ABSTRACT
Although ecology and the environment are modern constructs, their premises have precedents in natural philosophy and the observation of nature in ancient Greece. Two of the most important terms in fi fth-century Greece were physis, meaning “nature” in all denotations of the word, and nomos, variously connoted as “law” or “custom” or “convention.” The extant tragedies (and comedies) of that era have been looked at mainly through the conceptual lens of nomos throughout the subsequent ages, starting with Aristotle in the fourth century BCE. From my schooling I know that law and custom are at the heart of canonical drama such as Oresteia and the Oedipus trilogy, yet there are powerful natural forces at work too as I discovered in rereading these launchers of the European canon. Then, the physis/nomos binary is absolutely, stridently prevalent in The Bacchae. Hubris that is so central to the protagonists of these tragedies takes on an ecological tinge. In their eco-hubris, they act with excessive pride or arrogance toward the natural environment, and violate external nature as greatly as they do internal, human nature with their hubris.
