and mystic ceremonies than to the more temperate states of Greece. The old poet, weary of his logical subtleties and lifelong doubts, has finally found peace in a form of mysticism-the mystic worship of Dionysus, whose real nature was first made clear to him here far from Athens, where he is now breathing an atmosphere of intellectual freedom. As Jebb has said: "The really striking thing in the 'Bacchae' is the spirit of contentment and of composure which it breathes, as if the poet had ceased to be vexed by the seeming contradictions which had troubled him before." The tendency toward mysticism,67 long dormant in him, has at length asserted its power and now has full reign. He has finally, contrary to his custom, adopted the spirit of an enthusiastic convert; we are persuaded that he is convinced of all that he so passionately writes; the entire drama is pervaded with the exaltation of an overpowering vision.68 Dominated by the new enthusiasm, he has returned to the peaceful worship of nature and no longer lets his feelings be restrained by any ethical or reflective doubts. James Adam has finely said: "No other ancient poem shows so rapturous a feeling of the kinship between man and nature. The very hills are thrilled with ecstacy in sympathy with the frenzied votaries of the god.69 We feel that Dionysus has become a power pulsating throughout the whole of nature, both inorganic and organic, making the universe into a living, breathing whole; and we are stirred with a new sense of unification with the mystery

"Encycl. Brit. (11th ed.), art. “Euripides."

Christ (op. cit., p. 375) has found traces of this mystic tendency in his earlier dramas, e. g., in the "Ion," where the mystical renunciation of the world is glorified; in the character drawing of Eteocles in the "Phoenissae"; and in the "Cyclops," where rationalism is exposed. Recently Gomperz (II, p. 15) thinks he sees the same attitude of mind in the "Hippolytus."

"He is so much in sympathy with his subject that some have argued that he merely intended to terrorize his audience-whether Macedonian or Athenian-into a revival of the neglected worship of Dionysus; cf. Campbell, p. 309.

"In reference to the words of the messenger describing the revels on Cithaeron, 726ff: "And soon the whole mountain and the wild beasts were in a tumult, and all was in motion through their running hither and thither."

that surrounds us."70 He likens this religion of the "Bacchanals" to the "added dimension of emotion," the "new reach of freedom" discussed by William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience." It is this which makes the play a religious one. In a word it is "faith," which Professor Verrall says is the one thing new in the play, the thing which differentiates it not only from every other drama of Euripides, but from everything else in Greek literature, "the thing, the human phenomenon.... which is, in one word, faith or a faith-religion as we mostly now conceive it, exclusive in belief and universal in claim, enthusiastic, intolerant, and eager to conquer the world." Though the phenomenon is common enough to us, it was apparently unknown to the Greece of the poet's time and was first revealed to him in his last days in Macedon.

It is this, then,—the praise of enthusiasm and inspiration in nature, the personification of exultation in life and emotion in religion-which forms the chief motive of this strange play. The victory of Dionysus over Pentheus, that is, the victory of enthusiasm over reason, the showing up of the defects of human wisdom in comparison with the greater knowledge of the mysterious unknown, all this teaches a lesson no less plain than that disclosed by the victory of Aphrodite in the "Hippolytus" written twentythree years before. In these two companion plays, two great facts of nature, enthusiasm and love, are personified. These are two great necessities of our human natures, sources of happiness for weary mortals, and they cannot be reasoned away on any rational grounds, nor can they be disregarded without terrible effects, as is exemplified in the fate of both Pentheus and Hippolytus. Euripides

TO

Op. cit., p. 317. His explanation of the play on the theory of Macedonian influence I have followed in the main.

"The Bacchanals of Euripides and Other Essays (1910), p. 159.

constantly denounced every form of superstition; at the same time he was always opposed to a dogmatic rationalism; and so the "Bacchanals," written at the end of his life, is in a sense the summing up of his position.

Whether the new vision, which seems to have taken such complete hold of the poet, would have been lasting had he enjoyed a longer lease of life, is another question. Even in the play itself are indications of the old iconoclastic spirit reappearing; for example toward the end, in the brief colloquy between Dionysus and Agave," the latter answers with disdain in the line already quoted,

"'Tis not meet that gods nurse their anger like men.”

