Thêbes was the first city of Greece to which Dionysus came, at the head of his Asiatic troop of females, to obtain divine honors and to establish his peculiar rites in his native city. The venerable Kadmus, together with his daughters and the prophet Teiresias, at once acknowledged the divinity of the new god, and began to offer their worship and praise to him along with the solemnities which he enjoined. But Pentheus vehemently opposed the new ceremonies, reproving and maltreating the god who introduced them: nor was his unbelief at all softened by the miracles which Dionysus wrought for his own protection and for that of his followers. His mother Agavê, with her sisters, and a large body of other women from Thêbes, had gone out from Thêbes to Mount Kithærôn to celebrate their solemnities under the influence of the Bacchic frenzy. Thither Pentheus followed to watch them, and there the punishment due to his impiety overtook him. The avenging touch of the god having robbed him of his senses, he climbed a tall pine for the purpose of overlooking the feminine multitude, who detected him in this position, pulled down the tree, and tore him in pieces. Agavê, mad and bereft of consciousness, made herself the foremost in this assault, and carried back in triumph to Thêbes the head of her slaughtered son. The aged Kadmus, with his wife Harmonia, retired among the Illyrians, and at the end of their lives were changed into serpents, Zeus permitting them to be transferred to the Elysian fields.[628] [628] Apollod. iii. 5, 3-4; Theocrit. Idyll. xxvi. Eurip. Bacch. _passim_. Such is the tragical plot of this memorable drama. It is a striking proof of the deep-seated reverence of the people of Athens for the sanctity of the Bacchic ceremonies, that they could have borne the spectacle of Agavê on the stage with her dead son’s head, and the expressions of triumphant sympathy in her action on the part of the Chorus (1168), Μάκαιρ᾽ Ἀγαύη! This drama, written near the close of the life of Euripidês, and exhibited by his son after his death (Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 67,), contains passages strongly inculcating the necessity of implicit deference to ancestorial authority in matters of religion, and favorably contrasting the uninquiring faith of the vulgar with the dissenting and inquisitive tendencies of superior minds: see v. 196; compare vv. 389 and 422.— Οὐδὲν σοφιζόμεσθα τοῖσι δαίμοσιν. Πατρίους παραδοχὰς, ἅς θ᾽ ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ Κεκτήμεθ᾽, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος, Οὐδ᾽ ἢν δι᾽ ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρένων.