Maenad

"Bacchae" redirects here. For the tragedy by Euripides, see The Bacchae.

"Bassarids" redirects here. For the opera by Hans Werner Henze, see The Bassarids.

A dancing maenad. This is a Greek statuette from the 3rd century BC. It was made in Taranto

In Greek mythology, Maenads (Greek: Μαινάδες) were the inspired and frenzied female worshippers of Dionysus, the Greek god of mystery, wine, and intoxication, the Roman god Bacchus. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". They were known as wild, insane women who could not be reasoned with. The mysteries of Dionysus inspired the women to ecstatic frenzy; they indulged in copious amounts of violence, bloodletting, sexual activity, self-intoxication, and mutilation. They were usually pictured as crowned with vine leaves, clothed in fawnskins and carrying the thyrsus, and dancing with wild abandon. The Maenads are the most significant members of the Thiasus, the retinue of Dionysus.

In Macedon, according to Plutarch's Life of Alexander, they were called Mimallones and Klodones. In Greece they were described as Bacchae, Bassarides, Thyiades, Potniades and other epithets.^[1]

The Maenads were entranced women, wandering under the orgiastic spell of Dionysus through the forests and hills.^[2] The maddened Hellenic women of real life were mythologized as the mad women who were nurses of Dionysus in Nysa: "he that on a time drave down over the sacred mount of Nysa the nursing mothers of mad Dionysus; and they all let fall to the ground their wands." (Iliad, VI.130ff). They went into the mountains at night and practised strange rites.^[3]

Maenad carrying a hind, fragment of an Attic red-figure cup, ca. 480 BC, Louvre

The Maenads were also known as Bassarids (or Bacchae or Bacchantes) in Roman mythology, after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a fox-skin, a bassaris.

In Euripides' play The Bacchae, Theban Maenads murdered King Pentheus after he banned the worship of Dionysus. Dionysus, Pentheus' cousin, himself lured Pentheus to the woods, where the Maenads tore him apart. His corpse was mutilated by his own mother, Agave, who tore off his head, believing it to be that of a lion.

A group of Maenads also killed Orpheus.^[4]

In Greek vase-painting, the frolicking of Maenads and Dionysus is often a theme depicted on Greek 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.

See also Icarius, Butes, Dryas, and Minyades for other examples of Dionysus inflicting insanity upon women as a curse.

1 Maenads in later culture
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

Maenads in later culture

A mild and tamed Bacchante for a late 19th-century audience (William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1894)

A Maenad appears in the second stanza of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind (1819):

Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread

On the blue surface of their airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height—

In Algernon Charles Swinburne's quasi-autobiographical poem "Thalassius" (1880), a stunning epic simile of 33 lines (337-70) compares the temptation of the poet to a riot of Bassarides.

The Bassarids (composed 1964-65, premiere 1966), to a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is the most famous opera composed by Hans Werner Henze.

The maenads correspond to the Shikome in the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi (which has a correspondence with the Orpheus myth).

Maenads, along with Bacchus, and Silenus appear in C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian. They along with Bacchus, are portrayed as wild, rambunctious young children who dance around and perform somersaults.

Telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse is attacked by a homicidal maenad named Callisto in "Living Dead in Dallas," the second book of Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mystery Series.

References

^ Harrison, "The Maenads", Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3rd ed. (1922:388-400) p. 388.
^ Wiles, David (2000). Greek Theatre Performance: An Introduction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
^ Lever, Katherine (1956). The Art of Greek Comedy.
^ Apollodorus (Pseudo Apollodorus), Library and Epitome, 1.3.2. "Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been torn in pieces by the Maenads he is buried in Pieria."