TFBT: The Hymn to Dionysus and 24.CB22.1x

This happy morning, I give thanks as the smell of baking turkey drifts through our home and wait anxiously for Santa Claus to appear at the Macy Day Parade.  This happy morning; this twilight moment between what was and what will be, I finished the final session of The Ancient Greek Hero in Twenty Four Hours. 

 In this session we studied among other things the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus.  It begins with the god apparently looking for a ride standing on “a jutting headland by the shore of the fruitless sea…his rich, dark hair was waving about him, and on his strong shoulders he wore a purple robe.”   Back then only the wealthy could afford purple fabric.   Conveniently, a crew of pirates came upon him and “they thought that he was the son of a line of kings nurtured by the sky god.”  They snatch the young god up in hopes of a great ransom. 

Immediately the helmsman yells out “What kind of daemon possesses you all! What kind of god is this that you seized and tried to tie up…?  Elsewhere, I pondered the helmsman’s second sight.  I wondered if his hand on the rudder could sense the weight of the god affecting the boat.  Professor Nagy says of the helmsman’s clarity and vision; “…you have to have the mentality to get this.  And if you have the right mentality, then you're saved.”  The rest of the crew clearly doesn’t have the helmsman’s pious perspective.  The skipper over rules his arguments and tells him to keep to his work.  Immediately weird things started happening.  Dionysus turns into a lion, grapevines start growing up the mast and line, a bear appears on deck and the “fruitless sea” turns to wine, hence Homer’s wine-dark sea.  Naturally, “The men, terrified, were fleeing toward the stern of the ship, crowding around the steersman.”  Apparently, a bear on deck was the final straw and the crew leaped over board.  Dionysus turned them into the first dolphins.    The helmsman at his post till the end was about to follow them into the deep when the god saved him from doing so.  Dionysus said “Have courage, you radiant man, reached by a force that works from far away.   You have achieved beauty and pleasure   for my heart.” As Nagy explains in the textbook at 24.16 “Since Dionysus caused it to happen that the steersman ‘became the most blessed of all men’, I interpret this divine action as the transforming of a man into a cult hero.”

I had a different perspective this time while reading the textbook, studying the source material and listening to the lectures.  You see the federal government “furloughed” me.  Consequently, I was working at a local cannery located upon “a jutting headland by the shore of the fruitless sea”.  My comrades were not a crew of pirates but neither were they sons “of a line of kings nurtured by the sky god.”  That is to say they did not live in the “rarified air” they believed I did.   One day while we trimmed fillets of salmon, we got some good news about our progress.

 “Praise God!”  I shouted.  “Oh, are you religious?” one of the guys asked innocently.  In the federal government if I began discussing my faith, the boss would have yelled at me and told me to keep to my work.  My cheeks blushed as though I’d drank too much red-wine.  I hesitantly answered, yes.  My comrades showered me with questions about my faith and church.  Then the conversation passed on to other things. 

At break my comrades would stand on the dock at the back overlooking the water.  That day as the afternoon break wound down and our comrades leapt back to work, one of them fled toward the stern of the cannery where I stood and crowded up to me.  He had a question about lying.  Being experienced in dialogue from this class and familiar with Odysseus I helped him work through the ethics of a bummed cigarette. As we returned to work he seemed satisfied with the conclusion we’d drawn, as though he had “achieved beauty and pleasure for (his) heart.”

This concludes my current adventure with version CB22.1x of The Ancient Greek Hero in Twenty Four Hours.  I have” turned the post” as we say.  But the race goes on forever.  After the holidays I will race with other graduates in “Hour 25” and God willing, I and my winged steads will race with others during version CB22.3x during the Summer of 2014.

   

 

 

TFBT: Ripped Apart and Eaten by Dogs

We are entering the final week of The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours an excellent on line class from Harvardx, hosted by my personal hero Gregory Nagy.

 

A “bacchae” is a frenzied female follower of the god Bacchus, also known as Dionysus.  It is also a famous Greek tragedy by Euripides.  One of the major characters in the play ends up dressed like a bacchae. This is King Pentheus of Thebes. 

