Pentheus
Based on Ovid's Metamorphoses
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Bacchus was a new god who had recently arrived in Thebes. The people of the city, young and old, rich and poor, were drinking and dancing in the streets, celebrating the god's arrival. Pentheus ordered the wand-carrying ringleader, the person who called himself a god, bound up in chains. But when Pentheus' usually obedient slaves returned, ostensibly from imprisoning their charge, they said they didn't know where Bacchus was. Instead of the god, the slaves had his priest Acoetes. Acoetes had been converted to belief in the divinity of Bacchus during a sea voyage in which the god had stilled the waves. Pentheus ordered Acoetes shackled and killed, but the chains kept dropping from his wrists.
Determined to get rid of the new god, Pentheus went to the mountain where the sacred rites of Bacchus were being held. There Pentheus' mother, Agave, saw him before any of the other maenads. The god had changed her vision, however, so instead of seeing the human Pentheus, she saw a wild boar, which she and her sisters chased, captured and tore to pieces.
So ended the life of Pentheus, the god- and prophet-defying decendant of Cadmus.
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