Who Is This Stranger?
We have all heard the tale of the Pied Piper and how he lures away the rats that have infested the city, but when we aren’t given what is owed to him as payment, he causes panic among the city when he leads away all the little children because the parents and king don’t maintain their end of the agreement. The story Euripides' Bacchae closely parallels with this story. Dionysus, god of intoxication, is similar to the Piper because the people of Thebes and Pentheus, king of Thebes, don’t conform to the fact that he is a god. He wants to be revered as a god like Zeus and the other gods of Olympus that are honored. So, Dionysus comes to liberate the young women from the grip of Pentheus to demonstrate his powers to him and that he will be respected. Not all may agree that the women are being liberated, from their husbands and lives at home, but from what one can infer from the text where it states, “[They] sprang upright in close drill—an a...