t of an unwed pregnancy. The family's failure of imagination is taken as an insult by the gods. Kitto says that Pentheus "is a normally well-meaning man, but his complete lack of imagination ruins him" (Kitto, "Last" 377).
Euripides has it that Semele expelled the fetus of Dionysus at the time of the lightning strike and that Zeus "ensconced him instantly in a secret womb / Chambered within his thigh" to protect him from Hera. Graves (1.56) cites the story that Hermes rescued the six-month fetus and implanted it in Zeus's thigh until time for delivery, this time as a god. The relevant point for the action of TB is that Semele's surviving sisters have vulgarized a pregnancy that could not help but be glorious. Further, Agauë's son Pentheus, who is now king of Thebes, is "a fighter against gods, defies me, excludes me from / Libations, never names me in prayers. Therefore I will / Demonstrate to him, and to all Thebes, that I am a god" (Bac. 42-5).
Pentheus has suppressed the irrational, joyous, and emotional in Thebes in favor of a dour, moralistic ratio
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