This is probably the closest of all of the Greek tragedies to a Shakespearian tragedy. This is due to the end of the play having a huge bodycount and the action of the play is driven by one person's fatal flaw (not that I actually believe in the fatal flaw argument, but that is beside the point). However it is not Antigone who has the fatal flaw in this play but rather Creon, the king of Thebes. Unfortunately we cannot really look to Oedipus at Colonus to see the beginning of Creon's downfall because this play is not the final part of a trilogy, at least in the Aeschylan sense of a trilogy, though it is noticeable that when the copyists chose seven plays of Sophocles to preserve for posterity three of the Theban plays were kept which in a sense formed a trilogy, and in this trilogy we see Creon go from being a loyal servant of Oedipus to a ruthless tyrant that believes that he is the state and that his words are not to be disobeyed.

First I will discuss the term Harmatia, which is Aristotelian in origin, at least from his text on drama (The Poetics). I shall also look at the action of the play and finish off by discussing the main theme, which is the struggle between loyalty to one's family and loyalty to one's state. Well, no, I will finish off by looking at Creon's character, and how his actions bring about such a sticky end.

The concept of Harmatia is regularly found in the Bible where it has been translated into our word sin. Now, as I think about the concept of Harmatia I am somewhat torn between suggesting that Harmatia and sin are two different ideas, or that our modern understanding of sin does not exactly weigh with how the modern church translates and preaches it. The modern church preaches sin as being rebellion against God (of which we are all guilty), and then goes on to bombard us with what constitutes sin. However, to the Greeks, or at least to Aristotle, Harmatia is a fatal character flaw. Now that concept does not alienate sin because sin, in an of itself, is a fatal character flaw that we have inherited from Adam and Eve. This fatal character flaw of ours is our desire to live independently, and we see this more and more as we meet with people and associate with them. I also see it rampant throughout the church as people try to push God into a box and tell him what sin is rather than letting him demonstrate sin to them.

I say this because the list of sins seems to get longer and longer and we, as humans and those of us who call ourselves Christian, seem to think that sin is made up of our actions as opposed to our desire to rule ourselves. I guess the best explanation is that our actions, especially our selfish actions, are merely a symptom of this character flaw of ours. The Bible is correct when it says that the wages of sin is death, because as we see, especially in Antigone, that Creon's Harmatia leaves him desolate and alone, and as he says from his own lips, it is as if he were dead. Now, the Greek concept of death, the absence of life, and the removal of ourselves from this world, is somewhat different to the Biblical concept of death. In fact our modern understanding of death is more in line with the Grecian view. However the biblical view is that death is more to do with the break down of our relationships, particularly our relationship with God, than it is with the absence of life. To the Bible life is defined by relationships, and when we drive our relationships apart we are little more than dead. In fact it has been suggested that higher suicide rates occur among truly lonely people than it does among people who are surrounded by friends. That, though, is only speculation. However, consider this: even when we are surrounded by friends we can still be alone, especially if these so called friends of ours only seek us out for company and, in their self centred view of the world, seek to only have us by their side to make them feel good and important than really doing anything that is remotely friendly.

Now, the play itself is set after the Theban war, where Etocles and Polyneices killed each other after Polyneices attacked Thebes with his army to remove his brother and set himself up as king. Creon, by default, becomes king and his first order of business is to give Etocles a state funeral while leaving the body of Polyneices exposed. To be exposed was the worst thing that you could do to a corpse in the Ancient Greek world. A proper burial meant that you would at least have a half decent afterlife, while being exposed suggests that you would be left wondering the earth as a ghost, and a tormented one at that. Antigone, the sister of Polyneices, is horrified at this and seeks to bury him, much to Creon's displeasure, so he orders her executed. However the play is not as simple as that because Creon's son is in love with Antigone, and when he finds her dead, he kills himself, and in a fit of grief over the death of her son, Creon's wife also kills herself.

Now one of the main themes that comes out of this play is the struggle between one's loyalty to the state and one's loyalty to one's family and the dilemma that one will face when the state passes a law of which you do not approve. The question that is raised is: do you dishonour the state by breaking the law and honouring your family, or do you dishonour your family by upholding the law even when the law is unjust. In a way, there was nothing wrong with Creon's law, since Polyneices was a traitor, and treachery is seen as one of the worst crimes to commit (even today, though the definition of treason has become very ambiguous in the globalised, interconnected world). However, he was still family, and not only that, Etocles' ascension to the throne was dubious at best. The entire war was not so much about a deposed monarch seeking reinstatement, but rather a family quarrel between two brothers.

