Plays were performed in the theater of Dionysus - not surprising, given the name of the festival - a space which was sacred to Dionysus. It is interesting to note that a goat was sacrificed to purify the theater during the Dionysia, the goat being one of Dionyus' sacred animals.
A Greek theater was structurally simple, although relatively complex machinery could be used for stage effects, such as a crane which lifted performers into the air (used to portray levitating gods, and perhaps for plays by the comedian Aristophanes involved choruses playing the roles of birds and clouds). It involved one main stage with one entrance on each side. Often, there would be a structure representing a house or palace at stage center: in the Bacchae, it mostly represents the king of Thebes' palace.
The speaking roles within a Greek play would be handled by a maximum of three actors, who were all male. This prevented large numbers of characters from conversing with each other on stage, with the exception of the chorus. Central actors would wear platform boots in order to be more visible to the audience and switched between a variety of masks intended to identify the characters they portrayed.
Choruses were formed out of groups of young men known as ephebes (Eff-eebz), and included roughly ten or a dozen performers, who played the role of a group connected in some way to the play's narrative. It is unclear from the surviving scripts exactly how the authors intended the chorus to act, so the possibility exists that multiple performers could speak lines in unison, or perhaps alternated in speaking sentences, while other members of the chorus performed choreographed dances. The modern reader is encouraged to use their imagination.
The following choral section is known as the Parados. It follows the prologue (spoken in this play by Dionysus) and is meant to provide background for the play. While the typical speech in the play is spoken in a basic tragic meter (an iambic tetrameter or the like), choral sections often follow more complex combinations of different meters, in some senses like a modern pop song. No effort has been made to preserve the Greek meter in my translation
This choral passage is structed as follows: the first section is known as a prooimion (pro-oy-mee-on -entrance), which announces what follows and connects the opening soliloquy to the following passages, which are known as strophes and antistrophes (lit. turns and counter-turns), hymns of roughly twenty lines which respond to one another. The final section is called an epode (lit. "that which follows after"), which performs various functions.
Here the chorus are the play's eponymous Bacchae, women enraptured by the feral power of Dionysus. Their speech explains the origin of the god himself, as well as the apparatus of Bacchic worship.
64-169
(Enter chorus of Bacchant women)
CHORUS: Having passed from Asia's earth
and left behind holy Tmolus, I rush forward
to the sweet work of Bromios,
toil that is easy toil,
having cried out "euoe!" to Bacchus.
Who is in the road? Who is in the road? Who?
Get out of the way, into the houses,
dedicate your voice entirely to holy words.
I will celebrate Dionysus
in these practices always.
O blessed one, whoever is fortunate,
who knows the initiations of the gods
and lives a pious life and
brings his soul into Bacchantry,
dancing the Bacchic dance
in the hallowed, purifying mountains,
declaring right the rites of
great mother Cybele,
shaking his thyrsus high,
having crowned himself with ivy,
he does service to Dionysus.
Go on, Bacchae, go,
leading down the god Bromios,
Dionysus, child of god,
from the mountains of Phrygia
to the spacious roads of Greece,
Bromios.
When his mother was holding him
in the violence of childbirth, in labor pains,
as Zeus let fly his lightning, she
gave birth to him, cast from the womb,
leaving her life behind
at the thunderbolt's blow.
Immediately, Zeus son of Cronus
placed him in hidden recesses:
having concealed him within his thigh,
he bound him fast with golden needles,
hidden away from Hera.
He have birth to him when
the Fates decreed, and crowned
the bull-horned god with crowns
of serpents; because of this
the maenads, after catching snakes,
eaters of beasts, they twirl them
around locks of their hair.
O Thebes, nurturer of Semele,
crown yourself with ivy!
Flourish, flourish, along with
the green yew tree, with its beautiful fruit,
and devote yourselves to Dionysus
with branches of oak or silver fir,
and adorn your garments of spotted fawnskin
with threads of white-haired wool.
Be reverent in handling the violent wands.
At once the entire land will dance -
whoever leads the crowds is Bromios -
to the hill, to the hill! There the
mob of women will remain,
stung away from the rods of their looms
by Dionysus.
O dens of the Kouretes
and the most holy dwellings of Crete,
which nurtured the young Zeus, where
the three-plumed Corybantes
discovered for me in the caves this
circular object, with skin stretched upon it.
In their intense, Bacchic dance
they mixed it with the sweet-sounding breath
of Phrygian flutes and they placed it
in the hand of mother Rhea,
resounding with the shouts of the Bacchae.
Nearby the maddened Satyrs
fulfilled the rites of the mother goddess,
and joined them to the dances
of the twice-yearly festivals,
in which Dionysus rejoices.
It is pleasant in the mountains, whenever he falls to the ground
out of the raving bands, wearing
the holy fawnskin dress, hunting
for the blood of a slaughtered goat, the delight of eating living flesh,
rushing to the Phyrgian, the Lydian mountains, our cult-leader Bromios,
Euoi!
The earth flows with milk, it flows with wine, it flows with the nectar
of bees.
Bacchus incarnate raises his wand,
the flaming torch of pine,
like the smoke of Syrian frankincense,
rushes about, inciting the wandering women
by running and by dancing
and urges them on with shouts of joy,
tossing his delicate hair upwards.
At the same time he roars this with Bacchic shouts:
"Go on, O Bacchae,
Go on,
celebrate Dionysus
in the luxury of gold-bearing Tmolus,
accompanied by loud-roaring drums,
cry out the Bacchic 'Euoi', glorifying the god
in Phrygian screams and shouts,
whenever the sacred melodious pipe
wails out the holy sporting songs, songs agreeable
to the mad women roaming from mountain to mountain.
Then the Bacchic woman, reveling like a foal does
with her grazing mother, leaps, raising her swift-footed limbs.
(Exit Chorus)
Notes:
"Euoi" is the traditional shout of worshippers of Bacchus/Dionysus, and is a combination of prayer and an expression of religious frenzy.
The term Bromios is both an alternate name for Dionysus himself (linked possibly to thunder or the roars of animals) and can also describe a Dionysiac cult-leader who has reached some sort of otherworldly communion with the divinity. In this passage, the nature of the Bromios is an open question.
Cybele is a female divinity imported to Greece from the Near East. Dionysus, with a similar origin, is here associated with her worship.
Cronus is the father of Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon, the leader of the Titans, the generation of gods before the Olympians.
The goddess Hera is the wife of Zeus, often depicted as extremely spiteful due to her husband's numerous affairs.
A Thyrsus is a wand or staff carried by adherents of Dionysus. It typically consists of a stalk of a plant called fennel, to which is attached a clump of ivy at the end.
The Fates are three female goddesses who controlled the birth, life, and death of mortals through the power of weaving.
Kouretes (more often Corybantes) are male worshippers of Cybele, noted for a variety of dances.
Rhea is a goddess, wife of Cronus, and mother of Zeus. She was associated with various other goddesses as well.
Satyrs are male companions of nature gods such as Dionysus or Pan that have the tails of animals and are known for ritual consumption of wine and, unsurprisingly, inebriation.
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