Hippolytus/The Bacchae

And now I come to Hellas—having taught
All the world else my dances and my rite
Of mysteries, to show me in men's sight
Manifest God.

There by the castle side
I see her place, the Tomb of the Lightning's Bride,
The wreck of smouldering chambers, and the great
Faint wreaths of fire undying—as the hate
Dies not, that Hera held for Semelê.

, changed in shape from God to man,
I walk again by Dirce's streams and scan
Ismenus' shore.

Of heaven's hot splendour lit to life,

background represents the front of the Castle of PENTHEUS, King of Thebes. At one side is visible the sacred Tomb of Semelê, a little enclosure overgrown with wild vines, with a cleft in the rocky floor of it from which there issues at times steam or smoke. The God DIONYSUS _is discovered alone.

DIONYSUS, THE GOD; son of Zeus and of the Theban princess Semelê.
CADMUS, formerly King of Thebes, father of Semelê.
PENTHEUS, King of Thebes, grandson of Cadmus.
AGAVE, daughter of Cadmus, mother of Pentheus.
TEIRESIAS, an aged Theban prophet.
A SOLDIER OF PENTHEUS' GUARD.
TWO MESSENGERS.
A CHORUS OF INSPIRED DAMSELS, following Dionysus from the East.

tendencies to what are now called realism and romanticism, while marking his inferiority to the chaste classicism of Sophocles, bring him more easily within the sympathetic interest of the modern reader.

even gods and heroes are represented as moved by the petty motives of ordinary humanity. The chorus is often quite detached from the action; the poetry is florid; and the action is frequently tinged with sensationalism.

The idea of Fate hitherto dominant in the plays of his predecessors, tends to be degraded by him into mere chance;

the hundred and twenty dramas ascribed to Euripides, there have come down to us complete eighteen tragedies and one satyric drama, "Cyclops," beside numerous fragments.