Agave- Greek FigureMortal"Daughter of Cadmus"

The Denial of Dionysus

Agave was a daughter of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, and Harmonia. She married Echion, one of the Spartoi who had sprung from dragon's teeth sown in the earth, and their son Pentheus inherited the Theban throne. When her sister Semele claimed to be carrying Zeus's child, Agave and her other sisters spread the story that Semele had taken a mortal lover and lied. After Semele was destroyed by the sight of Zeus in his full glory, the sisters maintained their slander — denying the divinity of the child Zeus rescued from her womb and brought to term in his own thigh: Dionysus.

The Frenzy on Mount Cithaeron

When Dionysus returned to Thebes as a grown god to establish his worship, he made the house of Cadmus the target of his vengeance. He struck the women of the city with divine madness, compelling them to celebrate his rites on Cithaeron. Agave was among the leaders of these Bacchantes. Her son Pentheus fiercely opposed the cult, imprisoned the disguised god, and tried to suppress the rites by force. Dionysus escaped and lured Pentheus to the mountain to spy on the Maenads.

When the women discovered Pentheus hidden in a pine tree, Dionysus drove them into a killing frenzy. Agave was the first to attack. In her god-maddened state she saw not her son but a lion. She and her sisters pulled him from the tree and tore him apart — sparagmos, the ritual dismemberment of Dionysiac worship. Agave wrenched his head from his body and carried it back to Thebes impaled on her thyrsus, boasting of the kill.

The Recognition

Agave entered Thebes brandishing what she believed was a lion's head, boasting of her kill to anyone who would listen. Her father Cadmus, who had already gathered Pentheus's scattered remains from the mountainside, stood before her and asked her to look at the face on her thyrsus. She did. The madness lifted, and what she had taken for a lion was her son.

Dionysus pronounced exile on the surviving house of Cadmus. Agave was banished from Thebes. In some traditions she traveled to Illyria, where she married King Lycotherses and later killed him to give the kingdom to her father.