Agave (daughter of Cadmus)

Mythology

In Euripides' play The Bacchae, Semele, while pregnant with Dionysus, was tricked by Hera into witnessing the true form of Zeus, and was destroyed by the sight. Agave, Ino, and Autonoë began to spread a rumor that Semele had only been pretending that Zeus was the father of her child in order to conceal the fact that she was pregnant out of wedlock with the child of a mortal man, and that her death was a punishment for her actions. These claims directly invalidated the divinity of Dionysus, and he vowed to prove his godhood and avenge the reputation of his mother.

To get revenge, Dionysus arrived in Thebes with his Maenads to celebrate a Dionysiac festival on Mount Cithaeron. He drives the women of Thebes mad with revelry, including Agave. The women wandered the forests of Thebes, suckling animals, twining snakes in their hair, and performing miraculous feats, such as ripping cattle apart with their bare hands. Pentheus, successor king of Thebes and son of Agave, was horrified by the strange festivals and banned any form of Dionysian worship. He wanted to control the frenzied mob of women with armed force (likely by massacring them), but was instead convinced by a disguised Dionysus to spy on them first, disguised as a Maenad. Once Pentheus donned his disguise, he headed to Cithaeron with Dionysus and hid in a tree to watch the women. However, Dionysus exposed his true form to his followers, and revealed Pentheus' hiding spot to them. The Maenads, led by a frenzied Agave, pulled Pentheus down from the tree, ripped off his limbs and head, and tore his body to pieces.

Agave, still mad, arrived back in Thebes with Pentheus' bloodied head on a spike, believing it is the head of a lion. She proudly reveals the head to her father Cadmus, believing he will delight in her trophy, and is shocked when he is instead horrified. It is only when Agave begins to call out to Pentheus to come and look at her trophy, that her madness begins to fade, and she realizes what she has done.

According to Hyginus, Agave and her sisters were exiled from Thebes. Agave reportedly fled to Illyria to marry King Lycotherses, and then killed him in order to gain the city for her father Cadmus. However, according to William Smith, Hyginus' account is "manifestly transplaced by Hyginus, and must have belonged to an earlier part of the story of Agave".

Genealogy

Family tree of the Theban royal house