Bacchae Quotes

• "This city must learn its lesson well, even against its will"

  Dionysus
• "We alone have sense; the others are wrong"

  Tiresias
• "I do not scorn the gods, since I am mortal myself"

  Cadmus
• "I have more authority than you (Dionysus)"

  Pentheus
• "Though only a man, he dared to fight against a god"

  Dionysus
• "The more terrible things you tell me about the bacchants, the more will I punish this man, who has insinuated his arts into our women"

  Pentheus
• "If wine ceased to exist, then there is no more Aphrodite, no more pleasure of any sort for mankind"


  Chorus
• "I would sacrifice to him instead of raging and kicking against the goads, a mortal against a god"

  Dionysus
• "I will go to dress Pentheus in the fine clothes he will wear down to Hades, slaughtered by the hands of his mother. He will come to know that Dionysus, son of Zeus, is fully a god: most terrible, and yet most gentle to mankind"


  Dionysus
• "Divine power is certain. It corrects mortals who worship arrogance and do not revere the divine"

  Chorus
• "You! The man who desires to see what should not be seen, and seek what should not be sought"

  Dionysus
• "I am in your hands now"

  Pentheus
• "You are a man to inspire terror, great terror, and it is to terrors that you go, so that your fame will reach heaven"

  Dionysus
• "Pentheus, the son of Echion, is dead"


  Messenger
• "Dionysus is my master, not Thebes"


  Chorus
• "Take pity on me, mother, and do not kill me, your son, for my mistakes"

  Pentheus
• "If anyone despises divinity, let him look on this man's death, and believe in the gods"

  Cadmus