We still face these dilemmas today, though not to the same extent. The question of whether the drug laws are just is one of them (and I do believe that they are, even though they can be considered to be an outworking of the Nanny State). While it is true that people should be left to make their own decisions, we demonstrate time and time again that we are actually not capable of doing so, therefore the state actually does need to step in to protect us from ourselves. Then there is the war that the state embarks on that many members of the state disapprove of, and as a loyal soldier to the state, do you obey the state by embarking on a quasi-legal adventure, or do you uphold your morals by refusing, and face punishment or even gaol.

Creon mentions a number of times that he, as the king, is the state, and thus his laws are to be obeyed. However, ironically enough, the Chorus objects to this. Now the Chorus does play an important role in Greek tragedy, and usually represents what the Greeks call the 'Oklos', or the crowd. Crowd is actually a rather bad translation as my understanding of the Oklos is that it is a crowd that acts as a single entity and has a single mindset. Now, this is not always the case in Greek tragedy as at times the Chorus will split and then argue with itself, in a way representing division amongst the people. It is a shame that we do not actually see Choruses in plays any more (or not playing a major role as they did in Greek drama).

Now Creon, having become king, has pretty much become corrupted by power. Yet I am not entirely convinced that it is corruption at such an early stage of his reign. In a way, he is the new king, and he wants to stamp his authority on the city, or, as the Greeks called it, the Polis (I won't go into details of the meaning of this word as I have already spent too much time translating Oklos). For him to be disobeyed will suggest that he does not actually have the character to be a king. A king that is not obeyed and not respected is not actually a king because he has no authority. As such Creon wants to make sure that his authority sticks so when this law is broken he is forced to act. However, he is not caught in a dilemma deciding whether it is right to punish Antigone or not - he has already made up his mind, set the path that he wants to travel, and travels down it. However, it ends very, very badly for him, and this is emphasised at the conclusion when the prophet Tiresieus arrives and passes on the message from the gods. He has acted against the proper way and is now to be punished and there is no way to escape from it.

I recently saw a performance of this play (which was cool because I hardly see any Greek plays being produiced) and have written my thoughts on the performance, and the play as a whole, on my blog.

I've decided to read this again despite having already written a commentary on it, but that was partly because the commentary was on the whole book of Euripidean plays as opposed to this particular play (though the only play that I read when I commented on the book was this one). Anyway, a large portion of the end of this play is missing so we don't actually know how it ends (which is probably why it does not appear in many of the other books of Euripidean plays and why I had to hunt around for a copy of it). As such, we cannot actually say that this is one of Euripide's extant plays.

That does not mean that this play does not confront issues that were faced not only in the days of Classical Athens, but are also confront with our own society today: the issue of what to do with refugees. In the play the refugees are the children of Herakles (aka Hercules) who had fled to Marathon from Argos and sought sanctuary in one of the temples so that the king of Argos could not hunt them down and kill them.

The play was written in the opening years of the Peloponesian War and at that time Athens had its own refugee problem. The city of Platea had been attacked by the Thebans and in response the Plateans had sent all of the woman and children to Athens for protection. However Athens had decided to remain neutral in the conflict, which resulted in Platea being burnt to the ground and all of the remaining occupants killed. Meanwhile, in Athens, there was debate as to what to do with the refugees because they couldn't become citizens and had done nothing to warrant slavery, but the city did not seem to think that they could support this influx of people.

The issue of refugees is something that we simply cannot ignore today. This is something that confronts many of us here in Australia, but also in other parts of the world. The question that is raised though is the reason behind why the refugees want to get into our country – is it because they are fleeing persecution and war, or is it simply because they see better opportunities in our country. Either way, a lot of the refugees that end up here actually go on to become very productive members of our society.

One of the arguments that are put forth is that refugees are simply a drain on our society and they take money that could be used elsewhere. Personally I believe that that is rubbish. You will probably find that the refugees end up being much harder workers than the native citizens. In fact you will probably find that most people whom we would label dole bludgers are actually forth or fifth generation Australians. However, there is also the argument that they are taking our jobs, but the truth is that these are jobs that we are too proud to take up. Okay, there are questions about wages, and the fact that if you are on a minimum wage job then you are probably poorer than people on the dole because you do not have access to concession benefits. However, that also raises the question of whether, if we were to put more money into the hands of the working class, would they spend it wisely (in the same way would they also use time wisely if the working day were cut down by say two hours – probably not – they would probably spend more money on beer and spend more time in the pubs).