Pentheus had an aunt named Semele.  Semele use to brag that she was the consort of the king of the gods; Zeus.  For her boast she got blasted with a thunderbolt.  Well at least that is what the Thebans believed.  One day a “man” arrives on the scene with a chorus of women from Asia Minor.  He looks remarkable like Pentheus.  This should have been a clue to the king.  In fact, this man was  Dionysus; the thrice-born god of wine and Pentheus’ first cousin.  The deceased Aunt Semele was in fact the consort of Zeus.  Dionysus’ embroyic body survived the fire that consumed his mother and survived. 

 

Things get really confusing at this point in the play. I will try to explain what comes next, meanwhile be aware that by the end of the play Pentheus is ripped to pieces by his frienzied mother and surviving aunts.  (As an aside,  legend says that at the end of his life the playwright Euripides was ripped to pieces by his patron’s dogs.)

 

Here is what happens between Dionysius’ arrival and Pentheus’ death.  Pentheus refuses to recognize Dionysius as prodigal cousin or as a god.  As a consequence the women of the royal household, go crazy and run off into the wild.  Professor Nagy point out in Chapter 21 of  “The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours” at section 31 that the women of Thebes, the Theban bacchae “have lost control of themselves. But that does not mean that they are “out of control…. They are still under control, but the controller is now the god.”   At 21§32 he adds, “So, the possession of a woman’s mind by Dionysus is a positive experience when the woman possessed is performing a ritual”.

 

Greek Myths are often associated with particular rituals.  Ancient Greek tragedies are often based on myths. So plays often explain rituals.   Hence The Eumenides explains the trial by juror system.  Hippolytus explains initiation rituals in a town on the outskirts of Athens and Oedipus at Colonus explains rituals in the suburbs of Athens. So the Bacchae is explaining rituals too. What wasn't clear to me and unfortunately wasn't clear to Pentheus ; is that the Bacchae is demonstrating two rituals at once.

 

The Ancient Greeks staged tradegies with a handful of actors (if that ) and a chorus.  The chorus could represent the old men of a city, a group of woman concerned for the heroine or any other sort of homogenous peoples.  The chorus interacted with the actors and often voiced the questions they audience might have.  If you are a “Frankie Fan”; if you ever saw “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”  you know how a chorus works because the entire audience is the chorus for that film.

 

The women who came from Asia Minor with  Dionysus are the chorus for the play.  This play, this myth explains the orgins of the annual festival where the tragedies were performed.  This is the first Greek tragedy.  To use Nagy phraseology the women; “ are in a mental state of equilibrium or balance when they participate in the rituals of Dionysian theater by performing the myth that motivates these rituals.” ( 21.33)

 

With Dionysus help, Pentheus dresses like a bacchae, so he can observe their rituals.   His mind befuddled by the god, Pentheus  some how doesn’t realize that the chorus of  women he is going to spy on . “ is not the chorus of the Bacchae. It is not the chorus of Asiatic women who have followed Dionysus to Thebes - and who are the ritually correct chorus of the drama. Rather, this would-be chorus consists of all the women of Thebes. They have left the urban civilization of Thebes and have relocated themselves in the wilderness of the mountains,”

 

The women on the mountain are reinacting another myth and another much darker ritual.  Long ago Dionysus was called Zagreus.  He was the son of Zeus and heir to the throne of the universe.  The Titans, the elder gods enticed the child away from safety ripped him to pieces and ate his flesh.  This is the ritual that Pentheus sees reinacted upon Mt Cithaeron.  When the women see him, the result is common to the uninitiated that trespass on the mysteries; death.  Pentheus is ripped apart on the exact same spot his Uncle Acteon was ripped apart and eaten by his own hunting hounds. 

 

The play ends with the Pentheus’ mother accompanied by the other women proudly marching into town to show off  “this lion's head, my booty from the chase.”  As the frenzy fades, it is left up to Pentheus and Dionysus’ grandfather to explain the will of the gods.