Page:Euripides (Donne).djvu/135

Rh muse of Sophocles appears to have avoided such exciting themes.

"The Bacchanals" was not brought out in the lifetime of Euripides. It was exhibited by a younger man of the same name, his son or his nephew. If it were, as it is supposed to have been, the work of one far advanced in years, it displays no trace of declining powers, and, in that respect, is on a par with the Sophoclean "Œdipus at Colonos." From its scenes and subject it was probably composed after Euripides had quitted Athens; and there may have been reasons for his writing this tragedy at Pella, as a compliment to his host and patron Archelaus. The play, indeed, was well suited to the genius of the land, and the people before whom it was represented. Northern Greece, Macedonia, and the adjoining districts, were devout worshippers of Bacchus, both in faith and practice. Alexander's "captains and colonels and knights at arms" astonished the more sober Asiatics by their capacity for deep potations. The women of Thrace, Thessaly, and Macedonia, when the purple vintage was garnered, and the vats overflowed with red juice, celebrated harvest-home by putting on ivy-chaplets and tunics made of lion or deer skins, by brandishing the thyrsus, and by wild and violent dances. Olympias, the mother of Alexander, was a Bacchantè, and at certain seasons of the year whirled around the altars of the god, with snakes depending from her girdle and her hair. In this picturesque, if rather savage dress, she is said to have won the heart of King Philip, himself a most loyal subject of the jovial deity.