Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/294

 262 HISTORY OF GREECE. at the nead of his Asiatic troop of females, to obtain divine hon ors and to establish his peculiar rites in his native city. The venerable Kadraus, together with his daughters and the prophet Teiresias, at once acknowledged the divinity of the new god, and began to offer their worship and praise to him along with the solemnities which he enjoined. But Pentheus vehemently op- posed the new ceremonies, reproving and maltreating the god who introduced them : nor was his unbelief at all softened by the miracles which Dionysus wrought for his own protection and for that of his followers. His mother Agave, with her sisters. and a large body of other women from Thebes, had gone out from Thebes to Mount Kithaeron to celebrate their solemnities under the influence of the Bacchic frenzy. Thither Pentheus followed to watch them, and there the punishment due to his impiety overtook him. The avenging touch of the god having robbed him of his senses, he climbed a tall pine for the purpose of overlooking the feminine multitude, who detected him in this position, pulled down the tree, and tore him in pieces. Agave, mad and bereft of consciousness, made herself the foremost in this assault, and carried back in triumph to Thebes the head of her slaughtered son. The aged Kadmus, with his wife Harmo- nia, retired among the Illyrians, and at the end of their lives were changed into serpents, Zeus permitting them to be trans- ferred to the Elysian fields. 1 1 Apollod. iii. 5, 3-4 ; Thcocrit. Idyll, xxvi. Eurip. Bacch. passim. Such ia the tragical plot of this memorable drama. It is a striking proof of the deep-seated reverence of the people of Athens for the sanctity of the Bacchic ceremonies, that they could have borne the spectacle of Agave on the stage with her dead son's head, and the expressions of triumphant sympathy in her action on the part of the Chorus (1168), MUKOI^ 'Ayavij ! This drama, written near the close of the life of Euripides, and exhibited by his son after his death ( Sehol. Aristoph. Ran. 67 j, contains passages strongly inculcating the necessity of implicit deference to ancestorial authority in matters of re- ligion, and favorably contrasting the uninquiring faith of the vulgar with the dissenting and inquisitive tendencies of superior minds: see v. 196; com- oare w. 389 and 422. Ovdev aoit,Ufj.cr&a roiai Harpiovf itapadoxw;,  61' unpuv Td aoijtbv etipriTat. typevuv. Such reproofs " insanieutis sapientiae " certainly do not fall in with the plot