In the account given by Ctesias there is a beast in India called the martichora by the Indians and the ‘man-eater’ by the Greeks which I take to refer to the tiger. It has three rows of teeth on each jaw and a stinger on the tip of its tail. It defends itself with these stingers in close combat and discharges them when fighting at a distance like a bowman’s arrow. I think excessive fear for the beast has led the Indians to receive a false account from each other. They were also deceived as to the colour of its skin. When the tiger appeared before them in the rays of the sun, they thought it was red and either because of its speed or, if it were not running, its continuous twisting and turning, they could not see it up close.

THE ECSTASY

Bacchae

Euripides

Translated by William Arrowsmith, 1959

The Athenian tragedian Euripides (c. 480–c. 406 BC) was born, by tradition, on the island of Salamis. In his Bacchae, first performed posthumously in around 405, at the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus, Dionysus, god of wine and revelry, has come to Thebes in Greece in mortal guise. His mother Semele was born here and conceived him when she was visited by Zeus (see Story 98). Dionysus has driven her sisters and other women of Thebes to the mountains because they denied he was Zeus’ child. Here they rave in orgiastic frenzy. Against better advice, Pentheus, the young new ruler of Thebes, tries to stamp out Dionysus’ influence on his city. But while Pentheus detests the god’s wild and effeminate ways, he is also rather intrigued by them. A Messenger describes what happens when Dionysus, ‘that stranger’, agrees to take Pentheus to watch the orgiastic scenes on Mount Cithaeron. Pentheus’ own mother, Agave, is among the ‘Maenads’ or female followers of Dionysus. Euripides captures in his play the struggle between our inner wildness and outer propriety.

MESSENGER.

There were three of us in all: Pentheus and I,

attending my master, and that stranger who volunteered

his services as guide. Leaving behind us

the last outlying farms of Thebes, we forded

the Asopus and struck into the barren scrubland

of Cithaeron.

There in a grassy glen we halted,

unmoving, silent, without a word,

so we might see but not be seen. From that vantage,

in a hollow cut from the sheer rock of the cliffs,

a place where water ran and the pines grew dense

with shade, we saw the Maenads sitting, their hands

busily moving at their happy tasks. Some

wound the stalks of their tattered wands with tendrils

of fresh ivy; others, frisking like fillies

newly freed from the painted bridles, chanted

in Bacchic songs, responsively.

But Pentheus—

unhappy man—could not quite see the companies

of women. “Stranger,” he said, “from where I stand,

I cannot see these counterfeited Maenads.

But if I climbed that towering fir that overhangs

the banks, then I could see their shameless orgies

better.”