And a son, Polydorus. Though Cadmus and
Harmonia seem to have been favored by the
gods, their descendants suffered misfortunes.
In Euripides’ tragedy the Bacchae, Cadmus’s
grandson Pentheus was slaughtered by using his
very own mother, Agave, and his aunts Autonoe
and Ino in a Dionysiac frenzy. Their unwit-
ting murder of Pentheus was brought about
through Dionysus in revenge for Pentheus’s lack of
piety closer to him.
Hera was angered through Ino’s care of her
nephew, Dionysus, and she persuaded one in every of
the Furies, Tisiphone, to incite madness in
Athamas and Ino. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
Tisiphone, whose head writhed with snakes,
threw snakes and a venomous potion at
the couple that triggered their insanity. Athamas
dashed his son towards the wall,
