The gate of the year

Painting on the interior of an Attic cup (490 B.C.), now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich, Germany.
The picture shows a Maenad, follower of the Dionysus cult, holding in one hand a thyrsus and a little leopard in the other. Her clothing recalls that described by Euripides for the adepts to the cult of the god of intoxication: dressed with deer and other animal skins, wreathed with ivy, with snakes as belts, holding in their hands fawns, wolf cubs and sometimes suckling them (Bacchae, v. 695 ff.). The Dionysian rituals were celebrated overnight, outside the urban settlements, on mountains and in the woods. Participation to these cults was mainly female and the term with which the followers of the god were called, Maenads, derives from manía, the “madness” or inspired, ecstatic frenzy produced by the relationship with the god. While the male worshipers reached the ecstasy through the consumption of wine, the women did not need the beverage to enter in the condition of ecstatic frenzy (which the Greeks called enthousiasmós, meaning “to be inspired, possessed by a god”). For the Bacchants (another term with which were designated the worshipers of the god, who was called Bacchus in some region of Asia Minor), the communion with Dionysus was realized through music, dance, and a particular form of sacrifice, which implied the dismemberment of the victim (sparagmós) and the consumption of the its raw meat (omophagía) (Burkert 2005). The slain and devoured animals were in some way regarded as epiphanies or manifestations of Dionysus himself, a deity characterized by his capacity to transform himself into various animal and human shapes.

[Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mainade_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen _2645.jpg]




Ritual Folly

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Painting on the interior of an Attic cup (490 B.C.), now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich, Germany. The picture shows a Maenad, follower of the Dionysus cult, holding in one hand a thyrsus and a little leopard in the other. Her clothing recalls that described by Euripides for the adepts to the cult of the god of intoxication: dressed with deer and other animal skins, wreathed with ivy, with snakes as belts, holding in their hands fawns, wolf cubs and sometimes suckling them (Bacchae, v. 695 ff.). The Dionysian rituals were celebrated overnight, outside the urban settlements, on mountains and in the woods. Participation to these cults was mainly female and the term with which the followers of the god were called, Maenads, derives from manía, the “madness” or inspired, ecstatic frenzy produced by the relationship with the god. While the male worshipers reached the ecstasy through the consumption of wine, the women did not need the beverage to enter in the condition of ecstatic frenzy (which the Greeks called enthousiasmós, meaning “to be inspired, possessed by a god”). For the Bacchants (another term with which were designated the worshipers of the god, who was called Bacchus in some region of Asia Minor), the communion with Dionysus was realized through music, dance, and a particular form of sacrifice, which implied the dismemberment of the victim (sparagmós) and the consumption of the its raw meat (omophagía) (Burkert 2005). The slain and devoured animals were in some way regarded as epiphanies or manifestations of Dionysus himself, a deity characterized by his capacity to transform himself into various animal and human shapes. [Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mainade_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen _2645.jpg]