The Tragic Hubris of Pentheus Against Dionysus in Euripides' "The Bacchae"

The stories of men whose fortunes are reversed are told in many of the surviving tragedies and tales of ancient Greece: Herodotus begins with Croesus, then names king after king whose hubris brought their empire crashing upon their head. Sophocles tells us first of brilliant Oedipus, whom knew not who he was, and in moving to knowledge from ignorance, discovered his damnation; then of Creon, defiant of divine laws in preference of his own - and thus he saw his rule laid low. Finally, Euripides tells us of Pentheus, a fellow of Oedipus and Creon in the sufferings of the house of Cadmus, and of his tragic hubris, offensive to the Gods, unmatched even by that of Creon. For Creon would not heed the urgings of his countrymen to honor the laws of above; he sinned from afar, and so was punished from afar, shot down with Apollo's shining darts. But Pentheus blasphemed and disrespected to the immortal's very face - though he knew it not. His hubris was bared before the God. Only Pentheus would've made war against the divine, and thus he suffered the unfettered wrath of Dionysus, of all the Gods gentlest to mankind. He believed unwaveringly in the one-sidedness of what he knew - or rather, thought he knew - and was shown how little that really was; thus, The Bacchae is an illustration of the short reach of mortal wisdom, and of the total inability of reason to stand up against divine duality.