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1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Pentheus
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Pentheus

in Greek legend, successor of Cadmus as king of Thebes. When Dionysus, with his band of frenzied women (Maenads) arrived at Thebes (his native place and the first city visited by him in Greece), Pentheus denied his divinity and violently opposed the introduction of his rites. His mother Agave having joined the revellers on Mount Cithaeron, Pentheus followed and climbed a lofty pine to watch the proceedings. Being discovered he was torn to pieces by Agave and others, who mistook him for some wild beast. His head was carried back to Thebes in triumph by his mother. Labdacus and Lycurgus, who offered a similar resistance, met with a like fearful end. Some identify Pentheus with Dionysus himself in his character as the god of the vine, torn to pieces by the violence of winter. The fate of Pentheus was the subject of lost tragedies by Thespis and Pacuvius.

See Euripides, Bacchae, passim; Ovid, Metam. iii. 511; Theocritus xxvi; Apollodorus iii. 5, 2; Nonnus, Dionysiaca, xliv - xlvi; on representations in art see O. Jahn, Pentheus and die Mainaden (1841).

Penthievre, Counts Of. In the 11th and 12th centuries the countship of Penthievre in Brittany (dep. of Cotes-du-Nord) belonged to a branch of the sovereign house of Brittany. Henry d'Avaugour, heir of this dynasty, was dispossessed of the countship in 1235 by the duke of Brittany, Pierre Mauclerc, who gave it as dowry to his daughter, Yolande, on her marriage in 1238 to Hugh of Lusignan, count of La Marche. Duke John I. of Brittany, Yolande's brother, seized the countship on her death in 1272. In 1337 Joan of Brittany brought Penthievre to her husband, Charles de Chatillon-Blois. In 1437 Nicole de Blois, a descendant of this family, married Jean de Brosse, and was deprived of Penthievre by the duke of Brittany, Francis II., in 1465. The countship, which was restored to Sebastian of Luxemburg, heir of the Brosses through his mother, was erected for him into a duchy in the peerage of France (duche-pairie) in 1569, and was afterwards held by the duchess of Merceeur, daughter of the first duke of Penthievre, and then by her daughter, the duchess of Vendome. The duchess of Vendome's grandson, Louis Joseph, inherited Penthievre in 1669, but it was taken from him by decree in 1687 and adjudged to Anne Marie de Bourbon, princess of Conti. In 1696 it was sold to the count of Toulouse, whose son bore the title of duke of Penthievre. This title passed by inheritance to the house of Orleans.