Maenad
"Maenad" translates literally as "raving one." The name came from the Greek verb meaning to rave, to rage, and to be mad. These women were the most significant members of Dionysus' divine company, the thiasus. They wore fawn skins and carried the thyrsus: a long staff wrapped in ivy or vine leaves, tipped with a pine cone. They wove ivy wreaths into their hair and handled snakes.
Walter Friedrich Otto, a German philologist, drew on Euripides' Bacchae to describe what ancient texts attributed to these women in their rites. They struck rocks with the thyrsus and water gushed out. They lowered it and wine bubbled from the earth. Snakes licked the sweat from their cheeks without harm. Fire did not burn them. These were the claims. How much reflected actual practice? How much was myth? And how did a statuette found in one North Macedonian city eventually place a maenad on a national banknote?
Loud music and crashing cymbals opened the Bacchanalia. Revelers called Bacchantes whirled and screamed, drinking wine and driving one another to greater ecstasy. The goal was a state called enthusiasm: the soul temporarily freed from the body to commune with Dionysus. Celebrants aimed to gain a glimpse of what the ancients understood as eternity.
Sparagmos was the ritual's peak. Celebrants tore a bull apart with their bare hands. The bull was Dionysus' own symbol. What followed was omophagia: the eating of the animal's raw flesh. Ancient writers understood this as a form of communion. By consuming the god's symbolic flesh and blood, the participants absorbed his strength and character. They became, for a time, possessed by Dionysus.
King Pentheus of Thebes refused to recognize the divinity of his cousin Dionysus. The god responded by driving Pentheus' mother Agave insane. In her madness, Agave killed her own son and tore his body apart. In The Bacchae, Dionysus himself lured Pentheus into the woods. The maenads tore him to pieces there. Agave tore off Pentheus' head, believing she had taken a lion.
In Argos, Dionysus punished the daughters of King Proetus for refusing his worship. He drove them mad. They killed the infants they were nursing. The daughters of Minyas, king of Orchomenos in Boeotia, also rejected the god. Invisible drums, flutes, and cymbals disturbed their weaving. Ivy appeared on their looms. As punishment, they chose one child from among their number by lot and tore it apart. Dionysus then turned the daughters of Minyas into bats.
Lycurgus, ancient sources recorded, once attacked the Nurses of Dionysus on the holy hills of Nysa. They fled in panic, dropping their sacred implements as he struck them down with an ox-goad. A group of maenads also killed Orpheus when he refused to entertain them while mourning his dead wife. Oppian recorded that Dionysus himself, even as a child, had delighted in tearing young animals apart and bringing them back to life.
Plutarch's Life of Alexander records that in Macedon, maenads went by two unusual epithets: Mimallones and Klodones. Both names derived from the feminine art of spinning wool. In southern Greece the same devotees were known as Bacchae, Bassarides, Thyiades, and Potniades, among other names. Despite the domestic ring of the Macedonian titles, these warlike virgins from the hills were said to have routed an invading enemy. Their traditions linked them to a figure described as a "fake male Dionysus."
When the city of Magnesia wished to establish a maenadic cult in the third century BC, it consulted the Delphic Oracle. The Oracle was precise: go to Thebes, to the race of Cadmean Ino, and fetch maenads from that lineage. Those women would carry both the rites and the proper customs.
Once, during a war in the third century BC, a band of Thyiades lost their way during their nighttime rites. They wandered into Amphissa, a city near Delphi, and collapsed from exhaustion in the marketplace. There they fell into a deep sleep. The women of Amphissa formed a protective ring around the sleeping strangers. When the Thyiades woke, the women of Amphissa arranged safe passage home for them.
On another occasion the Thyiades were snowed in on Parnassos. A rescue party had to be sent out. The cold was severe enough that the rescuers' clothing froze solid. The Agrionia festival, observed most keenly in Boeotia, preserved this drama in ritual form. Each Boeotian city had its own version, but the sequence was the same: Dionysus arrives, the women resist and flee to a mountain, his persecutor is killed, and the god is reconciled.
Kraters, the large vessels used to mix water and wine at Greek gatherings, often carried scenes of maenads in full frenzy. Women ran through forests and tore apart any animal they came across. The imagery appeared on red-figure and black-figure pottery alike, and also on statues and jewelry. Fragments of reliefs showing female worshippers of Dionysus have been found at Corinth.
