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In Greek mythology, maenads (/ ˈ m iː n æ d z /; Ancient Greek: μαινάδες) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of his retinue, the thiasus. Their name, which comes from μαίνομαι ( maínomai , “to rave, to be mad; to rage, to be angry”), [ 1 ] literally translates as 'raving ones'.
Articles relating to the Maenads, the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue.Their name literally translates as "raving ones".
The Maenads were female followers of Dionysus. Out of the eight reliefs, the ecstatic woman alone is depicted in full profile. Her hair is richly tressed and fall in locks on her back and shoulders; her head is slightly lifted and bent backwards to show how she is possessed of bacchic madness.
Dionysus arrives in his true, divine form, banishes Agave and her sisters, and transforms Cadmus and his wife Harmonia into serpents. Only Tiresias is spared. [255] Lycurgus trapped by the vine, on the Lycurgus Cup. In the Iliad, when King Lycurgus of Thrace heard that Dionysus was in his kingdom, he imprisoned Dionysus' followers, the Maenads.
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One well-known manifestation of divine madness in ancient Greece was in the cult of the Maenads, the female followers of Dionysus. However, little is known about their rituals; the famous depiction of the cult in Euripides' play The Bacchae cannot be considered historically accurate. [13]
In Euripides' play The Bacchae, Theban Maenads murdered King Pentheus after he banned the worship of Dionysus because he denied Dionysus' divinity.Dionysus, Pentheus' cousin, lured Pentheus to the woods—Pentheus wanted to see what he thought were the sexual activities of the women—where the Maenads tore him apart and his corpse was mutilated by his own mother, Agave.
When Staphylus suddenly dies the next morning after a banquet in honor of Dionysus, the god makes Methe's name forever commemorated by naming the state of drunkenness after her, as well as makes Staphylus' and Botrys' names refer to grapes. [4] Later, Methe is mentioned as one of the followers of Dionysus on his Indian campaign. [5]