What we’re about
BCE is a literary conversation group where we read together “classic” texts in a broad sense, from before the Christian era, anything loosely before/during the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine I (272–337), his successor and son Constantius II and his nephew, Julian the Apostate, who rejected Christianity and promoted Neoplatonic Hellenism as a philosophy, and the worship of the traditional Roman gods as ritual practice.
BCE expects participants to have read the text and have formulated questions for discussion and have marked a few passages that we can read aloud and discuss. Participants have the same edition in front of them so they can create a common experience.
Examples of texts we can take on: Seneca, Lucan, the epic of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew book of Genesis, the plays of Aristophanes, Homer’s Odyssey, Ovid, Song of Songs, or the Egyptian Story of Sinuhe.
Upcoming events (3)
See all- 102b: Euripides: BacchaeLink visible for attendees
There are still more Bacchae questions to talk about and I am clearing the calendar to continue our conversation about this last tragedy by Euripides.
The Bacchae (Βάκχαι) is an ancient Greek tragedy, written by the Athenian playwright Euripides during his final years in Macedonia, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC, and which Euripides' son or nephew is assumed to have directed. It won first prize in the City Dionysia festival competition.
The Bacchae stands as a profound meditation on the tensions between reason and instinct, order and chaos, piety and hubris. The play dramatizes the arrival of Dionysus in Thebes and the resistance he faces from Pentheus, the rationalist king. Euripides uses this mythic conflict to explore the perils of denying the irrational, ecstatic aspects of human nature, embodied in Dionysian worship.
The play's significance lies in its dual critique: it challenges the impiety of dismissing divine powers and the arrogance of human rationalism, while also exposing the destructive potential of unchecked fervor and divine vengeance. Unlike earlier tragedies that often uphold civic values, Bacchae unsettles them, suggesting that the suppression of the instinctual leads to catastrophe. The violent resolution—Pentheus’s dismemberment by his own mother, under Dionysian frenzy—evokes both terror and pity, hallmarks of tragic catharsis.
In its theological ambiguity and psychological complexity, Bacchae reflects late Classical Athenian anxieties during a period of war and cultural shift. It remains a pivotal text in ancient drama, offering enduring insights into the human condition’s dualities and the tragic cost of imbalance.
A collection we have used earlier has a translation of Bacchae:
Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm, eds. The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (Modern Library Classics)
Table of Contents of the whole collection:
- Persians ; The Oresteia: Agamemnon ; The Oresteia: Libation bearers ; The Oresteia: Eumenides ; Prometheus bound / Aeschylus
- Oedipus the king ; Antigone ; Electra ; Oedipus at Colonus / Sophocles
- Alcestis ; Medea ; Hippolytus ; Electra ; Trojan women ; Helen ; Bacchae / Euripides.
The Greek text, edited by Gilbert Murray, is online on the Perseus Hopper at https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0091
An translation into English is at https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0092%3Acard%3D1
- 103: Sophocles+2: AjaxLink visible for attendees
In connection with our reading of the Stephanie McCarter's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses we'll be reading the play Ajax by Sophocles, together with a passage from Homer's Odyssey and a section from the Metamorphoses. For background see here and here.
Readings
1. Socrates's play Ajax (circa 441 BCE) with translation by John Moore in: Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers (The Complete Greek Tragedies) Paperback – April 19, 2013, Mark Griffith (Editor, Translator), and others.
The Greek text, edited by Francis Storr, is online on the Perseus Hopper at
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0183
An older translation into English by Richard Jebb is at
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.01842. Ovid, Metamorphoses (circa 8 CE), Book 13, Ajax and Ulysses Contend for Achilles’ Armor, lines 1-430 in the McCarter translation.
3. Homer, Odyssey (circa 8th century BC), Book 11, The Dead, "Other dead souls were gathering, all sad ...," lines 542-568 of the Emily Wilson translation.
- 104: Aristotle: On PoeticsLink visible for attendees
We will be discussing On Poetics by Aristotle, in the translation by Seth Benardete and Michael Davis (St. Augustines Press, 2002).
From the publisher: "Aristotle's much-translated On Poetics is the earliest and arguably the best treatment that we possess of tragedy as a literary form. Seth Benardete and Michael Davis have translated it anew with a view to rendering Aristotle’s text into English as precisely as possible. A literal translation has long been needed, for in order to excavate the argument of On Poetics one has to attend not simply to what is said on the surface but also to the various puzzles, questions, and peculiarities that emerge only on the level of how Aristotle says what he says and thereby leads one to revise and deepen one’s initial understanding of the intent of the argument. As On Poetics is about how tragedy ought to be composed, it should not be surprising that it turns out to be a rather artful piece of literature in its own right.
Benardete and Davis supplement their edition of On Poetics with extensive notes and appendices. They explain nuances of the original that elude translation, and they provide translations of passages found elsewhere in Aristotle’s works as well as in those of other ancient authors that prove useful in thinking through the argument of On Poetics both in terms of its treatment of tragedy and in terms of its broader concerns. By following the connections Aristotle plots between On Poetics and his other works, readers will be in a position to appreciate the centrality of this little book for his thought on the whole.
In an introduction that sketches the overall interpretation of On Poetics presented in his The Poetry of Philosophy (St. Augustine’s Press, 1999), Davis argues that, while On Poetics is certainly about tragedy, it has a further concern extending beyond poetry to the very structure of the human soul in its relation to what is, and that Aristotle reveals in the form of his argument the true character of human action."
Wikipedia has it that Aristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At 17 or 18, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of 37 (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante Alighieri called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Pierre Abélard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
