O throne of Earth and thou whose seat is earth
hard to be known whatever thou mayest be,
necessity of nature, mind of man,
Zeus I pray to thee, who doest lead mankind
in justice by a road not to be blamed ...O mortal fool -who will pull cities down,
temples and holy places of the dead,
and make all those a desert, and then die ...To bring her where she shall be put on board ...Lead me, who walked soft-footed once in Troy,
lead me a slave where earth fails sheer away
by rocky edges, let me drop and die
withered away with tears. Never say now
that happy was happy until we die.The cumulative effect of the Trojan Women is strong. This is not the formalized story of a legendary prince, it is
more like history, more like the experience of life.
The Bacchae, the punishment of King Pentheus by Dionysus disguised as his own priest and then terribly revealed,
may possibly be an adaptation from a lost work of Aeschylus. It is the most unforgettable play Euripides wrote, its
poetry is towering; unlike the Trojan Women, if it had not been written it would have been unimaginable.
I bring you him who put to ridicule
me and my mysteries. Take your vengeance.
And as he spoke one flash of dreadful light
struck at the earth and struck against heaven.
The air was silent. The wooded ravine
held all its leaves silent. No creature called.This language, which occurs just in the moment before the awful climax of the play, when Pentheus will be torn to
pieces by his own mother and the other women, is nothing if not dramatic. The most dramatic verses and the most
effective set-pieces in Greek tragedy are spoken by messengers; they describe action elsewhere. Tragic poetry is in
this also an extension of Homeric poetry.
Tragic Poetry (Conclusion)
In the Bacchae of Euripides the chorus hardly speaks at all; it virtually confines its expressions to song. Is that a
modern, that is, a late Euripidean device? Is it because he can no longer bear the intrusions of the chorus? In the
earliest tragedies and in all Aeschylus, the chorus had an all-important function. It -was as if the first actors had
only just stepped out of its ranks, and lacked confidence. Even where the usual characterization of the chorus as
old citizens, full of their proverbial wisdom and hopelessness, serves a purpose of mere contrast or transition
between speeches, as similar utterances sometimes do in the choral lyric poetry of Pindar, their presence was
significant to the unfolding of the plot. They are like those black-dressed women near a small harbour or those