According to several ancient reports Euripides spent the last two years of his life as a guest in the court of Archelaus, the king of Macedonia, who invited a number of literary and artistic figures to his capital at Pella. (The visit is doubted by Scullion 2003, but the evidence against it does not convince me that the story is without foundation.) When Euripides died in 407/6, he left behind three last tragedies, Iphigenia in Aulis, Alcmaeon, and Bacchae. These were produced in Athens by Euripides the Younger (the poet’s son or nephew), probably in 405. The second play is lost, but the first and third have come down to us, Iphigenia in a text marred by many later additions (see Page 1938 and Kovacs 2003) and B…
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Citation: Kovacs, David. "Bacchae". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 September 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13357, accessed 24 November 2024.]
