The Aborted Head
©
When King Pentheus had climbed into the pine tree in which the Sun had got
herself stuck, the King could not quite reach Her from his perch. So, he reached
up with his spear and gave her a few pokes with it.
Try as he might, Pentheus had no luck getting the Sun to move. He thought
of climbing yet a little higher, but the heat of the sun was boiling the resin
of the pine until it broke through its bark, whence it dripped and collected on
one of the edges of the perch where Pentheus was to stand.
Meanwhile, Dionysus and the maenads had began to crowd into the grove below.
Everyone who came to the mountain and entered the grove fell on their knees and
looked up to the Sun in the pine tree. The would be revelers set up a chorus of
moans and wailing. Pentheus, not wishing to be seen, moved to the opposite side
of the tree, where he was well hid by the pine’s branches. Unfortunately, the
heat from the trapped Sun was melting the resin on that side of the pine as
well. Soon King Pentheus’ hands were not only sticky from resin, but the resin
was hot and stayed hot for long enough to raise on the skin of his palms painful
blisters. For fear of his hands sticking to the bark and tearing the blisters
open, the Pentheus hardly dared touch anything. He was forced to move back to
his perch, a place where his overcoat was likely to be covered with dripping
resin and seen by those looking up from below.
Indeed, it was not long before King Pentheus was seen. There then arose a
loud cry and many hands and fingers pointed at him.
“May the Sun burn you to cinder!” a maenad screamed guessing that the King
had come into sight because the Sun had scorched him.
Another shouted: “What are you doing there, King!?”
“Jump, King!... Your face is ugly!... We’ve been waiting to show you a
porno!...” screamed others.
Still others shouted: “We’re coming after you!” and rushed at the tree and
began to climb after the King. When a number of women had reached him, they
grabbed his legs and let themselves hang loose. There was nothing Pentheus
could do (because of his blistered hands, he could not grab hold of any
branches to hang on to), but had to allow himself to be dragged down. Pentheus
fell together with three or four maenads holding on to him. They rolled out of
the branches and fell into a crowd of outraged women, who had gathered at the
bottom of the pine. Pentheus was seized by many women, all of who bit or tore
his flesh.
Even as the King felt being torn apart, he suddenly heard a voice close to
his ear. The voice was that of his mother. It said: “Be brave, my son. The sacrifice
has been foreordained. You must die!” Then the King received a blow to the back
of his head, upon which he lost consciousness.
The King’s mother, whose name was Agave, was among the Bacchantes and among
the first women to seize Pentheus and wrestle him to the ground. She had then
laid herself on the King’s back and killed him by driving a sharp end of a
piece of flint into the back of his skull. Now she used the same flint to cut
off Pentheus’ head.
Once the King’s head was severed from his body, Agave seized it by its hair
and held it up for all to see. “Here! Here!” she shouted, “Here is our offering
to the Sun! May no man ever dare to take Her place!”
Another maenad snatched the head out of Agave’s hands and put it between her legs and held it there in an up-side down position. “Here is the abortion!” the maenad screamed with her skirt turned red from the King’s blood, then passed the head to the maenad standing next to her. This one put the head between her legs and began to hop with it—until her knees could hold it no longer and it fell to the ground. In this way the head made its way around the crowd, until Agave retrieved it.
Holding the King’s head by the hair and holding her arm extended before her
as if she were holding a lantern, Agave began to run to Thebes
After all the Bacchantes had relieved themselves on the head, Agave had it
retrieved and washed. Then she held it aloft once more, screaming: “O, what made
you compete with the Sun!? O, Pentheus! O, my son!?” Only now did the
Bacchantes awaken to the fact that the King had been killed by none other than
his mother. Many now joined the mother in howling and screaming louder than they
ever had at any other human sacrifice.
After a long dirge, Agave seemed to have an idea. She asked her attendants
to bring her a barrel of pine resin, such as was kept in Thebes Mt. Cithaeron
At the ceremonial grove, they were awaited by Dionysus, who had remained
there with all too old to run back and
forth. From what everyone could see, the Sun was still caught up in the tree.
However, Dionysus and his companions had dug at the center of the grove a
deep pit, which they had filled with dry moss, loose branches, and trunks of
fallen trees. When Dionysus saw the head and the barrel of esin, he asked everyone
to come to dig the pine tree free of earth. When the tree stood free, it fell,
and so did the Sun. Everyone could now see that the Sun was but a large disk of
charcoal covered wood that had been dipped in resin, tied to the top of the
tree, and put to light.
Dionysus was not for a loss of what to do. He had the pine tree cut in half,
a man’s and a half length above the base of the roots, then the top of the trunk
was pushed into the pit and raised and secured in such a way that its roots stood
vertically into the air.
Agave put the bucket of resin with the head of the King on top of the
roots, and someone brought a fire. Dionysus ignited the moss in the pit. Slowly
the moss and wood there began to burn and the fire rose to surround the
uprooted tree. Eventually the flames came to lick the resin and the contents of
the barrel began to burn and boil. The King’s head sunk ever deeper into the pitch
until the wood hoops burnt through, the barrel spilled open, and the fire
dripped as flaming drops into the pit.
It was at that point that Dionysus raised the cry: “The Sun is risen!”
“The Sun is risen!” echoed the Bacchantes.
Someone brought up a donkey cart that held a cask of wine. A wild dance of
maenads began around the fire pit. The dance lasted until the trunk and roots
of the pine had burnt and the bony burnt skull of the King had been retrieved
as a holy relic. Thereupon the pit was dug shut. When the ground was level, and
it was clear to everyone that the Sun had traveled its course and was almost to
set, a new sapling of a pine tree was planted on top of this now invisible
altar.
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