Αγαυη
The daughter of Cadmus king of Thebes, and his wife Harmonia. Her sisters were Ino, Semele and Autonoe. She married Echion and had a son Pentheus. After Semele had been killed by a thunderbolt after she rashly asked her lover Zeus to show her how powerful he could be, Agave spread a rumour that Semele had had a liaison with a mortal and that Zeus had punished her for having claimed that she was pregnant by him. Later Dionysus, Semele's son, avenged his mother and punished Agave grievously for her slander. When Dionysus returned to Thebes, where Agave's son Pentheus was then ruling, he ordered all the women in the town to assemble on the mountain of Cytheron to celebrate his mysteries. Pentheus, who was opposed to the introduction of the ritual, tried to spy upon the Bacchantes. He was glimpsed by Agave who took him for a wild beast and tore him limb for limb. When she had returned to her senses she fled terrified from Thebes to Illyria, to the presence of Lycotherses, the king of the country, whom she married. But later she killed him, to ensure that her father Cadmus should possess the kingdom.
{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}
Table of Sources:
- Hesiod, Theog. 975ff.
- Apollod. Bibl. 3, 4, 2f
- Diod. Sic. 4, 2, 1
- Pind. Ol. 2, 22ff. (38ff.)
- Euripides, Bacchae passim, esp. 1043ff.
- Ovid, Met. 3, 511ff.
- Hyg. Fab. 184; 240; 254
- Serv. on Virgil, Aen. 4, 469