Pentheus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The legendary king of Thebes in Greek myth, who opposed the worship of Dionysus and was torn apart by frenzied women including his own mother
2. A figure from Greek mythology, a Theban ruler who rejected the god Dionysus and met a violent death at the hands of maenads
3. The mythical monarch of Thebes whose refusal to honor Dionysus led to his gruesome dismemberment by his own kin in a Bacchic frenzy

Etymology: Pentheus was the king of Thebes in Greek myth, and his name is an ancient Greek compound, though its exact etymology is uncertain. Scholars have proposed that it relates to "penthos," meaning grief or sorrow, which would fit his tragic fate: in Euripides' play "The Bacchae," he is torn apart by his own mother Agave and the other Theban women, who have been driven into frenzy by the god Dionysus. The name is therefore often read as "man of sorrow," though this remains a plausible reading rather than a settled fact. The name entered English through Classical scholarship and the translation of Greek drama rather than through everyday speech, so it is a learned borrowing. It appears in English mainly in discussions of Greek tragedy, and in the modern world it is used as a name for a character and as a term for anyone who resists a strange new religion and suffers for it.