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Pentheus′ Vision: Bacchae 918–22

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Richard Seaford
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Extract

In an earlier contribution to this journal I argued that many details in the experience of Pentheus in the Bacchae derive from the ritual of mystic initiation. One of these details was his vision of two suns, two cities of Thebes, and Dionysos as a bull. I would like to add here a further point of the same kind about this vision.

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Type
Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1987 , pp. 76 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

1 CQ 31 (1981), 252–75.

2 Clem. Alex. Paed. 2. 2 (p. 417; cf. Protr. 12, p. 240); Sext. Emp. Adv. Log. 1.192; Plut. Mor. 1083f.; V. Aen. 4.468. Clement clearly knows about the mysteries, but is concerned to denigrate them. He also calls P. … (cf. in the mirror of Dionysos at Plotin. Enn. 4.3.12; Olympiod. Phaedon B, p. 111, 14 Norvin).

3 Drunkenness: A. W. Verrall, The Bacchants of Euripides (1910), p. 108, who adds ‘an intoxicating drug’ (p. 115); cf. the interesting case made for by G. Thomson (with B. Barnett) in EEThess 18 (1979), 424–46.

4 As at Arist. Probi. 3.10; Nicand. Alex. 28–9; Nonn. D. 15.20–1, etc.; Lucret. 4.447–52; Petron. 64.2 with M. S. Smith ad he; etc.

5 ‘oxymoron… “rage adoucie”…non pas une attaque de folie furieuse’, J. Roux ad he; Dodds adloc. compares and of the female sex (Philemon, fr. 171 Kock).

6 Interpretation here tends to confuse loss of self-control with frenzy, as e.g. in Dodds's curious remark (on 920–2) that ‘now the bull nature, the Dionysiac nature, has broken loose in his own breast’. Cf. also V. Aen. 4.469–70 (quoted above).

7 For W. C. Scott (TAPA 105 [1975], 343, 345) the ‘blurring’ contrasts with P.'s earlier ‘trust in architecture’ and with the sun as a ‘symbol for a clear and distinct view’. But there is no mention of ‘blurring’. W. Sale (YCS 22 [1972], 72) implies that it is because P. here is both man and woman: ‘he himself is double’. Otherwise the question has not, so far as I know, been asked.

8 618–19, 630 (cf. art. cit., n. 1, 256–7).

9 I am grateful for advice on this point to colleagues in the Department of Psychology at this University.

10 E.g. Firm. Mat. Err. Prof. Rel. 6.2 ( = Orph. Fr. 214 Kern) ‘crepundiis ac speculo adfabre facto animos ita pueriles inlexit, ut desertis regiis sedibus ad insidiarum locum puerilis animo desiderio duceretur. illic interceptus trucidatur’, etc.: similar are the versions collected under Orph. Fr. 209.

11 John Lydus, De Mensibus 4.51; Clem. Alex. Protr. 2.18 ( = Orph. Fr. 34); Gurôb papyrus (Orph. Fr. 31); Ps. Arignote ap. Harpocr. s.v. (at the newly invented mirror), etc.; Seaford in JTS 35 (1984), 117–20; M. L. West (The Orphic Poems, pp. 156–7, 163, 172), combining the notices with visual representations, suggests that the initiand had to follow the mirror away from his throne.

12 West, op. cit. (n. 11), pp. 156–7.

13 Seaford, art. cit. (n. 11).

14 Cf. Isis reflected in mirrors in her procession (Apul. Met. 11.9): ‘aliae quae nitentibus speculis pone tergum reversis venienti deae obvium commonstrarent obsequium.’ Cf. the ‘clearer mirrors’ (of the divine) in Plutarch's essay on Isis and Osiris (Mor. 382b), an image certainly derived from the mysteries (Seaford, art. cit. n. 11).

15 Certain much later texts seem based on this idea: e.g. Plut. Mor. 382b, 417c; 1 Cor. 13.12; Tertull. Ada Andreae, 15; Greg. Naz. Or. 1 (PG 35.776c); Ps. Dionys. Areop. Eccl. 2.3.1; (all quoted in art. cit. n. 11); add 2 Cor. 3. 18 (initiands were sometimes veiled) … … On the magically revealing mirror of Hellenistic mysticism see N. Hugedé, La Métaphore du miroir dam les Epîtres de saint Paul aux Corinthiens (1957), pp. 45–75.

16 If Dionysos carried a mirror in Aeschylus′ Lykourgeia, this would give point to the parody at Ar. Thesm. 140.