Pentheus
Family: Thebes · Role: king · First appears: Fable 37
Pentheus, king of Thebes, was the son of Echion and Agave, the grandson of Cadmus, and the nephew of Autonoë. He despised Tiresias, mocking the old prophet’s blindness and predictions. When Tiresias foretold that Bacchus, son of Semele, would soon arrive and that Pentheus would be torn apart for refusing the god divine honors, Pentheus forbade his people to worship Bacchus and ordered his servants to capture him.
The servants instead seized Acœtes, whom Pentheus imprisoned while preparations were made for his torture. When Acœtes’ chains fell away and the prison doors opened by themselves, Pentheus dismissed his story and ordered his servants to drag him away. At Cithæron, Bacchus smote Pentheus, and the Bacchantes tore him apart, including Agave, Autonoë, and Ino; Agave seized his severed head and claimed the victory as their work.
Relationship record
Life events
- Tiresias predicts Bacchus’s arrival and Pentheus’s violent death for refusing divine honors.(Fable37)
- With: Tiresias Bacchus Semele Agave Autonoë
- “For soon the day will come, and even now I predict that it is not far off, when the new {God} Liber, the son of Semele, shall come hither. Unless thou shalt vouchsafe him the honor of a temple, thou shalt be scattered, torn in pieces, in a thousand places, and with thy blood thou shalt pollute both the woods, and thy mother and the sisters of thy mother.”
- Pentheus orders his servants to capture Bacchus and bring him in chains.(Fable37)
- With: Bacchus
- “Go quickly, (this order he gives to his servants), go, and bring hither in chains the ringleader. Let there be no slothful delay in {executing} my commands.”
- Pentheus’s servants capture Acœtes instead of Bacchus.(Fable37)
- Acœtes is imprisoned, but his chains fall away and the prison doors open by themselves.(Fable37)
- With: Acœtes
- “At once the Etrurian Acœtes, dragged away, is shut up in a strong prison; and while the cruel instruments of the death that is ordered, and the iron and the fire are being made ready, the report is that the doors opened of their own accord, and that the chains, of their own accord, slipped from off his arms, no one loosening them.”
- Pentheus is torn apart by the Bacchantes, including his mother and aunts.(Fable37 · 📍 Cithæron)
Fable 37
- enemies with Tiresias “Yet Pentheus,[79] the son of Echion, a contemner of the Gods above, alone, of all men, despises him, and derides the predicting words of the old man, and upbraids him with his darkened state, and the misfortune of {having lost} his sight.”
- enemies with Bacchus “Pentheus ridicules the predictions of Tiresias; and not only forbids his people to worship Bacchus, who had just entered Greece in triumph, but even commands them to capture him, and to bring him into his presence.”
- parent: Echion “Yet Pentheus,[79] the son of Echion, a contemner of the Gods above”
- parent: Agave “He was the son of Echion and Agave, the daughter of Cadmus.”
- elder kin: Cadmus “who being the father of Agave, the mother of Pentheus, is the grandfather mentioned in the present line.”
- elder kin: Autonoë “Give me thy aid, Autonoë, my aunt; let the ghost of Actæon[98] influence thy feelings.”
- with Acœtes (Pentheus orders Acœtes to be executed.) “We have lent ear to a long story,”[95] says Pentheus, “that our anger might consume its strength in its tediousness. Servants! drag him headlong, and send to Stygian night his body, racked with dreadful tortures.”
- with Agave (Agave participates in Pentheus's dismemberment.) “At the sight Agave howls aloud, and tosses her neck, and shakes her locks in the air; and seizing his head, torn off, with her blood-stained fingers, she cries out, ‘Ho! my companions, this victory is our work!’”
- with Autonoë (interaction) “She knows not what Actæon {means}, and tears away his right hand as he is praying”
- with Ino (Ino participates in Pentheus's dismemberment.) “the other is dragged off by the violence of Ino.”
- enemies with Acœtes “We have lent ear to a long story,”[95] says Pentheus, “that our anger might consume its strength in its tediousness. Servants! drag him headlong, and send to Stygian night his body, racked with dreadful tortures.”
Fable 38
- enemies with Bacchus “Thou {God}, worthy of our veneration, didst smite Pentheus, and the axe-bearing Lycurgus,[13] sacrilegious {mortals};”
- with Bacchus (interaction) “Thou {God}, worthy of our veneration, didst smite Pentheus”
Fable 44
- parent: Agave “Agave having assisted in tearing to pieces her own son Pentheus”
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Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.