In Greek mythology, maenads (; ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of his retinue, the thiasus. Their name, which comes from (, "to rave, to be mad; to rage, to be angry"), literally translates as 'raving ones'. Maenads were known as Bassarids, Bacchae , or Bacchantes in Roman mythology after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a bassaris or fox skin.
Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by Dionysus into a state of ecstatic frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped with a pine cone. They would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads, and often handle or wear snakes.Abel, Ernest L. (2006). Intoxication in Mythology: A Worldwide Dictionary of Gods, Rites, Intoxicants, and Place. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland.
Maenads according to writers
These women were mythologized as the "mad women" who were nurses of Dionysus in Nysa. Lycurgus "chased the Nurses of the frenzied Dionysus through the holy hills of Nysa, and the sacred implements dropped to the ground from the hands of one and all, as the murderous Lycurgus struck them down with his ox-goad".Homer, Iliad 6.130 ff., in E.V. Rieu's translation. They went into the mountains at night and practised strange rites.
According to Plutarch's Life of Alexander, maenads were called and in Macedon, epithets derived from the feminine art of spinning wool.According to Grace Harriet Macurdy, "Klodones, Mimallones and Dionysus Pseudanor", The Classical Review 27.6 (September 1913), pp. 191–192, and Troy and Paeonia. With Glimpses of Ancient Balkan History and Religion, 1925, p. 166. Nevertheless, these warlike ("virgins") from the hills, associated with a ("fake male Dionysus"), routed an invading enemy.According to the second-century CE Macedonian military writer Polyaenus, IV.1; Polyaenus gives a fanciful etymology. In southern Greece they were described as , , , , means "lady" or "mistress", See Potnia. and other epithets.Harrison, Jane Ellen (1922). "The Maenads". Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3rd ed. pp. 388–400.
The term maenad has come to be associated with a wide variety of women, supernatural, mythological, and historical,Jane Ellen Harrison remarked of the 19th-century (male) classicists, "so persistent is the dislike to commonplace fact, that we are repeatedly told that the maenads are purely mythological creations and that the maenad orgies never appear historically in Greece." Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3rd ed. (1922). p. 388 associated with the god Dionysus and his worship.
In Euripides' play The Bacchae, maenads of Thebes murder King Pentheus after he bans the worship of Dionysus. Dionysus, Pentheus' cousin, himself lures Pentheus to the woods, where the maenads tear him apart. His corpse is mutilated by his own mother, Agave, who tears off his head, believing it to be that of a lion. A group of maenads also kill Orpheus,Apollodorus, 1.3.2. "Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been torn in pieces by the maenads he is buried in Pieria." when he refuses to entertain them while mourning his dead wife.
In ceramic art, the frolicking of Maenads and Dionysus is often a theme depicted on kraters, used to mix water and wine. These scenes show the maenads in their frenzy running in the forests, often tearing to pieces any animal they happen to come across.
German philologist Walter Friedrich Otto writes:
Cult worship Bacchanalia
Cultist rites associated with the worship of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus (or Bacchus in Roman mythology), were characterized by maniacal dancing to the sound of loud music and crashing cymbals, in which the revelers, called Bacchantes, whirled, screamed, became drunk and incited one another to greater and greater ecstasy. The goal was to achieve a state of enthusiasm in which the celebrants' souls were temporarily freed from their earthly bodies and were able to commune with Bacchus/Dionysus and gain a glimpse of and a preparation for what they would someday experience in eternity. The rite climaxed in a performance of frenzied feats of strength and madness, such as uprooting trees, tearing a bull (the symbol of Dionysus) apart with their bare hands, an act called sparagmos, and eating its flesh raw, an act called omophagia. This latter rite was a sacrament akin to communion in which the participants assumed the strength and character of the god by symbolically eating the raw flesh and drinking the blood of his symbolic incarnation. Having symbolically eaten his body and drunk his blood, the celebrants became possessed by Dionysus.
Priestesses of Dionysus Maenads are found in later references as priestesses of the Dionysian cult. In the third century BC, when the city of Magnesia wanted to establish a maenadic cult in honour of Dionysus, the Delphic Oracle bade them, "Go to the holy plain of Thebes to fetch maenads from the race of Cadmean Ino. They will bring you maenadic rites and noble customs and will establish troops of Bacchus in your city.""The Establishment of Dionysiac Rites in Magnesia", in Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World, Ross Shepard Kraemer, ed., Oxford (2004).
Myths Dionysus came to his birthplace, Thebes, where neither Pentheus, his cousin who was now king, nor Pentheus' mother Agave, Dionysus' aunt (Semele's sister) acknowledged his divinity. Dionysus punished Agave by driving her insane, and in that condition, she killed her son and tore him to pieces. From Thebes, Dionysus went to Argos where all the women except the daughters of King Proetus joined in his worship. Dionysus punished them by driving them mad, and they killed the infants who were nursing at their breasts. He did the same to the daughters of Minyas, King of Orchomenos in Boetia, and then turned them into bats.
