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

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

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.

Maenads in later culture

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

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.

See also

• Anthesteria
• Gerarai

References

External links

• Background and Images for the Bacchae

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