THE

BACCHE.

THIS tragedy is of a singular nature, and very different from any thing that remains to us of the Athenian theatre: the best critics have ranked it among the finest tragedies of Euripides; and in respect of its composition it is so; but to us it is the least interesting of any of them; for we cannot so far assume the prejudices and sentiments of a Grecian audience as to be affected with a story of their Bacchus and his frentic Mænades; yet we can be sensible to fine writing, and the distress of Cadnius and Agave in the last scene is touched with a masterly hand. But it is peculiarly valuable for its learning, as it gives us the best account now extant of the Orgies of Bacchus; those rites, even to the dress and manners of the Baccha, are so particularly described, that later and even cotemporary writers seem to have taken their accounts of them from hence; so that it would be an absurd affectation to burden the page with unnecessary notes. The first choral Ode is truly tragic in the original acceptation of the word, and not

only remarkable for the elegance of its composi tion, but precious as a religious relic, all that remains to us of those songs in honour of Bacchus, from whence tragedy derived its origin and its name: the religious air, with which it is prefaced, gives it a solemnity, and in a manner hallows the whole drama.

P. Brumoy is inclined to think that this tragedy partakes something of the Satyric piece, if it be not altogether one, as well as the Cyclops; but without reason: he judges better when, from the subject and the turn of most of the scenes, he conjectures it to be a sacred tragedy, and to have been exhibited during the jollity of the feast of Bacchus. This was a time which demanded the attention of the moral poet, as the festivity was now corrupted with much licentiousness and debauchery ever true to the cause of virtue, he not only inculcates an awful reverence of the gods, but endeavours to call back his countrymen to that decoruni, that chastity and sobriety, which the god required, and which had been so shamefully violated: the Athenian stage, under the conduct of Euripides, pleaded the cause of religion and morality as warmly and as eloquently as the schools of the philosophers.

One is surprised to find that Euripides concludes five of his tragedies with the same words: however

3

naturally the reflection might arise from the subject of the other four, it does not seem to be pertinent to this; the proper moral of which is, as it was expressed by Cadmus on the death of Pentheus,

If there be

A man, whose impious pride contemns the gods,
Let him behold his death, and own their pow'r.

The scene is at Thebes before the vestibule of the palace of Pentheus.

PERSONS OF THE DRAMA.

BACCHUS

TIRESIAS

CADMUS

PENTHEUS

AGAVE

OFFICER

MESSENGERS

CHORUS OF ASIATIC BACCHE.

BACC.

THE

BACCHÆ.

v. 1-22.

Now to this land, the realms of Thebes, I come,

Bacchus, the son of Jove, whom Semele,

Daughter of Cadmus, 'midst the lightning flames
Brought forth; the god beneath a mortal's form
Concealing, on the brink of Dirce's fount,

I

see my

And where Ismenus rolls his stream, I tread.
mother's tomb rais'd near the house
In which she perish'd by the thunder; yet
Its ruins smoke, th' ætherial fire yet lives,
The everlasting mark of Juno's hate

Wreck'd on my mother. Cadmus hath my praise,
Who to his daughter rais'd this shrine, the ground
Hallow'd from vulgar tread: the clust❜ring vine
I gave to wreath around its verdant boughs.
Leaving the Lydian fields profuse of gold,
The Phrygian, and the Persian plains expos'd
To the sun's rays, and from the tow'red forts
Of Bactria passing, from the frozen soil
Of Media, from Arabia the blest,

And all that tract of Asia which along

The salt sea lies, where with Barbarians mix'd
The Grecians many a stately-structur'd town
Inhabit, to this city, first of Greece,