[2]
Having traversed Thrace and the whole of
India and set up pillars there,1 he
came to Thebes, and forced the women to
abandon their houses and rave in Bacchic frenzy on Cithaeron. But Pentheus, whom Agave
bore to Echion, had succeeded Cadmus in the kingdom, and he attempted to put a stop to
these proceedings. And coming to Cithaeron to spy on the Bacchanals, he was torn limb from
limb by his mother Agave in a fit of madness; for she thought he was a wild beast.2 And having
shown the Thebans that he was a god, Dionysus came to Argos, and there again, because they did not honor him, he drove the women
mad, and they on the mountains devoured the flesh of the infants whom they carried at
their breasts.3
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1 Compare Tzetzes, Chiliades viii.582ff.
2 In these lines Apollodorus has summarized the argument of the Bacchae of Euripides; for the death of Pentheus, see Eur. Ba. 1043ff. Compare Hyginus, Fab. 184; Ov. Met. 3.511ff., especially 701ff.; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 103 （Second Vatican Mythographer 83）. Aeschylus wrote a tragedy on the subject of Pentheus （TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 60ff.）.
3 The reference is to the madness of the daughters of Proetus. See above, Apollod. 2.2.2 note.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
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