The Bacchae
In Our Time18 Mar 2021

The Bacchae

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Euripides' great tragedy, which was first performed in Athens in 405 BC when the Athenians were on the point of defeat and humiliation in a long war with Sparta. The action seen or described on stage was brutal: Pentheus, king of Thebes, is torn into pieces by his mother in a Bacchic frenzy and his grandparents condemned to crawl away as snakes. All this happened because Pentheus had denied the divinity of his cousin Dionysus, known to the audience as god of wine, theatre, fertility and religious ecstasy.

The image above is a detail of a Red-Figure Cup showing the death of Pentheus (exterior) and a Maenad (interior), painted c. 480 BC by the Douris painter. This object can be found at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

With

Edith Hall Professor of Classics at King’s College London

Emily Wilson Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania

And

Rosie Wyles Lecturer in Classical History and Literature at the University of Kent

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Episoder(1086)

Mathematics

Mathematics

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century, the nature of mathematical ability, and what mathematics can show us about how...

6 Mai 199928min

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss artificial intelligence. Can we create a machine that creates? Some argue so. And is consciousness, as we are, with headaches and tiffs and moods and small pleasures a...

29 Apr 199928min

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the roots and the consequences of religious fundamentalism. It still surprises many Western liberal intellectuals that religion survives at all. That fundamentalism flo...

22 Apr 199928min

Evolution

Evolution

Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Are we continuing to evolve? If so, what are the signs and if not, why not? And those apes, so very very near us ...

15 Apr 199928min

Writing and Political Oppression

Writing and Political Oppression

Melvyn Bragg examines how two writers’ work have been shaped by political oppression and explores whether writers have a political role in modern society. The connection between writers and politics h...

8 Apr 199928min

Good and Evil

Good and Evil

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether religion can still be seen as a way of interpreting and judging good and evil in modern western civilisation and examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our...

1 Apr 199928min

Architecture in the 20th Century

Architecture in the 20th Century

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise in so-called spectacular architecture at the end of the 20th century. Is architecture to do with what we live in, where it’s located, the buildings that accomm...

25 Mar 199927min

Animal Experiments and Rights

Animal Experiments and Rights

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of animals in humankind's search for knowledge. Since the Greek physician Galen used pigs for anatomical studies in the 2nd century, animals have been used by ...

18 Mar 199928min

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