According to Oppian, Dionysus delighted, as a child, in tearing kids into pieces and bringing them back to life again. He is characterized as "the raging one" and "the mad one" and the nature of the maenads, from which they get their name, is, therefore, his nature.Otto, Walter F. (1965). Dionysus: Myth and Cult. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. p.135
Once during a war in the middle of the third century BC, the entranced Thyiades (maenads) lost their way and arrived in Amphissa, a city near Delphi. There they sank down exhausted in the market place and were overpowered by a deep sleep. The women of Amphissa formed a protective ring around them and when they awoke arranged for them to return home unmolested.
On another occasion, the Thyiades were snowed in on Parnassos and it was necessary to send a rescue party. The clothing of the men who took part in the rescue froze solid. It is unlikely that the Thyiades, even if they wore deerskins over their shoulders, were ever dressed more warmly than the men.Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life; translated from the German by Ralph Manheim; Bollingen Series LXV 2; Princeton University Press 1976. pg. 220.
Nurses and nymphs
In the realm of the supernatural is the category of nymphs who nurse and care for the young Dionysus, and continue in his worship as he comes of age. The god Hermes is said to have carried the young Dionysus to the nymphs of Nysa.
In another myth, when his mother, Semele, is killed, the care of young Dionysus falls into the hands of his sisters, Ino, Agave, and Autonoë, who later are depicted as participating in the rites and taking a leadership role among the other maenads.
Resisters to the new religion
The term "maenads" also refers to women in mythology who resisted the worship of Dionysus and were driven mad by him, forced against their will to participate in often horrific rites. The doubting women of Thebes, the prototypical maenads or "mad women", left their homes to live in the wilds of the nearby mountain Cithaeron. When they discovered Pentheus spying on them, dressed as a maenad, they tore him limb from limb.Euripides, The Bacchae
This also occurs with the three daughters of Minyas, who reject Dionysus and remain true to their household duties, becoming startled by invisible drums, flutes, cymbals, and seeing ivy hanging down from their looms. As punishment for their resistance, they become madwomen, choosing the child of one of their number by lot and tearing it to pieces, as the women on the mountain did to young animals. A similar story with a tragic end is told of the daughters of Proetus.
Voluntary revelers
Not all women were inclined to resist the call of Dionysus, however. Maenads, possessed by the spirit of Dionysus, traveled with him from Thrace to mainland Greece in his quest for the recognition of his divinity. Dionysus was said to have danced down from Parnassos accompanied by Delphic virgins, and it is known that even as young girls the women in Boeotia practiced not only the closed rites but also the bearing of the thyrsus and the dances.
A possible foundation myth is the ancient festival called Agrionia. According to Greek authors like Plutarch, female followers of Dionysios went in search of him and when they could not find him prepared a feast. As Plutarch records this festival, a priest would chase a group of virgins down with a sword. These women were supposed to be descendants of the women who sacrificed their son in the name of Dionysios. The priest would catch one of the women and execute her. This human sacrifice was later omitted from the festival. Eventually the women would be freed from the intense ecstatic experience of the festival and return to their usual lives. The Agrionia was celebrated in several Greek cities, but especially in Boeotia. Each Boeotian city had its own distinct foundation myth for it, but the pattern was much the same: the arrival of Dionysus, resistance to him, flight of the women to a mountain, the killing of Dionysus' persecutor, and eventual reconciliation with the god.
List of maenads
Alcimacheia – daughter of Harpalion and a maenad from Lemnos who followed Dionysus in his Indian campaign. She was killed during the Indian war by Morrheus, an Indian general son of Didnasos.Nonnus, 27.330 & 30.192–208 Bromie – one of the maenads who tried to kill Lycurgus.Nonnus, 21.88 Calybe – another follower of Dionysus in the Indian War.Nonnus, 29.270 Chalcomede – when she followed Dionysus in his Indian campaign, the Indian general Morrheus, hit by one of Eros' arrows, fell in love with her, and when he was about to seize her a serpent darted out of her bosom to protect her.Nonnus, 33.17, 33.190 ff. & 35.204 ff. Charopeia – leader of the Bacchic dance. She followed Dionysus in his Indian campaign.Nonnus, 36.256 Chorea – followed Dionysus in his expedition against Argos. Perseus is said to have put all the women to the sword, including Chorea, but since she had a higher rank she was not buried in a common grave, but had a tomb apart, which some consider a great honor, although nothing tangible or of any benefit for the dead man or woman appears to come from it. And the memory is kept of many who do not have a tomb.Pausanias, 2.20.4 Cisseis – one of the maenads who tried to kill Lycurgus.Nonnus, 21.89 Clite – one of the maenads who tried to kill Lycurgus.Nonnus, 21.77 Codone – a follower of Dionysus in the Indian war. She was killed by Morrheus.Nonnus, 30.213