The Bacchae

Agaue enters holding Pentheus’ head, which she believes is a mountain lion’s. In a rapid exchange with the Chorus, she invites them to feast on her spoils. Repulsed, they urge her to show her “spoils of victory” to the citizens of Thebes (159). Boasting of her feat, she calls for Cadmus and Pentheus. Cadmus enters holding Pentheus’ remains. Agaue exalts in her success, wanting her father to take Pentheus’ head. He grieves for them both, destroyed by Dionysus “justly but excessively” (160). Agaue says Cadmus should “take [Pentheus] to task” for “opposing the gods” and call him to witness her success (161). Cadmus mourns that being restored to sanity will bring her grief, then gently guides her back to her senses, instructing her to look “properly” at the head in her arms (161).

When she realizes that the lion’s head is Pentheus’, Cadmus explains how Agaue and her sisters killed him in a Bacchic frenzy, and that this was Dionysus’ punishment for not accepting his divinity. The surviving text in the following section has two substantial gaps. The first falls between two questions Agaue asks Cadmus: 1) whether he has arranged Pentheus’ remains and 2) what part Pentheus played in her madness.