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He is, after all, more often than not, the ‘beardless’ god, androgynous, often clean-shaven and therefore emasculated. Dionysus has always been a figure shrouded in mystery. He is, however, also a god of magic and of rituals that were not open to the public or, at least, not open to the predominant male citizen class. Similarly, to Orpheus, it has been argued that his cults attracted mostly women and slaves. He is a god of excess, characterised by an entourage of priestesses, the Bakkhai or Maenads, and, in iconography, also accompanied by male, sexually charged satyrs. He is first and foremost a god of wine and, therefore, of drunkenness, implying a lack of control that ancient society (as well as our modern one) may not have been all that comfortable with facing on a day-to-day basis.

Her academic background, therefore, plays a large part in her approach to translation.ĭuring Classical theory history, the god Dionysus, so central to the Bakkhai, has always proven to be a highly polarizing figure. In the context of Anne Carson’s translation of Euripides’ Bakkhai, modern scholarship concerning Dionysus is quite important: Carson is, first and foremost, a classicist. Through the course of the history of Classical studies, the play has often been read as a social commentary on the state of fifth-century Athens  a discussion on the constant strife between nature and order, divinity, and humanity, and an impassive, criticizing gaze turned towards the chaos and fragility of Athens at the time, almost helplessly caught in the delirium of the Peloponnesian war and its disastrous consequences. The Bakkhai is considered by many as Euripides’ most polarizing and interesting work – arguably, his best.

It was performed on stage for the first time in 2015 and featured British screen actor Ben Wishaw in the main role of Dionysus. Anne Carson’s most recent endeavour into the world of translation is a translation of Euripides’ Bakkhai , commissioned specifically by the British theatre company Almeida for their recurring series ‘Almeida Greeks’.