Maenad

[2] 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.

[5] According to Plutarch's Life of Alexander, maenads were called Mimallones and Klodones in Macedon, epithets derived from the feminine art of spinning wool.

[6] Nevertheless, these warlike parthenoi ("virgins") from the hills, associated with a Dionysios pseudanor ("fake male Dionysus"), routed an invading enemy.

[citation needed] German philologist Walter Friedrich Otto writes: The Bacchae of Euripides gives us the most vital picture of the wonderful circumstance in which, as Plato says in the Ion, the god-intoxicated celebrants draw milk and honey from the streams.

Honey trickles down from the thyrsus made of the wood of the ivy, they gird themselves with snakes and give suck to fawns and wolf cubs as if they were infants at the breast.

Fierce bulls fall to the ground, victims to numberless, tearing female hands, and sturdy trees are torn up by the roots with their combined efforts.

[12]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.

[14] 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.

In another myth, when his mother, Semele, is killed, the care of young Dionysus falls into the hands of his sisters, Ino, Agave, and Autonoe, who later are depicted as participating in the rites and taking a leadership role among the other maenads.

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.

[16] 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.

The names of the maenads according to various vase paintings were: Anthe ("Flower"), Bacche, Kale ("Beauty"), Kalyke ("Bud"), Choiros ("Pig"), Choro ("Dance"), Chrysis ("Gold"), Kisso ("Ivy"), Klyto, Komodia ("Comedy"), Dorkis, Doro, Eudia ("Calm"), Eudaimonia ("Happiness"), Euthymia ("Good Cheer"), Erophyllis, Galene ("Calm"), Hebe ("Youth"), lo, Kraipale, Lilaia, Mainas, Makaria ("Blessed"), Molpe ("Song"), Myro, Naia, Nymphaia, Nymphe, Opora ("Harvest"), Oinanthe, Oreias ("Mountain-Nymph"), Paidia, Pannychis ("All-night Revel"), Periklymene ("Renowned"), Phanope, Philomela, Polyerate ("Well-beloved"), Rodo ("Rose"), Sime ("Snub-nose"), Terpsikome, Thaleia, Tragoedia ("Tragedy") and Xantho ("Fair-hair").

[40][41] Eighteen maenads are named in Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis: § 14.219 Stronger than these then came the nurses of Dionysos, troops of Bassarids well skilled in their art: Aigle and Callichore, Eupetale and Ione, laughing Calyce, Bryusa companion of the Seasons, Seilene and Rhode, Ocynoe and Ereutho, Acrete and Methe, rosy Oinanthe with Harpe and silverfoot Lycaste, Stesichore and Prothoe; last of all came ready for the fray Trygie too, that grinning old gammer, heavy with wine.

[42] Maenads have been depicted in art as erratic and frenzied women enveloped in a drunken rapture, as in Euripides' play The Bacchae.

Edwards distinguishes between "nymphs," which appear earlier on Greek pottery, and "maenads," which are identified by their characteristic fawnskin or nebris and often carry snakes in their hands.

Maenad carrying a thyrsus and a leopard with a snake rolled up over her head. Tondo of an ancient Greek Attic white-ground kylix 490–480 BC from Vulci . Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany.
Dancing Maenad Roman copy of Greek original attributed to Kallimachos c. 425 –400 BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dancing maenad. Detail from an ancient Greek Paestum red figure skyphos , made by Python, c. 330 –320 BC, British Museum , London.
Two satyrs and a maenad. Side A from an ancient Greek red figure calyx-krater from Apulia , 380–370 BC. Louvre , Paris.
Dionysus and two maenads as depicted by the Amasis Painter circa 550–530 BC.
The Women of Amphissa by Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Maenad and satyr . Ancient Greek kylix by Makron , 490-480 BC. Staatliche Antikensammlungen München Kat. 94
Maenad of Las Incantadas from the agora of Thessalonica , 2nd century, Louvre .
William-Adolphe Bouguereau , Bacchante , 1894.