Agave

Family: Thebes · Role: mother of Pentheus · First appears: Euripides, The Bacchæ — Scene 1

Agave, a daughter of Cadmus, was the mother of Pentheus and sister to Semele, Autonoe, and Ino. In the opening of The Bacchæ, Dionysus drove her and her sisters mad and expelled them from the house: “Upon this, Bacchus excited his mother Agave, together with the sisters of Semele, Autonoe and Ino, to madness.” At Cithæron, Agave led the Bacchæ in defeating armed men and ravaging nearby settlements before returning to wash away the blood.

During the Bacchic frenzy, Agave and her sisters attacked Pentheus. She seized him despite his pleading, tore off his shoulder, and joined Autonoe, Ino, and the other Bacchæ in tearing him apart; she then fixed his head to a thyrsus and carried it through Cithæron. In Thebes, she recognized the severed head as her son’s, regained awareness, and understood that she had killed him unknowingly.

After Dionysus decreed banishment for Cadmus and his daughters, Agave left her ancestral city as a fugitive, saying, “Farewell, O house! farewell, O ancestral city! I leave you in misfortune a fugitive from my chamber.”