User:Medusa123

Background The Dionysus in Euripides' tale is a young god, angry that his mortal family, the royal house of Cadmus, has denied him a place of honor as a deity. His mother, Semele, a mistress of Zeus, was killed while she was carrying his child because she looked upon him in his divine form. Through the intervention of a god, however, her unborn son, Dionysus, is saved. Most of Semele's family, however, including her sister Agave, refuse to believe that Dionysus is the son of Zeus. Rejected, Dionysus travels throughout Asia and other foreign lands, gathering a cult of female worshippers (Bacchantes), and at the start of the play, he has returned, disguised as a blond stranger, to take revenge on the house of Cadmus. He drives the women of Thebes, including his aunts, into an ecstatic frenzy, sending them dancing and hunting on Mount Cithaeron, despite the fact that his cousin, the young king Pentheus, has declared a ban on the worship of Dionysus throughout Thebes.

Plot Dionysus first appears on stage to tell the audience who he is. He explains how his mother died and how, at the moment of her death, Hermes swooped down and saved the unborn baby. To hide the baby from Hera, Zeus had the fetus sewn up in his thigh until the baby was grown. Semele's family, however — her sisters Agave, Autonoe, and Ino, and her father, Cadmus - still believe that Semele had lied about the identity of the baby's father and been killed for her blasphemy. Dionysus has come to Thebes to vindicate his mother and validate his own divinity.

The old men Cadmus and Tiresias, though not under the same spell as the Theban women (who include Cadmus' daughters Ino, Autonoe and Agave, Pentheus' mother), have become caught up in the Bacchic rituals and are about to join the celebrations when Pentheus finds them dressed in festive garb. He scolds them harshly and orders his soldiers to arrest anyone else engaging in Dionysian worship.

The guards return with Dionysus himself, disguised as a priest leading the Asian maenads. Pentheus questions him, still refusing to believe that Dionysus is a god. His questions, however, indicate that he is deeply interested in the Dionysiac rites, but the disguised Dionysus refuses to reveal its secrets to him. Greatly angered, Pentheus has Dionysus imprisoned. Dionysus, however, because he is a god, is quickly able to break free and wreak havoc, razing the palace of Pentheus in a giant earthquake and fire. Word arrives via a herdsman that the Bacchae on Cithaeron are behaving strangely and performing incredible feats, adorning their hair with snakes to honor their god Dionysus, suckling wild wolves and gazelle, and making wine, milk, honey and water spring up from the ground. He adds that when the men tried to capture the women, the women, riding on a herd of cows, ripped them to shreds with their bare hands (Sparagmos). Those guards who attacked the women found that their weapons were useless, while the women's weapons - ordinary sticks - were deadly.

As punishment for his refusal to recognize him as a god, Dionysus capitalizes on Pentheus' desire to see the ecstatic women and convinces him to don the disguise of a female Maenad:

     :Stranger: Ah!  Would you like to see them in their gatherings upon the mountain?
     :Pentheus: Very much.  Ay, and pay uncounted gold for the pleasure.
     :Stranger: Why have you conceived so strong a desire? 
     :Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine-
     :Stranger: Yet you would like to see them, pain and all.[1]

Dressed as a woman in the skin of fawns, Pentheus sees double, perceiving two Thebes and two bulls (Dionysus often took the form of a bull) leading him.

The god's vengeance turns from mere humiliation to murder. Soon a messenger arrives at the palace to report that once they reached Cithaeron, Pentheus climbed an evergreen to get a better view of the Bacchants. Dionysus, still disguised as the blonde stranger, used magic to bend the tall tree and place the king high in the branches. Then he called to his followers and pointed to the man sitting atop the tree. The Bacchants wild tore Pentheus down and ripped his body apart piece by piece.

After the messenger has relayed this news, Pentheus' mother, Agave, arrives carrying the head of her son that she herself, in an ecstatic frenzy, had pulled off, believing it was the head of a mountain lion; she displays it proudly to her father, eager to show off her trophy. She is confused when Cadmus' face contorts in horror but finally she realizes what she has done. The family is thus destroyed, and Agave and her sisters are sent into exile. Dionysus, in a final act of revenge, returns briefly to excoriate his family one more time for their impiety. Cadmus and his wife Harmonia are turned into snakes. Tiresias, the old, blind Theban prophet, is the only one to excape without punishment.