The women eventually march off to Mount Cithaeron. They have in their midst Agave, the king’s mother, who turns mad and in her frenzy, tears his own son apart with her bare hands. The conflict between Dionysus and Pentheus is that between instinct and logic. When neither can moderate itself, that has a cruel consequence for humans. It is asking a key ontological question: what is a human being?

This is, perhaps, the most profound of all Greek tragedies. Euripedes’ The Bacchae drew on the Dionysus cult as a source, and became its sole theatrical relic.