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Becoming the Other: Pentheus Undercover

In the play, Pentheus takes on the role of a Maenad in order to infiltrate their operation.  He has been convinced that this is the best of the two options presented by Dionysus: going to war with the Maenads or spying on them.  Given that Pentheus is guided by Dionysus, it appears that he is losing his resolve and his becoming more like his "other half".  Pentheus wears a wig of long curls, fawnskins and long robes.  He also carries a thyrsus.  Dionysus describes Pentheus as being prey thrashing in a net.  This is a reversal from Pentheus's original decision to be the one to capture and tame the women. Dionysus wants to make Pentheus obsessed and to make him unable to refuse the god.  Again, this is meant as a reversal or as a cure to the original situation where Pentheus was hyper-rational and unwilling to submit to the god.  

Pentheus talks about seeing two suns, two cities and two bulls.  Dionysus says that it is a god that he sees and that he has been cured of his blindness (918-924).  Dionysus also helps Pentheus to play the part of the Maenad, helping him with his disguise.  Pentheus focuses on physical appearance and sight, but since he does not follow Dionysus willingly, he can never be a true Bacchante (927-940).  The conflict between the two men is cast as athletic contest where they are vying for divine glory (963-975).  Dionysus predicts that Pentheus will go home cradled in his mother's arms, and he may interpret this as a celebratory transport of a victorious person, but in truth this refers to the fact that his mother will take Pentheus's head home as a trophy.  Indeed, Dionysus predicts that Agave will take Pentheus to be the son of a lion and a spy, thereby disowning him (978-990).  In lines 1016-1021, Dionysus predicts that Agave will call for Dionysus to manifest himself as an animal to to kill the interloper.  

Pentheus finds a place to watch the Maenads in a tree that reaches up to the heavens.  He is discovered and Dionysus calls on the Bacchae to take vengeance upon the man who mocks the holy mysteries of the Bacchae.  The women climb a great stone to reach him and then stoned him.  The women eventually try to pry up the roots of the tree, but when unsuccessful, Agave tells the women to encircle and grab the trunk of the tree.  These evokes line 653, where Dionysus threatens to encircle the city.  Pentheus falls to the ground, representing his fall from grace and a loss of balance between humanity and nature.  Pentheus removes his wig in an attempt to make his mother recognize him, but she is possessed by Dionysus and she commits sparagmos.  Agave returns home, gloating over her prize (which she thinks is the head of a lion), but in truth she only carries her own grief (1148).  For the first time, sight is repudiated as Agave realizes that she has killed her son and she proclaims that she cannot look at her crime (1243).  Dionysus then exiles the women and turns Cadmus and his wife into a snakes