Ebook The Riddle of the Bacchae

The theory of the Bacchae which is advanced in the following pages first occurred to me in 1901, when writing an essay on the well-worn subject Iniuriane Euripides deorum' contemptor habeatur, which was proposed for discussion to candidates for the Members' Latin Essay Prize at Cambridge in that year. I was then struck by what still appears to me the great crux of the play, - the fact that Euripides tells, the story of the palace-miracle in such a manner that it becomes incredible. The explanation of the whole drama which I offer may possibly strike the reader as more incredible still, but it is the only method I can imagine of accounting for the way in which the miracle is presented, and for those other features in the play which are left unexplained, I think, by any other theory. If an easier solution of these difficulties can be suggested I shall be quite ready to discard my own. Meanwhile I must confess I am surprised that the numerous and accomplished scholars who have edited or discussed the Bacchae have almost unanimously remained silent on a matter of such importance. Dr. Wecklein, so far as I know, is the only commentator who has given any indication that there is a difficulty at all. Under these circumstances, I feel much diffidence in stating a theory which I fear implies that the large number of learned and able scholars who have given attention to the play have failed to notice what is prima facie a piece of incompetence impossible to anyone who claims to be taken seriously as a dramatist, or at any rate have allowed its significance completely to escape them.