Bacchae

About “Bacchae”

The Bacchae, one of the great masterpieces of tragedy, tells of King Pentheus's resistance to the worship of Dionysus and his horrific punishment by the god through dismemberment at the hands of Theban women. This 2001 English translation by Gibbons also includes Iphigenia at Aulis, recounting the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter to Artemis in exchange for favorable sailing winds, and Rhesus, dramatizing an incident in the Trojan War, though this last play, transmitted under Euripides's name, is probably not by him and instead shows what tragedy was like after the great fifth-century playwrights.