This week we talked about Ancient Greek drama and culture, including the role of Dionysus in early forms of drama. This discussion made me think of the bacchantes, women who worshipped Bacchus (Dionysus’ Roman counterpart) and went into states of frenzy, dancing around as they were possessed by the god. They were basically super extreme versions of fangirls, hence the title of this post. We read about these women in the Aeneid last year for Latin class because a prominent character, Queen Dido, was compared to a bacchante as she raged through the city searching for the eponymous character Aeneas. Apparently these women would whirl around, scream, and engage in acts of unbelievable strength such as tearing apart bulls and eating them raw. (I know, pretty disturbing.) In fact, there’s a name for pulling apart bulls—sparagmos.
A couple myths exist about these strange people. Supposedly Dionysus went to Thebes and his family refused to believe that he was a god, so he made his aunt go crazy, and she killed her son. Then he went somewhere else and the king’s daughters wouldn’t worship him, so he made them go crazy, too, and they also killed their children. Actually, Euripides (we talked about him in class) wrote a tragedy called The Bacchae centered around the first story I just briefly described (the one about Thebes). If you want to read more: http://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_euripides_bacchae.html. The tragedy got first place at the Dionysia, which would have been really exciting for Euripides, but sadly he was dead by that point in time…
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Your post reminds me a bit of the story of Hercules' madness, which we touched upon briefly in class the other day.
I've heard several versions of his madness, but the bottom line is that he goes crazy and kills his wife, Megara, and his children. Euripides actually wrote a play of this tragedy.
Thinking of this story also reminds me of what we read in Fleming the other night concerning the actual vs. the ideal. Thanks to Disney, many of us probably think of Hercules as a great, charming hero who falls in love with the delightfully sassy Meg. However, I didn't find out until years and years after first seeing this movie that Hercules eventually kills Meg and his kids (and this isn't even to mention the rest of his troublesome history). That kind of puts a damper on things. Discovering the original stories behind Disney movies is often quite disturbing (I was never really a huge fan of Prince Philip to begin with, but now I can safely say that I will never look at him the same way again); but you have to admit that they're pretty good at duping young children into believing the ideal version of fairy tales. Must have studied upon on their Ancient Greek concepts!
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