered in conjunction with animals actually acting
in the reported events, both in unconventional situations and endowed with
unconventional qualities. In parallel to this, the motif of tying and binding, with
its strong psychological and political implications and its connection with the
issues of imprisonment, capture, and control, effect a similar transference between
the literal and the metaphorical.
Readers have taken notice of this from a variety of perspectives. Goldhill
(1986: 281) mentions a "brilliant interweaving of theme and image"; Segal (1985:
162) notes the modest incidence of metaphor and simile in the play and sees
it as among the "indications of epistemological fluidity" that (on his argument)
invite a metatheatrical reading of the play. More astute thematically, Barlow
notes the issues of incommunicability and inability to understand each other that
this aspect of the play emphasises. The lack of a fixed line separating the
literal and the figurai is perceived by the audience, but is obviously not present
in the perception of the characters. In this way, their isolation and helplessness
in a world which is hostile and incomprehensible is foregrounded even more
fully. In Bacchae characters are victims of deeper meanings and allusions that they
enact unaware. "Nature" is only acknowledged through its malfunctioning, and
uneasy questions are posed concerning the legitimate opposition between man
and animal.
School of English and Drama

Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London El 4NS
U.K. c.thumiger@qmul.ac.uk
55 See, representatively, Barlow 1971: 1-4.

56 Barlow (1971: 1059): 'When Agave refers to Pentheus in the tree as a "climbing beast," x?v
au?axr|v 6fjp', it is one of those instances where metaphor and realistic portrayal of delusion meet.
Agave's language is metaphorical to all but herself."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Diggle, J. ?d. 1981-94. Euripidis Fabulae. 3 vols. Oxford.
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Flaumenhaft, M. J. 1994. The Civic Spectacle: Essays on Drama and Community. Lanham.
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BICS 36: 33-65.
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Euripides' Heracles," Ramus 28: 89-107.

Animal World, Animal Representation, and The Hunting-Model - Between Literal and Figurative in Euripides' Bacchae - Thumiger

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Animal World, Animal Representation, and the "Hunting-Model": Between Literal and

Figurative in Euripides' "Bacchae"

J. his article focuses on a particular aspect of the verbal level in Euripides'

1 Segal 1961 and 1978; Segal 1997: 27-54 and passim.

If nature is felt negatively in Dionysiac "gratuitous" miracles, it is felt positively

comparing himself and his desperate daughter to a young swan protecting an

131025-26 del. Middendorf.

characters?servants, stranger, Agave, chorus?all carry out, or at least try to carry

difference that they do not concern one character in particular?Pentheus, as

31 Translation by Bury (1926).

a figurative usage of the animal element simultaneously makes the mechanical

We can make an instructive comparison with Aeschylus' practice. In Aeschylus'

specific characterisation in each different instance, which is changeable, often

For an analysis of this motif, see also Ieran? 1991.

School of English and Drama

55 See, representatively, Barlow 1971: 1-4.

Anderson, J. K. 1985. Hunting in the Ancient World. London.

Seaford, R. 1987. "Pentheus' Vision: Bacchae 918-922," CQ n.s. 37: 76-78.

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