1. Dionysos differs from gods in other prologues in that he will act as a direct human agent in the punishment of Pentheus and Thebes, disguised as the foreign and exotic male leader of a company of female devotees of Dionysos, "bacchae" or bacchants, who have followed him from Asia Minor, and who are now visitors in Thebes.  They form the chorus of the play and give it its name.

2. Semele is described as mortal, but there are signs in literature and cult that she was regarded as a Persphone-like figure who came to life again and was worshiped together with Dionysos.

4. Dionysos stresses here and at 53f. that he has taken on human form.  At the end of the play he will appear again without disguise; but even during the action his role is often ambiguous.

5. Dirce and Ismenus were the two rivers of Thebes.

10. Cadmus is the legendary founder of Thebes and father of Semele, Agave, Ino, Autonoe, and the boy Actaeon, and the grandfather of Pentheus, Agave's son, to whom he has handed over the royal power.

25.  The thyrsos was a staff with ivy tied to its top, and the identifying mark of the devotee of Dionysos.

35.  Ino and Autonoe, as the other Theban women, are "maddened" beyond the normal degree of Dionysiac inspiration.

58.  The companions of the god are the members of this thiasos or company: a group of bacchants united in the worship of Dionysos.  This thiasos has the god himself as a leader.  The erroneous notion that historic groups of female devotees of Dionysos were led by a male priest originated in this play by Euripides.

64-119.  PARODOS.
It consists of:  a  call for holy silence; b) a declaration of the blessed state of the bacchant; c) the story of Dionysos' birth; d) a call to Thebes to worship Dionysos, and e) further elaboration of the ecstasy of the bacchants and their male leader.  The ode is in fact a hymn, with ritual opening, solemn repetition of the divine name, and rehersal of the history and cult of the god and his effect on his worshipers.

65ff. Tmolus: mountain range to the south of Sardis, capital of Lydia.  Bromius is a cult-name of Dionysos.

78.  The bacchant is loosely described as also worshiping Cybele, the "Great Mother" or earth-goddess of Asia.  Euripides mixes together the ecstatic cults.

96ff. The jealous Hera persuaded Semele, loved by Zeus, to ask him to come to her in his true form.  She was consequently burned up, but Zeus snatched the embryo and brought it to completion in his own thigh.

104.  Snakes were ugly and dangerous, and at times benign, establishing association with the earth, symbolizing birth and rebirth by the casting off of their skin, etc.  They also represented sometimes the powers of the dead and the demons of the underworld.

112.  Fawnskins were ritual bacchic apparel.

120ff.  The Corybants were actually Asiatic demons associated with Cybele, to whom the wild music of drum and flute originally belonged.  According to one account Zeus was born in Crete, and his infant cries were hidden by the Couretes (similar to Corybants) from his father Kronos (who had been eating all the children born from his union with Rhea).  Later these young demons established the drum in rites for Zeus' mother Rhea.

171.  According to myth Cadmus had come to Greece from Phoenicia in search of his sister Europa, who had been abducted by Zeus, and he founded Thebes in obedience to an oracle of Apollo.

265.  Pentheus' mother Agave married Echion, one of the "autochthons" (earth-born) warriors who grew from Cadmus' sowing of the dragon's teeth when he founded Thebes.  So Pentheus has a special reason for defending the family honor.

274-318.  Teiresias' arguments against Pentheus and for Dionysus may be summarized as follows:  a) Demeter and Dionysos cover the twin spheres of solid and liquid nourishment respectively; b) wine, the gift of Dionysos, soothes pain, brings sleep; also it is poured as a libation to other gods; c) the theory of Dionysos being sewn in the thigh of Zeus arises from etymological confusion; d)) as bringer of frenzy and inspiration Dionysos is associated with prophecy and panic, both regarded as divine in origin; e) if women are occasionally immoral, it is because of their own lack of chastity, not because of Dionysos.

291ff.  The making of doubles and the hostility of Hera to her husband's human mistresses and offspring are common themes of myth.  The former is exemplified also at 629f.

298.  Dionysos gained a foothold at Delphi and was believed in historical times to occupy the shrine beneath the "twin-peaked plateau" for the three winter months of each year when Apollo was absent.  Warfare belonged to Ares, and panic in battle was associated with Pan; yet from a theoretical point of view Teiresias was justified in claiming a share in these manifestations, since Dionysos' producing frenzy in his worshipers does have a general connection with them.

337ff.  Actaeon was Cadmus' dead grandson and is mentioned on two other occasions in the play.  Like Pentheus, he was torn to pieces (on Cithaeron, by his own hounds).  Other versions of Actaeon's offense were known in the classical period; but the punishment of a mortal for boasting that he can surpass a god is an old theme.

