The ancient Greek equivalent of Eve is Pandora. She lifts the lid of a forbidden box and brings to an end a 'Golden Age' of gods and men. However, Pandora is only the first in a long tradition of female villains that includes Helen of Troy, who caused the legendary Trojan War; Medea, the woman who murdered her own children after being abandoned by Jason (of the Argonauts); and most famous of all, the savage Amazons.

By the 5th century BC, attitudes toward female power had become rather less damning, and in some of the plays of the era women play genuinely positive roles. A prime example is Sophocles' tragedy Antigone, where a woman becomes history's first conscientious objector, and in Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata, where the heroine leads a successful 'sex strike' forcing the men of Athens and Sparta to abandon a senseless war.

However, by far the most striking play of the period is Euripides' tragedy The Bacchae, a psychologically complex tale of how the women of Thebes become possessed by the irrational power of the god Dionysus.