The bacchae - Euripides

Written in the last years of Euripides' life, The Bacchae is the great Greek dramatist's incontestable masterpiece. The play deals with the attempt of the city of Thebes to deny the sovereignty of the god Dionysus, and with the god's devastating revenge. This confrontation between arrogant, overreaching human pride and the primal forces of nature vividly presents a dilemma as pertinent to our time as it was to the ancient Greeks. Its fierce and fearful climax leaves us with a sense of both painful desolation and profound understanding that is the hallmark of the highest peak of the playwright's art.