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- 102: Euripides: BacchaeLink visible for attendees
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.
