Dionysus

Also known as: Bacchus / Bromius / Dithyrambus / Evan / Evius · Family: Gods · Role: god · First appears: Euripides, The Phœnician Virgins — Scene 4

At Thebes, Pentheus rejected Dionysus’s worship and persecuted those who celebrated his rites: “Pentheus, the then reigning king, who, as others say, preferred the worship of Minerva, slighted the new God, and persecuted those who celebrated his revels.” Dionysus drove Agave, Autonoe, and Ino mad and expelled them, then escaped after Pentheus imprisoned him; while he watched from a lofty tree, the Bacchants tore Pentheus apart.

At Olympus, Zeus rescued Dionysus from the lightning flame and carried him there as an infant. Dionysus, the son of Semele and Zeus, was later captured by Pentheus’s servants, ordered bound and brought to Thebes for execution, and confined at Pentheus’s house, but escaped without being touched or bound. He destroyed Pentheus’s house, identified himself publicly as Semele’s and Zeus’s son, and persuaded Pentheus to disguise himself in women’s clothing and follow him to observe the Bacchæ.

At Cithæron, Dionysus commanded the Bacchæ to punish Pentheus for mocking him and his rites. After Pentheus was killed, Dionysus decreed serpentine transformations for Cadmus and Harmonia and banished Cadmus, Agave, Autonoe, and Ino to foreign lands. Cadmus was his elder kin and had praised him as the god born from his daughter; Hera was his enemy, Dirce had received him in her fountains, and Silenus was his friend and votary.