Euripides' last and most enigmatic play was written in 407 BC, shortly before the end of the Peloponnesian War and the deafeat of Athens. It is the first time that the god Dionysus, who offers human beings freedom from the shackles of civilisation and rationality, appears as a character in a tragedy. Pentheus, the modern rational man held captive by his own limitations and slef-regard, challenges the god, becoming his ritualised victim before meeting his inevitable doom.