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]
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. A late, rationalising supposition is that the behavior of Maenads is intended to explain and display the intoxicating effects of alcohol. In some cases, the alcohol causes bizarre behavior in people and cannot be justified or explained by any other reason except that of the intoxication. 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. In Greek vase-painting the frolicking of Maenads and Dionysus is often a theme depicted on Greek kraters, that are 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.
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Maenads in later culture
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—
The Bassarids, 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).
See also
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.