Mind you this debate over what to do with displaced people tends to only be argued in the more advanced and wealthy countries. Turkey and Jordan simply do not have the ability to turn these people back, especially since their borders are all land borders. The problem is that these people simply stream over the borders and thus need to be moved into camps. However, we here in Australia live in fear of a trickle of refugees that somehow manage to get over here by boat, and the few that get through are then marched off to third party countries and locked up in detention facilities in conditions that are significantly worse that the conditions our own prisoners have to put up with. In a way, as the socialists correctly say, when the economy turns sour, the best medicine is to blame the people who can't defend themselves against the attacks. In a way these refugees are not only fleeing persecution in their own lands, but are also facing persecution here.

We actually don't have a complete copy of this play though the edition that I read attempts to reconstruct the missing sections (which is mostly at the end) because, as they say, this is a popular play that is regularly performed. This in itself is a strange statement since I have never seen it performed (in fact I have only ever seen one Greek play performed, and that was Oedipus Tyrannous and that was by an amateur theatre group). Mind you, Greek plays tend to be short, meaning that they last generally only as long as about a third of a Shakespeare play (though when they were performed in ancient times, it would usually be along with three others plays).

The Bacchae is about change and about the resistance to change and how our attempts to resist change is generally futile. Mind you it is a tragedy and it does have a pretty bloody ending (in that a number of the main characters end up dead, though the progenitor of change, Dionysus, doesn't, but then again he is a god). There are two things that do strike me about this play, the first being how there are reflections of Christianity in it, particularly early Christianity, and the second involves reflections of the modern rave culture. However, before I go into exploring those two aspects of the play I should give a bit of a background so you may understand where I am coming from.

The cult of Dionysus was a rather new cult to appear in Ancient Greece, as far as the gods are concerned, and he was not one of the traditional gods of the pantheon. He apparently was introduced through migrations from the north, particularly through Thrace. The cult itself was a mystery cult, meaning that the rituals and celebrations tended to be conducted behind closed doors (and this comes out in the Bacchae, particularly since the main worshippers were women). The celebrations (as also comes out in the Bacchae) generally involved drunken revelries out in the bush.

The Bacchae itself is set in the mythical period of Ancient Greece in the city of Thebes. The king of Thebes, Penthius, is concerned about this new cult that has appeared that is seducing all of the women into joining. As such he goes out of his way to attempt to put an end to it, including arresting Dionysus. It is interesting that Dionysus, unlike the gods in many of the other Greek plays, has a major role. Most of the gods in Greek drama tend to only come in at the beginning or the end, either to provide an introduction, or to intervene in a hopeless situation. However Dionysus is one of the major characters in this play.

Anyway Dionysius, in an attempt to defend his cult (and one wonders if his portrayal here is similar to the charismatic cult leaders that we have seen throughout history) convinces Pentheus to spy on one of the celebrations. However, in a drunken haze, the women in the midst of their celebration mistake Pentheus for an mountain goat, capture him, and tear him to pieces. However, the women do not get away scot free as they are exiled for, well, murder, despite their arguments that they were not in control of their faculties at the time.

The idea of the new cult is something that societies have faced throughout time, and it goes to show that the Roman persecution of Christianity is something that is not limited to that particular religion at that particular time. It is interesting to note that in the play Pentheus does not believe that Dionysus is a god, despite certain actions (such as blowing up his palace) that suggest otherwise. Further, the ignorance of the bacchic rites is also similar to Roman ignorance of certain Christian rites, such as the Lord's Supper.

Some have even suggested that Dionysus is a Christ figure, and the introduction to the play even has some similarities with the virgin birth. For instance, Dionysus is born of a woman but has Zeus as his father (though unlike Christianity, where the term 'conceived of the Holy Spirit' does not indicate a sexual union between God and Mary, where it is clear from this play that there was a sexual union between Zeus and Dionysus' mother, though this can be put down to our failure to understand, or accept, the possibility that conception can occur outside of sexual union, though these days this is changing). More interesting is that Dionysus mother is accused of extra-marital sex, which Mary also faced. Another interesting note is that after Dionysus' birth, Zeus hides him to protect him from being killed by a jealous Hera, which has reflections in the Christ story in that Jesus was spirited off to Egypt to protect himself from the murderous rampages of a jealous king.

Some might suggest that I am drawing some rather tenuous examples here, but I would argue otherwise. One of the reasons is generally because of the fear of Christians to look outside the box. We are more than happy to accept the Bible, but to consider anything outside of that, particularly with regards to pagan representations (or could they be prophecies) of the Christ, can open up to many probabilities. I guess it has to do with the conservative bent that most Christians have, in that what has been done over hundreds of years has proven itself and anything that is new can be dangerous or even destructive. However, remember what Paul writes in the book of Thessalonians: test everything, hold onto what is good, and reject what is bad. He did not say 'reject everything' but to 'test everything' which includes age old traditions.

