Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Pentheus.
The gallery
Pentheus Torn by Maenads (House of the Vettii, Pompeii)
Unknown (Roman wall-painter), Before AD 79
The triclinium fresco in the Casa dei Vettii freezes Euripides' climax: Pentheus, still in women's dress, torn limb from limb by Agave and the maenads. Roman wall-painting makes the Bacchae's sparagmos domestic decoration.
Death of Pentheus (Douris cup, Kimbell Art Museum)
Douris, c. 480 BC
Douris paints the Theban king already dismembered on an Attic red-figure cup — maenads wielding his limbs as trophies. The Kimbell kylix is among the earliest and clearest images of Pentheus' death.
Death of Pentheus (Louvre G445)
Unknown (Attic red-figure), c. 450–425 BC
On this Attic red-figure lekanis lid in the Louvre, Agave and Ino tear Pentheus apart — the Bacchae's mother-murder rendered in clay. The vase keeps the Theban king's refusal of Dionysus as a visual warning.
Maenads Killing Pentheus (Meidias Painter, Kerameikos)
Meidias Painter (circle), c. 420–400 BC
A Kerameikos hydria in the Meidias Painter's ornate style stages the sparagmos: maenads closing on Pentheus. Athenian luxury pottery makes the Bacchic killing a jewelled surface.
On screen
Dionysus in '69
Brian De Palma
De Palma and Schechner film The Performance Group's ritual Bacchae — Pentheus torn in a New York warehouse as living theatre bleeds into cinema.
The Bacchantes
Giorgio Ferroni
Ferroni's peplum Bacchae casts Alberto Lupo as Pentheus against Pierre Brice's Dionysus — the Theban king's refusal dressed for Italian sword-and-sandal spectacle.