Pentheus’ travestism in Dionysian rituals

Abstract

Euripides’s Bachhae contains to some extent the history of tragedy. The rituals most primitive are incorporated in the person of Pentheus and travestism. In Tiresias and Cadmus is imposed the civilized vision with the ritual that is incorporated in the city of Athens.
This can be explained by inserting the work in the religious practices characteristic of the Dionysian festivals and the process experienced by them in the cultural and political history of Athens, which forces them to deal with the vicissitudes of the civic concerns of democracy.