IS ATHENIAN DRAMA DIONYSIAC?
Athenian drama of the classical period derived in part from Dionysiac
ritual, and was Dionysiac in its spatial and temporal context. It was
performed in a sanctuary of Dionysos along with rituals for Dionysos
(notably a procession leading animals to be sacrificed in the sanctuary)
during a festival of Dionysos. Dionysos is often regarded as a source of
poetic inspiration, and associated with the Muses. In Aristophanes’
Frogs Dionysos is throughout the plot closely associated with tragedy,
and Aeschylus is called ‘the Bacchic lord’ (1259). Aeschylus’ plays
are ‘full of Dionysos’ (Plutarch Moralia 715). Dionysos, in legend,
told Aeschylus to write tragedy, and protected the dead Sophokles
(Pausanias 1.21.1–2).
However, in most Athenian drama of which we know the plot
Dionysos does not appear. Is there anything Dionysiac about their
content? Satyric drama always has Dionysos’ companions as its
chorus, and they exhibit the boisterous adherence to (or nostalgia for)
the pleasures – of wine, dance, music, and sex – that are dear also to
their absent master. In Euripides’ Cyclops the absence of Dionysos is
(as probably in other satyr-plays) felt as a loss, and once liberated from
Polyphemos they look forward – in the last line of the drama – to
rejoining permanently the service of Dionysos. As for comedy, various
of its characteristics – phallic costume, crude sensual pleasures, light-
heartedness, vitriolic language, laughter, unrestrainedness, obscenity,
revelry – are characteristic also of a kind of celebration associated with
Dionysos.
Tragedy, on the other hand, is far removed from the boisterousness
and low pleasures of the other two dramatic genres. True, it originated
in, and was performed at, a festival of Dionysos, and certain of its
features may derive from the Dionysiac ritual that contributed to
its genesis. These features are masks, frequent evocation of ritual, the
social marginality (as of maenads) of the people represented by
the chorus, the centrality (nevertheless) of the chorus to the perfor-
mance, the tendency of the chorus to associate its own dancing with
Dionysos, perhaps even the centrality of a suffering individual. But
they are not enough to allow us to characterise as ‘Dionysiac’ a genre
in which Dionysos himself appears only occasionally.
94 KEY THEMES