Cults Influence in Mythology

The religioners of Dionysus were origin eachy all women, and they would crook out the parts of the different women associated with the god. They would be seen by outsiders as being in the throes of a form of rage, or madness, which whitethorn be the origin of our word "mania" but which involves all its various senses at once, that of raging love as easily as raging anger. The women of Dionysus were called mainades, or Maenads:

There were many portrayals of them, wake them in long robes, with heads lightly thrown back, wreathed with ivy, carrying the thyrsus--a long staff of narthex with a pine-cone on its end. Thus attired they ran rather than danced, attach to by flutes, drums, and tambourines (Ker?nyi 260).

These women were said to be driven mad by wine. They were also known as the Bacchantes--the Roman version of Dionysus is Bacchus--and they would zip through the woods and over mountains uttering sharp cries, tearing the antic creatures they encountered to pieces and devouring the bloody shreds of flesh while they sang. the gods of Olympus loved set and beauty in their sacrifices and temples, but the Maenads had no temples and instead idolise in the baselesserness, going

to the wildest mountains, the deepest forests, as

What the play show that had previously been ignored as the state of mind of the pursual of the cult,

Guthrie, W.K.C. The Greeks and Their Gods. Boston: Beacon Press, 1950.

The variety and contradictions inherent in the worship of Dionysus have been noted by scholars who are puzzled by the way the cult developed:

The cult of Dionysus was contrasted with and stood in ambition to the cult of Apollo, and in Apollo followers saw only what was fairish and human and moderate. This is quite different from the freedom and license of the followers of Dionysus. Each of these major strands affected the other in somewhat degree, and the cult of Apollo became more ecstatic and cathartic as a result of exposure to Dionysian rituals, though these changes should not be seen as mere borrowings.

The Dionysian cult was in its shepherd's crook tamed to a degree (Guthrie 200-201).

Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. Mt. Kisco, New York: Moyer Bell, 1960.

Dionysus is seen in a dual role, sometimes man's blessing, and sometimes his ruin. The worst chronicle told about him relates to his mother's city, Thebes, where he had come to establish worship, accompanied by a train of women dancing and singing exultant songs. Pentheus, the fagot of Thebes, unaware that he was Dionysus's cousin, ordered the band arrested, but the wile prophet Teiresias warned that this man was a god and that Pentheus should not income tax return this action. Pentheus doomed himself by not listening to this warning. Dionysus and his followers splinter from prison, and Pentheus chases the maidens into the hills where they have fled. Most of the Theban women had joined them, including Pentheus's mother. All the women rush along Pentheus, in their madness seeing him as a wild beast. They tore him limb from limb, after which Dionysus removed the madness from them so Pentheus's mother could see what she had done (Hamilton 57-59).

Direct evidence of the chronology and world-wide history of the spread of Dionysian religion throu
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