The Bacchae

The Bacchae, also known as The Bacchantes, is an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides, written in Ancient Greek under the title Bakkhai and first performed posthumously in 405 BC at the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, as part of a tetralogy staged after the playwright's death. The play depicts the god Dionysus arriving in Thebes to punish King Pentheus and his mother Agave for denying his divinity, driving the city's women into an ecstatic frenzy of worship that culminates in Pentheus's dismemberment at his own mother's hands. Widely regarded as Euripides's masterwork, the play is distinctive among Greek tragedies for placing the god himself on stage as an active character rather than a distant presence, and for its unusually close integration of the chorus into the unfolding action. It remains one of the most frequently studied and performed works of Greek tragedy, prized for its exploration of religious ecstasy, civic order and the destructive consequences of denying the irrational.