I want to finish off with a comment on the modern rave scene. Okay, the idea of the outdoor rave out in the bush rose out of Britian where, in an attempt to stamp out drug use, the government made raves themselves illegal. However, it could also be suggested that the reason the mystery cults of ancient Greece met out in the bush was because they were also illegal. However (particularly since I have been to raves myself) there is something almost bacchic about the rave. The idea of taking drugs to induce feelings of pleasure, as well as the lights and the sounds adding to that, reflects what was occurring here in the Bacchae. In many cases, the rituals were sensual experiments in pleasure, which is similar to what happens at a rave. This also goes to show that the rave is not something new, but something that has been going on for centuries.

Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women

Are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum,

We have bought a husband, we must then accept him as

Possessor of our body. This is to aggravate

Wrong with worse wrong. Then the great question: will the man

We get be bad or good? For woman, divorce is not

Respectable; to repel the man, not possible. (Trans Phillip Veracott)

These few lines near the opening of Euripides' Medea pretty much describes what life was like for women in Ancient Greece: it was not pretty. What struck me when I read this play again (and it is one of my favourites) is how astute Euripides was to the plight of Greek women, and it was not as if it was any better elsewhere. Granted, women did have more rights in Ancient Rome (and would become very astute political maneuverers, such as Nero's mother Agripina) but in general the freedoms that women have won over the past 150 years are probably the furthest that they have come to participate in society than any other time throughout history (with a few exceptions).

I should talk about about the play and its background (the legend that is, not the writing of it, which took place just prior to the Peloponesian War). The play is set sometime after Jason's return to Greece after obtaining the Golden Fleece from Cholchis. When he was in Cholcis, he had wooed Medea, the daughter of the king, and with her aid managed to steal the fleece and escape, but in doing so Medea was forced not only to kill her brother but renounce her citizenship of Colchis never to return. Years later, after they returned to Greece, Jason and Medea married and had children. However, Jason received an offer from King Creon of Corinth to marry his daughter and thus take the throne, so he pretty much ditched Medea, arranged for her exile, and shacked up with his new wife.

If I can describe the play in one sentence, it would be 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'. Let all men out there understand this, and if there is one piece of literature I would recommend that all men who wish to have a relationship with a woman should read it should be this one. It is not so much that Medea is a noble character, she is not. She poisons Jason's wife and father-in-law, and then proceeds to murder both of her children, and this is after she forced an oath out of the King of Athens to provide her protection, no matter what. Medea is not a lovely person, and despite the argument that she was driven to this point by a nasty man just simply does not cut it. I agree that Jason is not a noble man either, but still does not justify Medea's actions.

One can simply feel the pain of Medea in this play as she struggles with this change to her life. Yes, she acts on instinct and out of vengeance, but she has renounced her country and her people and fled to an alien land, all over the love of a man, only to discover that this man discards her once she is no longer needed by him. As she says, a Greek woman still has family and friends, whereas she has nobody (not quite true, as she secured sanctuary in Athens). We are reminded, over and over again, of the plight that is to be a woman, and an alien woman, in Ancient Greece, and it is not pleasant.

Does Euripides' write a decent female character then? Well, that is difficult since we have fragments of only one female Greek poet, and that is Sappho. Everything else is written by men, though not necessarily about men. I believe Medea's character is representative of a woman scorned, seeking vengeance upon he who discarded her. She cries, and is in deep emotional pain, but then lines like 'it is the nature of a woman to cry' is clearly the writing of a man. However Euripides is different from the other Greek playwrights in that he stands up for the woman, and we see this clearly in this play. There are others where he covers such themes as well, but we will look at them when we do. Further, not all of Greek literature deals only with strong men and weak women. Homer's Odyssey is a clear example of this as Penelope is painted as a strong, loyal, and dedicated woman that we resist even the wise men to remain faithful to a husband that she believes is still alive. Further, we have gods like Athena and Artemis, who clearly break out of that mould that we like to put Greek women into (both of these gods are major gods, not married to any other gods, are warriors, and are worshipped by many Greeks of the time).

Another thing that struck me in this play this time is the nature of children. Medea weeps about how it is difficult to know how a child turns out. Is all that time wasted in raising the child, only to see him either turn bad, or die in a war? Many parents fret and worry about that, and sometimes the more we worry, the less we actually look into ourselves and ask what can we do to make the situation better. This is a fallen world, and people die in fallen worlds: it is a fact of life. Death will always be painful, but sometimes we need to accept this. The more we try to mould our children into what we want, the more we force them away from us: many a piece of literature explores this (especially these days, just see Dead Poet's Society). However, Medea slays her children, if only out of spite.