And that after all the Greek gods are but the contemptible puppets of a vast and indefinable fate is attested by the final verses-which are also appended to several other plays" and which doubtless contain the poet's true sentiments: "Many are the forms of things divine, and many things unhoped for the gods bring to pass. Both what was expected has not been fulfilled and of the unexpected God has found a solution. So hath it happened here."75 In the "Hippolytus," Phaedra, father and son are all pictured as the puppets of divine caprice; here at the end of the "Bacchanals" Euripides goes a step further and makes not only Pentheus, Agave and the rest puppets of the gods, but the gods puppets of fate.

Thus the play, powerful though it is, contains just such conflicting views as his other works, and so is a true child of the poet. For Euripides, though his dramas were a tremendous factor in carrying on the protest against traditional views of religion which had been inaugurated the preceding century by Xenophanes and Heraclitus, made but little effort to construct a new theology. His mind

" 1345ff.

"I. e., the "Alcestis," "Medea," "Helena," "Andromache." TO 1388ff.

was essentially curious and impressionable to every influence; every thing-nature, society, humanity, religion, philosophy-appealed to him. A recent student of his philosophy has observed that there was scarcely a problem of his day, scarcely a theory in Greek thought before or during his lifetime, of which he did not take account.76 But though he raised every question he gave a conclusive answer to none, and contented himself with throwing out a crowd of suggestions which at best seem only tentative gropings, and when taken together neither form a consistent whole nor are ruled by any one principle. As Croiset says: "C'était une intelligence vive et pénétrante plutôt que forte.""" It is quite possible that he had no definite views on religion; he was too great a thinker to yield to the temptation of any one solution, and so like many other great minds he took refuge in mysticism. His nature did not yearn for moral and intellectual anchorage, like that of Sophocles-evidence his shifting, almost kaleidoscopic views of the soul's future: sometimes he simply considers that the problem cannot be solved;78 again he favors the view of Anaxagoras that is was a dreamless sleep, denying the survival of consciousness;79 or he paints the usual epic gloomy region of never-ending night;80 there are passages also in which he asserts that the spirits of the dead still feel with the living,81 and in others he seems to maintain the Orphic conception, that life is death to the soul and that death is life.82 This inconsistency in his views impresses us more than any other feature of his mind except his pessimism. As Gomperz puts it: "He delighted to suffer each shifting breath of opinion in turn to seize upon and move his soul."83 In his defence p. 313. 78 "Hippol.," 192ff. 80 Cf. Frag. 536.

76

Nestle, op. cit., 560.

"Cf. "Troades," 631ff.

"Op. cit.,

1 Cf. "Electra," 677; "Orestes," 1237.

82 Cf. Frag. 830 and 639. Cf. on the subject of his eschatological ideas,

Adam, op. cit., pp. 306ff.

we must remember his life was cast in a period of changing and conflicting thought; the old order of things was passing, but the new was not yet firmly established. It was his destiny to stimulate, to interest, rather than to actually instruct; for his mind was not vigorous enough to embody a system of principles and to cling to them. He was a thinker but hardly a philosopher; and first and last he was a poet, and so in accordance with the Greek idea a teacher also. For Plato says in a beautiful passage that the poets "are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of wisdom."'84 And Aristophanes had already expressed a similar thought when he said that the poet "should conceal what is evil and neither bring it forward nor teach it. For just as children have teachers to direct them, so poets are teachers for grown people."85 So the religious views of a Pindar, an Eschylus or Euripides, influenced the people deeply. In the "Bacchanals" there seems to be no trace of the great problem which constantly perplexed Euripides the reconciliation of an imperfectly ruled world with the idea of a benevolent God. But its absence in this play is no guarantee that he had finally found its solution; more probably he never found any light to bring into harmony his intellectual doubts and his moral yearnings. Doubtless much of the pessimism which is evident in many of his plays a pessimism which at times is synonymous with hopeless despair-is to be explained by this lack of unity.86

WALTER WOODBURN HYDE.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

"Lysis," 214.

""Frogs,” 1053ff.

"E. g., in the "Hercules Furens," "Hecuba," "Troades," "Andromache" and especially in frag. 452. Adam, p. 311, argues that this pessimism is not entirely due to the political and social changes of the poet's day, for Sophocles, his contemporary, was not affected by it; Gomperz, II, p. 10, ascribes it to the growth of reflection as well as to the unrest of the transition age in which Euripides lived.