The Maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue.
Description[]
The term maenad has come to be associated with a wide variety of women, supernatural, mythological, and historical, associated with the god Dionysus and his worship. The Oceanid Nymphs of Mount Nysa or Nysiads who were entrusted by Zeus to raise Dionysus with the assistance of the Satyr God, Seilenos, which they fulfilled, went on to become the first group of Maenads, joining the company of a grown Dionysus. Maenads even include women in mythology who resisted the worship of Dionysus and were driven mad by him and forced against their will to participate in often horrific rites.
Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by Dionysus into a state of ecstatic frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped with a pine cone. They would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads or wear a bull helmet in honor of their god, and often handle or wear snakes.
Myths[]
According to the play, The Bacchae, Dionysus came to his birthplace, Thebes, where neither Pentheus, his cousin who was now king, nor Pentheus' mother Agave, Dionysus' aunt (Semele's sister) acknowledged his divinity. Dionysus punished Agave by driving her insane, and in that condition, she killed her son and tore him to pieces. From Thebes, Dionysus went to Argos where all the women except the daughters of King Proetus joined in his worship. Dionysus punished them by driving them mad, and they killed the infants who were nursing at their breasts. He did the same to the daughters of Minyas, King of Orchomenos in Boetia, and then turned them into bats.
According to Opian, Dionysus delighted, as a child, in tearing kids into pieces and bringing them back to life again. He is characterized as "the raging one" and "the mad one" and the nature of the maenads, from which they get their name, is, therefore, his nature.
Once during a war in the middle of the third century BC, the entranced Thyiades (maenads) lost their way and arrived in Amphissa, a city near Delphi. There they sank down exhausted in the market place and were overpowered by a deep sleep. The women of Amphissa formed a protective ring around them and when they awoke arranged for them to return home unmolested.
On another occasion, the Thyiades (woman celebrants of the Orgies of the god Dionysos) were snowed in on Parnassos and it was necessary to send a rescue party. The clothing of the men who took part in the rescue froze solid. It is unlikely that the Thyiades, even if they wore deerskins over their shoulders, were ever dressed more warmly than the men..
A group of maenads also kill Orpheus, when he refuses to entertain them while mourning his dead wife.
List of Maenads[]
Thyia-Naiad Nymph, lover of Apollo and the mother of their son, Delphos.