I have heard many people suggest that Christianity has made the world worse, not better, and that is something that I must heartily dispute. All we need to do is to look at the pre-Christian world to see how horrid and barbaric it was. In many of the Greek tragedies there are no noble characters. There are only two truly noble characters that I can think of in Greek antiquity, one of them being Penelope, the other being Leonidas. Athens, the beacon of freedom and democracy, oppressed women and maintained a slave economy. Further, during the early days of the Peloponesian War, they attacked the island of Mytilene, sacked the place, killed all of the men, and enslaved all of the women and children. While we may have had issues with the way the United States (and Britain) have acted in other lands, I cannot think (with the exception of the period of slavery) of any time where they have acted in such a way. Further, while birth control has always been around, the ancients would deal with unwanted pregnancies by breaking the baby's legs, and then leaving them in the wilderness to die.

The book that I read this dialogue in also contained the Protagoras, which is a good pairing because both of them deal with the question of whether virtue can be taught (the Penguin edition uses the word good, but the better translation would be virtue: I do find that the Penguin editions do tend to dumb down these dialogues, a lot, which sort of defeats the purpose; which is not surprising that my Classics' lecturers tried to stay away from them as much as possible). However, it is interesting as to what they put first because it is clear that the Protagoras was the later text and dealt with an event that occurred thirty years before the Meno, in which Plato was not present, while the Meno was most likely written before the Protagoras about an event that occurred after the Protagoras, one in which it is likely that Plato was present. If you look at both of them you will note that the Protagoras is not a dialogue but a retelling, by Socrates, of an event that occurred thirty years earlier, while the Meno is an actual dialogue which forms a discussion between Socrates and Meno with a slave and Anytas popping in as extras.

The Meno is an interesting work because it demonstrates how Socrates really taught people to think. He is like the teacher that when you ask them a question they do not give you an answer but rather then respond to your question with a question of their own which forces us to come up with an answer all of our own. It reminds me of a bible study leader who would never answer a question but respond with 'that is a really good question, David, what do you think?' (though that went a little overboard afterwards when the response to all of his questions was 'that is a really good question Phil, what do you think?'). Mind you, another reason that he never actually answered my questions was because I was notorious for asking really curly questions.

Now, it seems that the Meno jumps all over the place, and as I was reading it I thought that Socrates was simply getting the whole question of what virtue was wrong. However, the question that Meno asked him was not 'what is virtue?' but rather 'can virtue be taught?'. Socrates is very clever because he then breaks down the question to 'what is virtue?' which means that to understand whether it can be taught we need to understand what it is, and as such for the first part of the dialogue Meno is trying to understand what virtue is and coming up with ideas (such as acquiring good things) which Socrates then turns around and shoots down in flames. For instance, the question of virtue being the acquisition of good things is brought down when you point out that if you acquire a good thing in a bad way, then can that acquisition of that good thing be an example of virtue? Of course not, Meno realises, and then discards that idea.

Now, Anytus makes an entrance (Anytus was one of Socrates' prosecutors, and also Meno's host while Meno was in Athens. Meno was from Thessaly, in far northern Greece). Upon entering Socrates drags him into the discussion, at which point Anytus turns around and pretty much dishes out what he thinks of sophists (the Greek version of lawyers, but in this context, people that go around selling their services as teachers of virtue), and then promptly leaves. However it is an interesting aspect to the discussion because he brings in a completely new dynamic to the entire discussion since by the time he storms out we come to an understanding that these people that go around believing that they can teach virtue really do not know what virtue is. However, Socrates also destroys Anytus' argument by asking in why he hates Sophists, but if he has never actually sat down in one of their classes then how can he know that they are bad.

Now, the conclusion is that virtue can not be taught but it can be only handed out by the Gods. When I got to this point I came to understand, from the dialogue, that Socrates really did have an objective understanding of truth in that he moves truth into the objective sphere. Also, it seems to reflect that which is said in the Bible in that nobody is good and that virtue can only come about in a person by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Personally I believe that people can only love God through the power of the Holy Spirit in the sense that there are lots of good people out there who would never do anything bad to another human.

Oh, and I should also note that Meno actually leaves this discussion with understanding, something which differs from a number of the other dialogues that I have read as the main participant in the discussion does not excuse himself because he is fed up with Socrates destroying his belief and undermining his opinion of what he believes to be true but rather leaves with a greater understanding of virtue, which suggests, that in the end, that virtue can be taught, but only to people who really want to learn.