Autonoë (daughter of Cadmus)
In Greek mythology, Autonoë was a Theban princess as the eldest daughter of Cadmus, founder of Thebes in Boeotia, and the goddess Harmonia. She was the wife of Aristaeus and mother of Actaeon and possibly Macris.
Mythology
Euripides' account
In Euripides' play, The Bacchae, she and her sisters were driven into a bacchic frenzy by the god Dionysus when Pentheus, the king of Thebes, refused to allow his worship in the city. When Pentheus came to spy on their revels, Agave, the mother of Pentheus and Autonoë's sister, spotted him in a tree. They tore him to pieces in their Bacchic fury. The murder of Pentheus was brought by Dionysus as retribution for Pentheus's lack of piety for the gods.Actaeon, the son of Autonoë, was eaten by his own hounds as punishment for glimpsing Artemis naked. At last, grief and sadness at the lamentable fate of the house of her father induced Autonoe to quit Thebes to go to Ereneia, a village of the Megarians, where she died.