quotes

• "the world knows my fame" vs T "you and your loved ones live together in infamy"

  priest : "you cannot equal the gods"- some remnant of traditional belief

  "you pray to the gods? let me grant your prayers"
• " i would be blind to misery not to pity my people kneeling at my feet"

  • dramatic irony
• "Thebes is dying"

  priest personifies Thebes on behalf of the suffering of theban citizens
• "raging plague in al its vengeance, devastating the house of Cadmus"

  • tragedy is based in mythological past
  • Bacchae similarly focuses on curse of House of Thebes
• dramatic irony

  " i found one cure ... to Delphi-Apollo the prophets oracle- to learn what i might do or say to save our city"
• Creon "drive the corruption from the land"

  Oedipus "how can we cleanse ourselves - what rites"

  • the audience undergo cleansing during the theatre festival, according to ritual obligations
• " i never saw the man myself"- dramatic irony
• Creon forwards the recount of how Laius 'met his death' whilst going to consult an oracle told to him by the god Apollo - ironic and display the gods power and the inevitable fate the gods have decreed

  Laius killed "where two branching roads , one from Daulia, one from Delphi, come together"
• " for my own sake, i'llrid us of this corruption"

  • paranoid that the killer may killl him
  • tyrannical
  • fears more the power of mortals than the power of the gods- Thucydides observed that worship decreased during plague in Athens - intellectual elite began to question and challenge traditional beliefs
• chorus : first strophe in parados

  " what is your prices?.. some new sacrifice?"

  • the complexities of Greek religion

  second strophe

  describe the destruction caused by the plague- constantly reference the deaths caused
• " lord Tiresias sees with the eyes of Apollo" vs "eyes peeled for his own profit"

  "you, my lord are the one shield, the one saviour"
• Tiresias

  "how terrible to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees"

  oedipus :

  "you scum of the earth" "pious fraud"
• tiresias

  "build your anger to whatever pitch" - implicit

  "you did, you forced me, twisted it out of me"- unnatural
• prophets are not initially straighforward

  "you criticise my temper... unaware of the one you live with"

  VS

  "i say you are the murderer you hunt"
• " if you didnt look so senile , the lash would teach you what your scheming means"

  • asebeia
  • disrespect to elderly
• chorus

  "i can't accept him, can't deny him, dont know what to say"- agonised

  "whether a seer can fathom more than i, there is no test"

  "never will i convict my king, never in my heart"
• " I HAVE A TERRIBLE FEAR THE BLIND SEER CAN SEE"

  "so much for prophecy its neither here nor there" "frightning prophecies"
• chorus:

  "pride breeds the tyrant"

  ""unless these prophecies all come true... the gods, the gods go down"
• messenger

  "neither was he, no more your father than i am"
• "fail to solve the mystery of my birth"

  play becomes about discovering his parents alongside discovery that Oedipus murdered king Laius
• messenger

  "the pain we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all"
• oedipus

  "never have come to this, my father's murderer, never been branded my mothers husband"
• creon

  " and this time, i assume, even you will obey the god's decree"
• chorus

  "count no man happy till he dies"
• "no wonder he doesn't know me master but let me refresh his memory for him"
• shepherd "you were born for pain"
• "house of Thebes.. .such things it hides, it will soon bring to light"
• "better to die than to be alive and blind"
• "the flight of my own intelligence hit the mark"
• "if you didnt look so senile the lash would teach you what your scheming means"