Thyrsus

The fabulous history of Bacchus relates that he converted the thyrsi carried by himself and his followers into dangerous weapons, by concealing an iron point in the head of leaves.

The story surrounds the murder of the young king and indoctrination of all of the Theban women into Dionysus's cult, with the thyrsus serving as a badge of sorts for members.

To raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond/ In fawnskin habits, and put my thyrsus in their hands–/ The weapon wreathed with ivy-shoots... Euripides also writes, "There's a brute wildness in the fennel-wands—Reverence it well.

"[11]Plato describes the hedonistic connotation of the thyrsus, and thereby Dionysus, in his philosophical Phaedo: I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods.

[12]In Part II of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles tries to catch a Lamia, only to find out that she is an illusion and instead holds a thyrsus.