Maenads- Greek GroupCollective"Mad Women"

Dionysus's Mad Women

The Maenads were the ecstatic followers of Dionysus. They danced in fawnskins and ivy wreaths alongside Silenus, the god's aged tutor, and Pan, whose pipes joined their mountain revels. In the grip of the god they seized wild animals and tore them apart with bare hands.

On Mount Nysa in Thrace, Lycurgus attacked Dionysus's nurses and drove them into the sea with an ox-goad. Zeus struck him blind, and he died soon after. At Delphi, women called Thyiades danced on Mount Parnassus every other winter in the god's honor — Pausanias records a night when they wandered into a snowstorm and collapsed from exhaustion in the marketplace of Amphissa.

The Bacchae of Thebes

When Dionysus came to Thebes to establish his cult, King Pentheus refused to acknowledge him as a god. Dionysus drove the women of the city to Mount Cithaeron as Maenads — Pentheus's own mother Agave among them. On the mountain they nursed fawns at their breasts and struck rocks until water and milk poured out. Armed men sent to capture them were routed.

Pentheus disguised himself to spy on their rites. The Maenads spotted him in a pine tree. Agave, thinking her son was a mountain lion, led the others in tearing him limb from limb. She brought his head back to Thebes on her thyrsus, still convinced she carried a trophy from the hunt.

The Death of Orpheus

After Orpheus lost Eurydice a second time, he turned away from the company of women. In Thrace the Maenads hurled stones and branches at him, but his music charmed even the missiles, and they fell harmless at his feet. The Maenads screamed louder until their noise drowned out the lyre. When the music stopped reaching, the stones struck true, and they tore him apart. His severed head floated down the river Hebrus, still singing, and washed ashore on the island of Lesbos.