Dionysus-Worship and Euripides Bacchae

Nietzsche called Apollo the “god of individuation and just boundaries,” a god of social order and hierarchy.  Dionysus, on the other hand, stood for freedom, wildness, and ecstasy, the dissolution of boundaries and the dissolving of personal identity.  Why would Euripides, at the end of his life, write a play on the rogue god Dionysus?  What does the play have to do with the long, bitter, Peloponnesian War—also drawing to an end? With the development of democracy?  And why would Church Fathers use Euripides’ Bacchae to represent the Virgin Mary and Jesus?  For discussion of these issues and more, including fabulous illustrations, come to this lecture on Nov. 1. 

Joan B. Burton is Professor of Classical Studies, Emerita, at Trinity University, San Antonio, and Affiliate Professor of Classics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has also held teaching appointments at Howard University and at the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Burton received her Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her research interests focus on Ancient Greek and Byzantine cultural history. Publications include Theocritus's Urban Mimes: Mobility, Gender, and Patronage (Berkeley); A Byzantine Novel: Drosilla and Charikles; “Byzantine Readers” in The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel; "Women's Commensality in the Ancient Greek World" (Greece and Rome); "Abduction and Elopement in the Byzantine Novel" (GRBS); etc. At Trinity, she served as chair of Classical Studies, co-founder and director of the Comparative Literature Program, and on the faculty boards of Gender and Women's Studies and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. At Maryland, she also directs the Individual Studies and Federal Semester programs. Burton recently gave a talk on the Ancient Greek and Byzantine Novel at the Greek Embassy in DC and played violin for benefit concerts at the Kennedy Center for the Wounded Warrior Project.