Les Bacchantes et le palimpseste de la religion grecque
The Bacchae and the Palimpsest of Greek Religion

Summary/Abstract: The Bachae by Euripides is one of our richest sources of the archaic cult of Dionysus. Its climax is represented by the dismemberment (sparagmos) of Pentheus by his mother Agave, maddened by Dionysus. The violent conflict between Pentheus and Dionysus has generally been interpreted as an expression of the opposition of classical Olympian religion to the introduction of a new orgiastic cult. In this paper I propose an alternative reading of the legend. It is premised on the fact that Pentheus belongs to the race of the spartoi, the bronze warriors that sprang from the teeth of the dragon slaughtered by Kadmos. My hypothesis is that the conflict between Dionysos and Pentheus reiterates the sacrificial killing of the local ”serpent” (a Minoan-Mycenaean title for the king) and its warriors by Kadmos when founding Thebes.

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