As a god, Dionysus couldn't be held in chains involuntarily. Pentheus only believed he had captured the god because of a magic cast upon him. When the glamor wore off, Pentheus thought his prisoner had escaped. It didn't take him long to find Dionysus again. Again the god tried to reason with him, but Pentheus remained obdurate.
This time, in retaliation, Dionysus drove Pentheus to do the very thing he most despised, wear women's clothing. So garbed Pentheus set off to join the Maenads -- among whom were numbered his mother and aunts. They did not mistake him for a woman but a wild animal. After he sought the protection and vantage point of a tree, the deluded women uprooted it, shook the wild beast-Pentheus from its branches, and tore him limb from limb.
"Soon as they saw my master
perched upon the fir, they set to hurling stones at
him with all their might, mounting a commanding
eminence, and with pine-branches he was pelted
as with darts; and others shot their wands through
the air at Pentheus, their hapless target, but all to
no purpose. For there he sat beyond the reach of
their hot endeavours, a helpless, hopeless victim.
At last they rent off limbs from oaks and were for
prising up the roots with levers not of iron. But
when they still could make no end to all their toil,
Agave cried: 'Come stand around, and grip the
sapling trunk, my Bacchanals! that we may catch
the beast that sits thereon, lest he divulge the
secrets of our god's religion.'"Then were a thousand hands laid on the fir, and
from the ground they tore it up, while he from his
seat aloft came tumbling to the ground with
lamentations long and loud, e'en Pentheus; for well
he knew his hour was come. His mother first, a
priestess for the nonce, began the bloody deed
and fell upon him; whereon he tore the snood from
off his hair, that hapless Agave might recognize
and spare him, crying as he touched her cheek, 'O
mother! it is I, thy own son Pentheus, the child
thou didst bear in Echion's halls; have pity on me,
mother dear! oh! do not for any sin of mine slay
thy own son.'""But she, the while, with foaming mouth and wildly
rolling eyes, bereft of reason as she was, heeded
him not; for the god possessed her. And she
caught his left hand in her grip, and planting her
foot upon her victim's trunk she tore the shoulder
from its socket, not of her own strength, but the
god made it an easy task to her hands; and Ino set
to work upon the other side, rending the flesh with
Autonoe and all the eager host of Bacchanals; and
one united cry arose, the victim's groans while yet
he breathed, and their triumphant shouts."
- Euripides Bacchantes