370-433 First Stasimon

371.  Holines is a free personification, not a goddess.  Cf. later the personification of bloody Vengeance (911 and 1011); also the Loves, Desire, Peace.

402ff.  The chorus in their wishes for escape are treated as Greeks rather than as foreigners; they think of Cyprus because it was the birthplace of Aphrodite, goddess of love and reconciliation (occasionally associated with Dionysos in cult).  Both here and in the unusual association of the home of the muses with Desire, sexual love is used to symbolize freedom and peace.

407ff.  The alien river is the Nile.

433ff.  The disguised Dionysos is led in by a servant.  This is the first of three scenes (567-861 and 912-76 are the other two) that disclose Pentheus' degradation from apparent domination to being the absurd creation of Dionysos.

439.  The stranger's smile is no doubt fixed by the actor's mask.  It was a traditional feature.

455-59.  By the end of the fifth century, Dionysos was regularly represented as graceful, almost effeminate.

519-575  Second Stasimon

520.  The river Achelous in western Greece was the largest of those within the boundaries of classical Hellas and was thought as "parent" of all the others.  The infant Dionysos was washed in Dirce between his two births, says Euripides.

526.  The etymology of the word "dithyramb" is totally fantastic.  It is a genre of choral song sacred to Dionysos.

540ff.  Echion, Cadmus' father, was one of the original Sown Men, who grew from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus.  Thus he was chthonic (born from the earth), and like the Giants sprung from the earth in full armor.  They symbolize violence and anarchy; like the Titans, they fought against the new Olympian gods led by Zeus.

556ff.  An almost universal element of invocations was the listing of places where the deity might be, usually his/her favorite or best known  cult-places.  Nysa was a mountain associated with a different story of resistance to Dionysos, that of Lycurgus.  The "ridges of Corycia" refer to Mount Parnassus, where there was a famous Corycian cave.

562.  Both Orpheus and Dionysos have exceptional powers over the world of nature.

569ff.  The Axios and Lydias were two rivers of Thrace that Dionysos would have to cross if he were moving down from there back to Olympus and Thebes.

576-861.  This scene forms the central core of the play.

576ff.  The voice of Dionysos sounds offstage.  The god's escape from imprisonment amid fire and earthquake seems to have been a traditional theme in the stories of his overcoming resistance ot his cult.

608.  The chorus greet their leader as if he were the god himself.

765ff.  The messenger would be unlikely to know this; but the convention of the messenger-speech allowed this kind of departure from realism.

780ff.  The gate of Electra faced southward, toward Cithaeron.

817-821.  Dionysos wants to persuade Pentheus not merely to go to Cithaeron in secret, but also to go dressed as a female bacchant.

862-911  Third Stasimon

864f.  The head is flung back in a typical bacchic gesture, often represented in vase paintings, which lifts and exposes the throat.

882-90.  The power of the gods to act from afar and without effort was a traditional religious belief.

895tf.  The distinction between law/custom and nature had been made very familiar by the sophists at the time of this play.

912-76.  Pentheus is now completely under the god's power.  In his hallucinations lies an ambiguous element of sinister truth.  The scene ends with the god leading his victim offstage toward the mountain and calling on the absent Agave to prepare his reception there.

971.  The word deinos (wonderful/terrible) is used here.

977-1023.  Fourth Stasimon.  After summoning the hounds of Madness to fill the women on Cithaeron with vengeful frenzy, the chorus imagines the discovery of Pentheus by Agave.  the final stanza matches the opening invocation by summoning Dionysos as animal and hunter.  The events the chorus believes will happen do not happen quite like that, as is shown by the messenger's speech.

1020-23.  Suddenly Dionysos becomes hunter, not animal.  The switch emphasizes his duality and his many forms.  The Maenads are the animals now; they are being hunted by Dionysos, but they will become deadly through the god and will tear to pieces their hunter.

1024ff.  The "stranger from Sidon" is Cadmus; the dragon guarded the spring of Ares, was slain by Cadmus, and his teeth were sown.

1078.  The invisible god's voice is heard, just as in 576ff.

1082f.  Dionysos was occasionally imagined as making lightning, probably because of his first birth thorugh the lightning that struck Semele.  A glow of fire regularly indicates a divine presence or divine inspiration.

1108.  "This climbing beast:" still a metaphor; Agave later (1141, 1147) thinks Pentheus is a lion.

1122.  The symptoms are those of epilepsy, known to the Greeks as "sacred disease."

1153-1164  Fifth Stasimon

1165-1392.  Exodus ("going-out") of the chorus.

1264ff.  Recognition by Agave of her madness and her deed.

1329.  There is a lacuna; in the course of the missing passage Dionysos appears, in his fully divine form, on the palace roof.