Mark W. Edwards traced the evolution of maenad imagery in his paper "Representation of Maenads on Archaic Red-Figure Vases." He distinguished "nymphs," which appear on earlier pottery, from "maenads." Maenads were identified by their characteristic fawnskin garment, called a nebris. Edwards found that the more striking contrasts lay between black-figure and red-figure pottery as a whole, rather than between maenads and nymphs specifically.
Anthe, Kale, Kisso, Komodia, and Tragoedia are among the maenad names recorded on ancient vase paintings. The names translate as "Flower," "Beauty," "Ivy," "Comedy," and "Tragedy." The poet Nonnus of Panopolis named eighteen maenads in his Dionysiaca: among them were Aigle, Callichore, Eupetale, and Ione, and rosy Oinanthe. Last in his procession came Trygie, described by Nonnus as "that grinning old gammer, heavy with wine."
Percy Bysshe Shelley placed a maenad in his "Ode to the West Wind." C. S. Lewis brought maenads to Narnia in Prince Caspian, where they appear alongside Bacchus and Silenus as fierce girls who dance and perform somersaults.
Hans Werner Henze composed The Bassarids between 1964 and 1965; it premiered in 1966. W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman wrote the libretto. Among Henze's works for the stage, it is considered his most famous.
In Xena: Warrior Princess and Young Hercules, the bacchae were deliberately conflated with vampires. The first series played up the vampiric angle; the second emphasized the maenadic traits. The HBO series True Blood cast a maenad named Maryann as its primary antagonist in the second season; vines, sexual frenzy, and the head of a bull all appeared. Jim Butcher's "Last Call," from the Dresden Files universe, placed a maenad in Chicago. She buys a large quantity of microbrew beer and casts a spell on it. Her plan is to serve it at a Chicago Bulls game and drive the crowd into a Dionysian frenzy.
In 1932, workers in Tetovo, in what is now North Macedonia, uncovered a small statuette of a maenad. The figure was dated to the sixth century BC. Tetovo adopted the maenad as its civic symbol, placing the image on the city's coat of arms. In 1996, the Macedonian government issued a 5000 denar banknote with the Tetovo Maenad on its reverse.
Up next
Common questions
Who were the maenads in Greek mythology?
Maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of his divine retinue, called the thiasus. The word translates as "raving ones," from the Greek verb meaning to rave and to rage. In mythology they ranged from Dionysus' earliest nurses in Nysa to the women who murdered King Pentheus of Thebes.
What does the name maenad mean?
"Maenad" translates literally as "raving one," derived from the ancient Greek verb maínomai, meaning to rave, to be mad, to rage, and to be angry. In Roman mythology, the equivalent women were known as Bacchae, Bacchantes, and Bassarids, names tied to the Roman god Bacchus.
What rituals did maenads perform during the Bacchanalia?
Bacchanalia centered on maniacal dancing to loud music and crashing cymbals, with participants called Bacchantes drinking wine and driving one another into ecstasy. The rites climaxed in sparagmos, the tearing apart of a bull with bare hands, followed by omophagia, the eating of raw flesh. Ancient writers understood this as sacramental: celebrants absorbed the god's character and became possessed by Dionysus.
What happens to King Pentheus in the maenad myths?
King Pentheus of Thebes refuses to recognize the divinity of his cousin Dionysus, who responds by driving Pentheus' mother Agave insane. In Euripides' play The Bacchae, Dionysus lures Pentheus into the woods, where maenads tear him apart; Agave tears off his head, believing she has taken a lion.
What is the Tetovo Maenad?
The Tetovo Maenad is a small statuette of a maenad dated to the sixth century BC, discovered in Tetovo, North Macedonia, in 1932. Tetovo adopted the figure as its civic symbol, depicted on the city's coat of arms. In 1996, the image appeared on the reverse of a Macedonian 5000 denar banknote.
How are maenads depicted in ancient Greek art?
Maenads appear on red-figure and black-figure Greek pottery, statues, and jewelry, often shown running through forests and tearing animals apart. Fragments of reliefs showing female worshippers of Dionysus have been found at Corinth. Scholar Mark W. Edwards identified maenads on archaic pottery by their characteristic fawnskin garment, called a nebris, which distinguished them from the nymphs depicted on earlier vessels.
All sources
7 references cited across the entry
- 2MaenadesHarry Thurston Peck — 1898
- 3BookGreek Theater Performance: An IntroductionDavid Wiles — Cambridge University Press — 2000
- 4BookThe Art of Greek ComedyKatherine Lever — 1956
- 6BookHistory of Ancient Pottery: Greek, Etruscan, and Roman: Based on the Work of Samuel BirchHenry Beauchamp Walters — 1905