The Bacchae is not a study of Dionysian ritual nor an examination of religious hysteria. What the playwright addresses is the eternal conflict between god and man.

Dionysus arrives in Thebes as a mystic and at the same time as a vengeful deity to introduce the sacred institution of the Bacchic orgy and to punish the family of his mother Semele. Old Cadmus and Agave must suffer because they doubted his divine origin. As for King Pentheus, he must pay for his disrespect towards the god. The king is torn apart by his frenzied mother.

When the veil of delusion and ecstasy is torn, Agave falls into the ultimate existential destitution. She has become a child killer in serving the new god, whose invasion brings a spiritual revolution that is not accomplished without bloodshed.

God and man clash with intolerant violence. The tyranny of popular religious belief against the insolent pretension of ruthless sophistry. In the desert of their destruction, Agave and Cadmus find solace in compassion.

At the extreme of human pain, which is prefigured by the omnipotent Zeus (“long ago, this Zeus of ours has hinted to your father”), stands moral dignity – the acceptance of fate. The pride of the defeated in an uneven struggle.