Pentheus. The son of Agave and Echion, Pentheus, king of Thebes (Boeotia), was immortalized in Euripides’ The Bacchae. He refused to acknowledge the divinity of Dionysus (Bacchus). Although forewarned of danger by his grandfather, Cadmus, and the seer Tiresias, he tried by force to prohibit the bacchic rites. The Theban women, with supernatural strength brought on during the rites, destroyed Pentheus’s soldiers. Pentheus himself was tricked by the god into spying on their celebrations. He was discovered, and in their frenzied state the women mistook him for a wild lion. Led by his own mother and his aunts Ino and Autonoë, they dismembered him. Pentheus’s fate is presented as an example of hubris: in denying the existence of the god he participated in his own ruin.

  

    Classical Sources. Euripides, The Bacchae. Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511—733. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 3.5.2—3. Pausa-nias, Description of Greece 1.20.3,2.2.7, 9-2-4,9.5-4. Hyginus, Tabulae 76,124,184, 239. Nonnus, Dionysiaca 5.210.