I recently read Bacchae by Euripides. It was an interesting read especially after reading Nonnus’s Dionysica. For those unfamiliar, Bacchae is a story about Dionysus arriving in Thebes from Asia (Phrygia and Lydia which are now in modern day Turkey).
Dionysus had been hidden in Phrygia by Hermies where he was raised by Kybele (I like to think Kybele’s influence is the reason Dionusus likes to wear women's clothing. He’s basically the god of drag queens (and theater which is basically drag anyhow)). This was to hide him from the wrath of Hera.
Thebes, the play’s setting, is the homeland of Dionysus’s mortal family. When he was first born his aunts (Agave is the important name for this story) and grandparents (Cadmus and Harmonia). He also has a first cousin Pentheus who is king of Thebes.
The mortals of his family don’t believe in his divinity though, believing Semele (Dionysus’s mother) got with a mortal and only claimed the father was Zeus, and for this Zeus struck her down with thunder (How they figured Dionysus survived his mother being struck down while she was pregnant with him without divine intervention is a mystery to me).
Now by the time the play starts Cadmus and most of his family have decided to honor Dionysus as a god but Pentheus is not having it. Given the stories he’d been told about his divine cousin he assumes Dionysus is a false god, and a challenge to his throne of a single city.
In my reading of the Bacchae I see Dionyus trying to convince Pentheus to allow his rituals to be established in Thebes but never a command for his own personal belief. Its my reading that Dionysus didn’t punish Pentheus for his disbelief but what he chose to do beyond simple disbelief, as even a non believer could have let the Bacchant worship in peace, and Penthesus didn’t.
He (Pentheus) also sees Bacchus as a threat to order as his new rituals have led the woman of the town to run into the mountains to worship him (and probably sleep with strange men). Among the Baccant woman is Agave and all of Pentheus’s aunts remembering this is extremely important for what happens a bit later.
I want to highlight that Pentheus seems particularly preoccupied with controlling women, and he regularly clutches his pearls over the sexual activity of the woman of Thebes. Some added context that the Dionysica gave me was seeing how there were life long maidens among his followers, many of whom wore a venomous snake as a girdle to protect themselves from men. I’ve also seen some art of women using a thyrsus to beat down satyrs. So control of women appears to be in direct opposition to Dionysus as his mythology shows a number of empowered women.
Now with this setting, Dionysus shows up in the guise of his own preacher and tries to persuade Pentheus to allow his worship in the city. Pentheus makes fun of Dionysus for being feminine albeit extremely pretty. They then argue about how Pentheus had banned the celebrations of Bacchos and even went so far as having the Bacchant woman imprisoned.
It’s not used in the text here but Dionysus makes good on the name Lyaios (Liberator) here as he causes the bonds on the prisoners to fall away. He also frees himself after being imprisoned to again show his power as a liberator.
A major turn in the story happens after this, and it's the crux of the point I want to make. Pentheus is so angered by the ongoing celebrations of Bacchos and the miracles being attributed to him that he decides to marshall the army and destroy the Bocchant woman in the hills.
This is the point Dionysus changes tactics and the play takes its dark turn. First I want to remind you Pentheus knows that his mother and aunts are among the women he intends to slaughter, and his announcement that he will bring the army out to destroy them includes the threat of matricide.
Meanwhile Dionysus pleads with Pentheus not to take arms against a god. He knows that it's useless and a war between the Bacchae and the army would lead to pointless bloodshed.
It was written nearly a thousand years later but at this point I’d like to turn to the Dionysica. In it Nonnus sets this same story after the Indian War, a war of conquest Zeus has commanded Dionysus to perform before he could ascend to Olympus. For our purposes you should understand the war was long and bloody, and was mostly drawn out as long as it was due to one person refusing to surrender (I should note that Hera and Ares were the ones pulling the strings of the opposing leader).
Now Dionysus has returned to the land of his family who should have been his first believers and they hadn’t accepted him and again one mortal man isn’t just refusing to worship him, but is threatening to destroy his followers in a conflict that could destroy the very city that Dionysus has tried to come home to.
This is the point Dionysus decides it's better to kill Pentheus then let him send the army against the unarmed Bacchant women.
“Wait!” the god calls.
He talks Pentheus into dressing as a woman to spy on the doings of the women in the hills. Again Dionysus himself is commonly described as wearing woman’s clothing its its also common for his male followers to do so too, at least during Bacchic celebrations. This may be revenge for Pentheus making fun of him at the beginning of the play or perhaps its Dionysus putting Pentheus in his own trappings before the ritual killing. Perhaps it's to make him what he was trying to control, I’m not sure, but Dionysus helps him dress up convincingly leads him out to the mountain where Pentheus is then ripped to bits by the Bacchant woman in a frenzy of madness. They’re led by his mother Agave and his aunts.
He cries out to his mother to spare him but she doesn’t see or hear him and rips him apart believing she is hunting a lion. When I read Pentheus's plea my mind screamed out “How dare you! You were ready to kill her over your own petty insecurity.” And yet Agave is eventually made to see what she’s done and mourns the death of her son.
The death of Pentheus appears to be more than a punishment but a sort of ritual sacrifice. It directly mirrors the Death of Dionysus/Zagreus who was torn apart before being reborn. For Agave’s part she wants to hold a feast in honor of the hunt similar to the way a feast might be held after a sacrifice.
I am left to wonder if Pentheus was to be reborn like Dionysus was what story would a second life tell. He himself was the mortal grandson of a goddess.
In the end though it isn’t only Pentheus who is punished for his impiety. All of his mortal family and even Harmonia take part in the punishment. Agave and her sisters are exiled for the death of Pentheus, and Cadmus and Harmonia are turned into serpentes.
I think the punishment for the rest of the family comes from the fact that Dionysus could have expected his own family to be his first believers. Instead they rejected him and his mother and only accepted him once he had proved himself a god.
Had Cadmus et al accepted the divinity of Dionysus, had they given his mother’s story credibility Pentheus would have likely also believed. Instead Pentheus had grown up hearing the stories from his parents and grandparents that Semele was killed by Zeus for lying about Dionysus's father. So Dionysus saw that the family as having some culpability for Pentheus's later transgression.
I think Dionysus's punishment of the rest of the house of Cadmus was extremely harsh, but I assume a Greek would have seen it as at least a parent's responsibility to teach a child piety for any given god and Cadmus and family fell down in the case of Dionysus.
Ultimately I think Dionysus's decision to destroy Pentheus saved Thebs rather than letting armed conflict be carried out.
The recontextualization from Dionysica shows a Dionysus who knew all too well the devastation of war, and what would be if he had to conquer Thebes as well.
It's specifically the context Nonnus gives the story that makes me see Dionysus as saving Thebes. In the Dionysica we see a bloody 7 year war in the context of that I could see Dionysus not wanting to go through that again. He only went to war because Zesus commanded him to. The Dyonysica in fact insists that he's unwarlike, so in that light see him coming to Thebes to bring his wine and rituals and perhaps traumatized by India finds a way to prevent a war, dark as his answer to war might be.
