In Macedonian playwright Euripides' play The Bacchae, Theban Maenads murdered King Pentheus after he banned the worship of Bacchus because the Maenads denied Pentheus' divinity. Bacchus, Pentheus' cousin, himself lured Pentheus to the woods, where the Maenads tore him apart and his corpse was mutilated by his own mother, Agave.