#agaue

Did gods and Universe just hate Harmonia??? Or maybe because she represented harmony and peace bothered them because Olympus has no chill???

Literally on her wedding day she got a gift from her husband made by Hephaestus - a robe and a necklace. A CURSED NECKLACE that literally led to the destruction of this entire family for generations. Why? Because Heph is still angry that Aphrodite "betrayed" him when he forced her into the relationship. Boyyyyyyyyy!

I feel so sorry for Harmonia. Her grandmother (Hera) indirectly killed her daughter Seleme who was in a relationship with her grandfather (Zeus) and pregnant with Dionysus. Then her second daughter, Ino who took Dionysus under her care also experienced Hera's wrath for it, because why not. Goddness drove her granddaughter's husband (Athamas) mad and he killed their older son (Learchos) so Ino jumped into the sea from a cliff to save herself and her younger son (Melicertes). Poseidon turned them into sea gods, so profit. Agaue, another daughter, was stunned by Dionysus and led in killing the King of Thebes - Pentheus. Did I mention that he was her own son? Imagine waking up from a trance and seeing your son's torn body and blood on your hands. The fourth sister Autonoe helped Agaue kill her son, her nephew, and then Autonoe's son was torn apart by his own dogs. It happened when Artemis turned him into a deer when he UNWITTINGLY saw her naked in the forest. And finally Polydorus, the last child and only son of Harmonia and Cadmus… who actually nothing happened to. He was supposed to die on a hunt so… maybe that's it? But apart from their direct children, do I have to remind you of the whole story of King Oedipus and his family who are descendants of Harmonia? No one ends well there! And when the necklace was finally consecrated in Delphi, in the temple of Athena… the tyrant Phayllus decided to steal it for his beloved. And how did it end? Their son went mad and killed his entire family after burning down his house. Bravo!!

Bacchae

The Bacchae is a Greek tragedy written by the playwright Euripides (c. 484-406 BCE) in 407 BCE, which portrays Pentheus as an impious king, for the ruler of Thebes has denied the worship of Dionysus within his city walls. For Pentheus, the god is a destroyer of social and moral values, and the former has returned from abroad only to have his conceptions of the god strengthened. He discovers that this false divinity has caused his women to abandon their domestic roles for the freedom of Mt. Cithaeron in order to worship Dionysus. Despite Pentheus' diligent efforts to maintain control over his people, city, and self, Dionysus proves to be an unstoppable force that the King of Thebes is not able to keep under lock and key.

Euripides

As with many individuals in antiquity, little is known about the life of Euripides (c. 484-406 BCE). It is speculated that the playwright was born in 484 BCE at Salamis, and he first performed at the Great Dionysia in 455 BCE. Distancing himself from public life, Euripides, unlike both Aeschylus and Sophocles, did not hold military or religious positions. Euripides wrote the Bacchae in 407 BCE, one year after he left Athens to spend the final two years of his life in Pella at the court of King Archelaus. According to William Arrowsmith in his introduction to the text, Euripides' son brought the Bacchae, along with the plays Iphigenia at Aulis and Alcmaeon at Corinth, back to Athens in order to be produced at the City Dionysia. Euripides' Bacchae is the only tragedy out of 18 surviving texts in which the Greek god Dionysus appears, the divinity whom the City Dionysia honors.

poetic statement of the tensions set up between an individual and a group when that individual, after being a member, or even standing as head, of the group, with whose collective aims his own individual desires have been identified, suddenly — as often happens in ordinary life — finds himself outside the group, his own will in stark and even disastrous conflict with theirs. (Podlecki, 144).

On the other hand, Christine M. Kalk analyzes the physical transformation that Pentheus undergoes throughout the tragedy, specifically how he metamorphizes from the King of Thebes into a symbol that represents the thyrsus. This transformation illustrates Dionysus' true power. Jean A. LaRue argues that Pentheus is controlled by his sexual obsession with the Maenads. To quote LaRue, “Pentheus' pride struggles with his lustful curiosity, and the latter wins” (LaRue, 212).

The ending of the play exemplifes something in the experiance of Dionysus that we may call a Dionyasic Anagnorisis (recognition): wild abandon and exultation followed by a sad reawakening to a painful reality. A hangover, in every day terms. ... [an example] when Agaue comes out of the Dionysauc ecstasy and realized what she has done ... polluting her body with the flesh of her sonthrough the act of sparagmos [tearing apart and, in some cases, consuming th flesh to the animal sacrificed].

-Complete Euripides: Bacchae and Other Plays

This is what happens when you consume water, milk, honey and wine that spirts from the ground folks.