Mystery Cults, Theatre and Athenian Politics: A Reading of Euripides’ Bacchae and Aristophanes’ Frogs

Cover page\nHalftitle page\nSeries page\nTitle page\nCopyright page\nDedication\nEpigraph\nContents\nAcknowledgements\nMap\nPreface\nDefinitions\nPart One Summary and Context\n	1 The Plays, the Eleusinian and Great Dionysia Festival\n		1.1 The plays\n		1.2 The Attic cult of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis\n		1.3 The Great Dionysia\n	2 Mysteries and Mystery Initiation in Athens\n		2.1 Mystical initiation in a world context\n		2.3 Plutarch’s initiation experience\n		2.4 Mysteries, ethics and the afterlife in Plato\n		2.5 The imagery of the mysteries\n		2.6 Modern visions of the afterlife\n	3 Initiates and Theatre Audiences in Athens\n		3.1 Initiates in Athens\n		3.2 Theatre audiences in Athens\n		3.3 Women in theatre audiences\n	4 Mystery Rituals and Theatre Performances\n		4.1 Theatre and poetic inspiration\n		4.2 Music and divinity\n		4.3 Catharsis and theatre reception\n		4.4 Ecstasy and the aulos\n		4.5 Dance, chorus and audience\n	5 The Polis, Mystery Cults and Civic Ideology\n		5.1 Political implications of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter\n		5.2 Mystical/political values in Aeschylus’ Oresteia\n	6 Historical Context and Episodes\n		6.1 Stasis\n		6.2 Epimenides, the Initiation of the Polis and Solon\n		6.3 Demeter, Miltiades and Telines\n		6.4 The Herms’ and Eleusinian mysteries’ scandal\n		6.5 Aeschylus, Diagoras and Asebeia\n		6.6 Religion, the demos and the Arginusae trial\n		6.7 The overthrow of the Thirty and civic reconciliation\nPart Two The Plays\n	7 Audiences, Similarities and Scholars’ Misapprehension of Pentheus\n		7.1 Bacchae and its audience\n		7.2 Similarities between the Bacchae and Frogs\n		7.3 Politics and scholarship\n		7.4 The ‘paradox’ of Bacchae\n	8 Politics in the Plays\n		8.1 The polis and stasis\n		8.2 The polis and tyranny\n		8.3 Euripides and tyranny\n		8.4 Pentheus the tyrant\n		8.5 The adversaries of the chorus in Frogs\n		8.6 The polis and money\n	9 Mystery Cults and the Choruses\n		9.1 Dionysus and Demeter, mystery deities\n		9.2 Mystery cults’ spaces\n		9.3 Lights in the night, fire and torches\n		9.4 The choruses/ thiasoi\n		9.5 Religious, moral and political values\n		9.6 Interpreting Bacchae ’s stasima\n	10 Political Implications\n		10.1 Equality in Bacchae and Frogs\n		10.2 The plays’ political goal\n	Conclusions\nNotes\nReferences\nIndex