In Euripides’ The Bacchae, Dionysus possesses his female followers in order to achieve the end he desires: to teach Pentheus a lesson for disavowing his mother’s claim that she slept with Zeus. The Bacchants become frenzied and crazed when they notice Pentheus spying on them in the forest, and tear him limb from limb, with Pentheus’ own mother winning the grandest prize of all - the decapitated head of her mutilated son. In this sense of the term deluded, Agave is so beyond reality that she becomes capable of aiding in the murder of her own child, and being proud of this accomplishment until she is released from her delusion. There can be no argument made that this delusion as brought on by Dionysus is merely a playful or innocuous one. In this case, delusion directly entails suffering. The delusion of one person results in the suffering of others.
Vanessa Csordas-Jenkins
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