Book Review: ‘Bacchae’ by Euripides
We dive into ancient literature for the very first time on ‘The Dark Academicals’ this week, and we had to travel back to ancient Thebes and read ‘Bacchae’, one of Euripides most famous, and last, plays.
Bacchae, a profound exploration of the human psyche, deals with the appalling consequences of resistance to Dionysus, god of wine and unfettered emotion. This tragedy, which above all others speaks to our post-Freudian era, is one of Euripides' two last surviving plays.
In an interview with Emily Temple for Lit Hub in 2022, Donna Tartt cited ‘Bacchae’ as a text that people should read if they want to understand the themes behind ‘The Secret History’ and as that is the whole theme of season eight of the podcast, it became an essential text for us to try.
I was really nervous about this as it’s the first time I’ve read ancient literature in well over a decade, and there was an adjustment period with the language, with reading a play, and of the structure of the play, but once I settled into it, it wasn’t that difficult! I read the Oxford World Classics edition which has notes on context, history and intertextual links, as well as a glossary or names and terms at the beginning of the play. It’s a collection of four plays: ‘Bacchae’, Iphigenia at Aulis’, ‘Rhesus’ and ‘Iphigenia among the Taurians’ - I highly recommend this edition and the Oxford collection as a whole for classic texts that you need a little assistance with.
Before we even started reading ‘Bacchae’, we’d agreed that we’d leave our usual format for a podcast episode behind and see where the episode took us instead, so I was really surprised by how many connections we found to our tropes of dark academia (which it shouldn’t really, when you think about it…). It was so interesting to see how the bacchanal and elements of the worship of Dionysus was presented in the ways that we’d associate with a secret society in dark academia - full of rites, rites of passage and forms of initiation - as well as hero worship and, of course, classical studies in a very meta way.
You can listen to our full rundown of our dark academia tropes in our very first podcast episode right here:
I really enjoyed discovering this play for myself and finally reading some ancient literature again - it was reassuring that I still know how to read and analyse difficult texts, and I can talk about them too!
While Sarah is an Aeschylus girl when it comes to ancient literature, but this has really geared me up to continue to read widely and find my niche - don’t be intimidated by these texts, the editions are there to help you!
Written by Sophie
