He uses Pentheus ' clear desire to see the ecstatic women to convince the king to dress as a female Maenad to avoid detection and go to the rites:

: Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine -

Dionysus lured Pentheus out to spy on the Bacchic rites disguised as a woman, and Pentheus expected to see sexual activities.

Dionysus, Pentheus's cousin, himself lured Pentheus to the woods, Pentheus wanting to see what he thought were the sexual activities of the women, where the Maenads tore him apart and his corpse was mutilated by his own mother, Agave.

* One of the surviving Spartoi, the " sown men " that sprang up from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus ; " it was Echion who, for his great valor, was preferred by Cadmus to be his son-in-law :" Echion was father of Pentheus ( see Spartes ).

The two brothers fled from Euboea after they murdered King Phlegyas, settling in Hyria and then moving to Thebes, because they were friends with Pentheus, its king.

The Suda gives the titles of twenty tragedies, of which a very few fragments have been preserved: Aeolus, Allies ( Symmakhoi ), Andromeda, Chrysippus, Daughters of Aeolus, Daughters of Pelops, Elephenor, Herakles, Hippolytus, Kassandreis, Laius, Marathonians, Menedemus, Nauplius, Oedipus ( two versions ), Orphan ( Orphanos ), Pentheus, Suppliants ( Hiketai ), Telegonus, and the Wanderer ( Aletes ).

Dionysus came to his birthplace, Thebes, where neither Pentheus, his cousin who was now king, nor Pentheus ’ mother Agave, Dionysus ’ aunt ( Semele ’ s sister ) acknowledged his divinity.

The tragedy is based on the mythological story of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agauë, and their punishment by the god Dionysus ( who is Pentheus ' cousin ) for refusing to worship him.

Complicating matters, his cousin, the young king Pentheus, has declared a ban on the worship of Dionysus throughout Thebes.

In Greek mythology, Pentheus ( or ) was a king of Thebes.

Cadmus, the king of Thebes, abdicated due to his old age in favor of his grandson Pentheus.

An angered Dionysus caused Pentheus ' mother Agave and his aunts Ino and Autonoë, along with all the other women of Thebes, to rush to Mount Cithaeron in a Bacchic frenzy.

As Thebes succumbs to the " dementia and the delirium of the new god ", Pentheus laments the fall of his kingdom and demands the arrest of Bacchus.

She married Echion, one of the five Spartoi, and was the mother of Pentheus, a king of Thebes.

In The Bacchae, by Euripides, Tiresias appears with Cadmus, the founder and first king of Thebes, to warn the current king Pentheus against denouncing Dionysus as a god.

In Euripides ' play, The Bacchae, she and her sisters were driven into a bacchic frenzy by the god Dionysus ( her nephew ) when Pentheus, the king of Thebes, refused to allow his worship in the city.

Dionysus arrives at Thebes and Pentheus refuses his rites and arrests Dionysus.

The scene in The Bacchae wherein Dionysus appears before King Pentheus on charges of claiming divinity is compared to the New Testament scene of Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate.

In Euripides ' play The Bacchae, Theban maenads murdered King Pentheus after he banned the worship of Dionysus.

Dionysus, Pentheus ' cousin, himself lured Pentheus to the woods, where the maenads tore him apart.

Pentheus questions him, still not believing that Dionysus is a god.

This greatly angers Pentheus, who has Dionysus locked up.

Dionysus wishes to punish Pentheus for not worshipping him or paying him libations.

Dionysus dresses Pentheus as a woman and gives him a thyrsus and fawn skins, then leads him out of the house.

The production was eventually fashioned into an independent feature film which, interestingly, featured Will Shepherd — the Pentheus of Richard Schechner's Dionysus in ' 69 — in the role of Cadmus.

Pentheus soon banned the worship of the god Dionysus, who was the son of his aunt Semele, and did not allow the women of Cadmeia to join in his rites.

Because of this, Pentheus imprisoned Dionysus, thinking the man simply a follower, but his chains fell off and the jail doors opened for him.

The name " Pentheus ", as Dionysus and Tiresias both point out, means " Man of Sorrows " and derives from πένθος, pénthos, sorrow or grief, especially the grief caused by the death of a loved one.

In Euripides's play, " The Bacchae ", Theban Maenads murdered King Pentheus after he banned the worship of Dionysus because he denied Dionysus's divinity.

After listening to Acoetes tale of being on the ship with Bacchus, Pentheus ordered him jailed and tortured.

When they discover Pentheus spying on them, dressed as a maenad, they tear him limb from limb.

They pulled Pentheus down and tore him from limb from limb ( as part of a ritual known as the sparagmos ).

Pentheus, convinced that Acoetes is lying, tries to throw him in jail.

Driven to a frenzy the participants thought Pentheus was a boar and attacked him.

Pentheus, wishing to prevent or stop these riotous proceedings, was persuaded by a disguised Dionysus to go himself to Cithaeron, but was torn to pieces there by his own mother Agave, who in her frenzy believed him to be a wild lion.

When Pentheus came to spy on their revels, Agave, the mother of Pentheus and Autonoë's sister, spotted him in a tree.

Teiresias and Cadmus try to propitiate Dionysus but Pentheus attacks the god who tells him the story of the Tyrsenian pirates.

During this time, Pentheus tells him that a traitor within Strike Force Centauri is responsible for the ambush.

Crassus ' head was thus used in place of a prop head representing Pentheus and carried by the heroine of the play, Agave.

Cadmus finally abdicated in favor of his grandson Pentheus, and went with Harmonia to Illyria, to fight on the side of the Encheleans Later, as king, he founded the city of Lychnidos and Bouthoe.

In Ovid's Pentheus, Acoetes was brought before the King to determine if Bacchus was truly a god.

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 enamored of the Bacchic rituals and are about to go out celebrating when Pentheus returns to the city and finds them dressed in festive garb.

However, being a god, he is quickly able to break free and creates more havoc, razing the palace of Pentheus to the ground in a giant earthquake and fire.

: Pentheus: Very much.

A messenger arrives at the palace to report that once they reached Cithaeron, Pentheus wanted to climb up an evergreen tree to get a better view of the Bacchants.

This, of course, drove the Bacchants wild, and they tore the trapped Pentheus down and ripped his body apart piece by piece.