Bacchanals

Euripides' Bacchae is based on the Greek myth of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agave and their punishment by the god Dionysus who proclaims that he has come to Thebes to avenge the slander that he is not the son of Zeus. He intends to introduce Dionysian rites into the city and to demonstrate to Pentheus that he was indeed born a god. At the end of the play Pentheus is torn apart by the women of Thebes and Agave bears his head on a pike to her father Cadmus. Bacchae is distinctive from