(3) CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY:

EURIPIDES & APULEIUS – BACCHAE & GOLDEN ASS

 

I believe in all the gods – especially the goddesses!

And the nymphs – I’m in it for the nymphs.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are of course my primary books of classical mythology, ranking in second spot in my Top 10 Mythology Books, as classical mythology itself does in my Top 10 Mythologies. and Top 10 Mythologies.

However, it’s not all Homer. Indeed, Homer ranks his own special mention – this special mention is for books on the subject of classical mythology other than Homer or within the Iliad, Odyssey and Trojan War.

Books on the subject of classical mythology (or religion) already feature prominently as entries in my Top 10 Mythology Books or special mentions – Bulfinch’s Mythology with its first volume predominantly on classical mythology, Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths, Walter Burkert’s Greek Religion, Bettany Hughes on Aphrodite, Paul Robichaud on Pan, and Natalie Haynes on the Olympian goddesses and other female figures of classical mythology. More generally, Barbara Walker’s Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets as well as the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols have numerous entries on subjects of classical mythology.

However, I have two keynote books for this special mention, both of which are by writers in the classical period itself, Greek and Roman respectively – the Greek dramatist Euripides and Roman writer Apuleius, with their works The Bacchae and The Golden Ass respectively.

I mean, that right there – just the phrasing of Bacchae and Golden Ass – encapsulates my personal  philosophy, my mythos if you will, of classical mythology. Indeed, the phrase Golden Ass encapsulates my personal philosophy of everything – my life has been a quest not for the grail, but the golden ass.

 

“Appear, appear whatsoever thy name or shape!

O mountain bill, snake of the hundred heads,

Lion of the burning flame

O god, beast, mystery, come!”

Firstly, The Bacchae by Euripides – literal Dionysian deus ex machina in the original folk horror story and clash of church against state  or cult against throne.

The greatest Greek tragedy – indeed one that has been argued to be one of the greatest ever written – in the usual style of Greek tragedies, which is the gods will screw you over and there’s nothing much you can do about it, even with that weird chorus telling you what’s happening, and even if they liked to call it nemesis for your hubris.

Yes, I know Dionysus personally appears, albeit in mortal disguise, to give Pentheus a repenting chance, but he doesn’t exactly go all out in the attempt because it’s much more demonstrative – and fun – setting up Pentheus for the Wicker Man to his Lord Summerisle. Except that the Bacchae makes the Wicker Man look like a picnic.

Anyway, the play by Euripides is based on the myth of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who is opposed to the new god Dionysus and his cult, despite being, you know, actually related to him. No, seriously, Pentheus is the cousin of Dionysus, because that’s how it was in those days, particularly with Zeus. Worse, Pentheus – and much of Thebes denies the divinity of Dionysus. And you can’t be disrespecting Dionysus.

So Dionysus does what any Greek god would do:
Step 1 – disguise yourself as a mortal priest of yourself and be captured only to respond cryptically to questions
Step 2 – drive your female worshippers or Maenads mad and trick Pentheus into spying on them in disguise as one of them
Step 3 – !!!
Step 4 – profit!

And by step 3, I mean sit back as your Maenads, including Pentheus’ own mother Agave, literally tear Pentheus apart with their bare hands in a crazed frenzy, believing Pentheus to be a wild beast.

That leads to a moment of classic horror as Agave proudly bears the head, still under divine delusion that it is the head of a mountain lion, to her own father Cadmus, only to see it for what it really is when Cadmus recoils and calls upon her to look more closely.

From a modern perspective, it’s hard not to identify or sympathize with King Pentheus cracking down on a strange new cult spreading through his city – particularly one with literal crazed worshippers like the Maenads, up there with the followers of Jim Jones or Charles Manson.

The Bacchae resonates on so many levels. I’ve already compared it to The Wicker Man, which replays many of its story beats for horror – and it’s easy to adapt the Bacchae for horror, from folk horror to cosmic horror – Dionysus as Yog Sothoth, perhaps?

More substantially, others have argued the parallels between it and the Gospels, with Jerusalem for Thebes and Jesus for Dionysus (and the Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate for Pentheus), except of course Jesus is far more morally palatable in his divine coup de grace than Dionysus.

And there’s the Nietzschean interpretations, most famously with his dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy – and it is tempting to see Pentheus as a good Apollonian, attempting to hold the line of order against Dionysian chaos. Or the Freudian interpretations with Pentheus as ego trying to hold back the wild ecstasy of the id…

 

“Queen of Heaven, whether you are known as bountiful Ceres, the primal harvest mother, who, delighted at finding your daughter Proserpine again, abolished our primitive woodland diet, showed us sweet nourishment, and now dwell at Eleusis; or heavenly Venus, who at the founding of the world joined the sexes by creating Love, propagating the human race in endless generation, and worshipped now in the sea-girt sanctuary of Paphos; or Diana, Apollo’s sister, you who relieve the pangs of countless childbirths with your soothing remedies, venerated now at Ephesus; or dread Proserpine herself, she of the night-cries, who triple-faced combats the assault of spirits shutting them from earth above, who wanders the many sacred groves, propitiated by a host of rites; oh, light of woman, illuminating every city, nourishing the glad seed with your misty radiance, shedding that light whose power varies with the passage of the sun; in whatever aspect, by whatever name, with whatever ceremony we should invoke you”

And then there’s The Golden Ass by Apuleius – she is the goddess and this is her body!

As a (bawdy) comic prose novel – “the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in entirety” – it lacks the tragic grandeur of The Bacchae, but what it lacks in grandeur, it makes up in, well, golden ass. The titular ass is what the writer is magically transformed into for a series of picaresque adventures, as well as snippets of classical mythology such as the myth of Cupid (or Eros) and Psyche.

He is restored to human form by the goddess – ironically perhaps given its keynote status as one of my top books of classical mythology, the Egyptian goddess Isis, who initiates Apuleius into her mysteries. O yes!

Isis was of course a popular goddess among the Romans, who took to her despite her Egyptian origin. However, in The Golden Ass, Isis is revealed to be not just a goddess, but effectively the Goddess – made manifest and known as other goddesses, including those in classical mythology.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)