Crossword clues for maenad
maenad
- Dionysus devotee
- Graduate stops Mad Hatter getting drink?
- Ms West, wild and frenzied woman
- Extremely annoyed after soldier captures the heart of confessed bacchante
- European, a male standing up drunken woman
- Woman who’s all-round crazy?
- Female follower of Bacchus
- Bacchante's crazy about another woman
- Participant in Dionysian orgies
- Dionysus follower
- Bacchanalia dancer
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Maenad \M[ae]"nad\, n. [L. Maenas, -adis, Gr. ?, ?, fr. ? to rave.]
A Bacchante; a priestess or votary of Bacchus.
A frantic or frenzied woman.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"Bacchante," 1570s, from Greek mainas (genitive mainados) "priestess of Bacchus," literally "madwoman," from stem of mainesthai "to rage, go mad" (see mania).
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context Greek mythology English) A female follower of Dionysus, associated with intense reveling. 2 An excessively wild or emotional woman.
WordNet
n. an unnaturally frenzied or distraught woman
(Greek mythology) a woman participant in the orgiastic rites of Dionysus
Wikipedia
In Greek mythology, maenads (; ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones." Maenads were known as Bassarids, Bacchae or Bacchantes in Roman mythology after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a bassaris or fox-skin.
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.
These women were mythologized as the 'mad women' who were nurses of Dionysus in Nysa: Lycurgus "chased the Nurses of the frenzied Dionysus through the holy hills of Nysa, and the sacred implements dropped to the ground from the hands of one and all, as the murderous Lycurgus struck them down with his ox-goad." They went into the mountains at night and practiced strange rites.
According to Plutarch's Life of Alexander, maenads were called Mimallones and Klodones In Macedon, epithets derived from the feminine art of spinning wool. Nevertheless, these warlike parthenoi ("virgins") from the hills, associated with a Dionysios pseudanor "fake male Dionysus", routed an invading enemy. In southern Greece they were described with Bacchae, Bassarides, Thyiades, Potniades and other epithets.
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.
In Euripides' play The Bacchae, maenads of Thebes murder King Pentheus after he bans the worship of Dionysus. Dionysus, Pentheus' cousin, himself lures Pentheus to the woods, where the maenads tear him apart. His corpse is mutilated by his own mother, Agave, who tears off his head, believing it to be that of a lion. A group of maenads also kill Orpheus.
In ceramic art, the frolicking of Maenads and Dionysus is often a theme depicted on kraters, used to mix water and wine. These scenes show the maenads in their frenzy running in the forests, often tearing to pieces any animal they happen to come across.
German philologist Walter Friedrich Otto writes:
Usage examples of "maenad".
On thy form from every side Like a Maenad, round the cup Which Agave lifted up In the weird Cadmaean forest.
The shadow of the leaves, dappling her, gave her frock the strange look of a leopard skin, a Bacchic image, a maenad.
Dead leaves stream through the hurrying air And the maenads dance with flying hair.
The dead leaves sigh on the troubled air, Far off the maenads bind their hair.
Only, a song is in your ears, A song you have heard, you think, in dream: The song which only the demon hears, In the dark forest where maenads scream .
Sovaz said nothing to these maenads, but the symbol was not lost on her.
Ermaulde, becoming aware of the activity, turned, and the mimes capered away, to dance for five seconds with furious energy, like maenads, before they once again flung themselves down beside Ivanello.
Bathing its burnished depths, will change to gold Its last bright drop let thirsty Maenads drain, Its fragrance will remain.
Quite as much as the dance of the Maenads or the frenzy of the Corybantes, love-making carries us into a different world, where at other times we are forbidden to enter, and where we cease to belong as soon as the ardor is spent, or the ecstasy subsides.
He realized that these must be maenads, the crazed followers of Dionysus, and behind them came Dionysus himself.
They seized me at last and tore me apart, as my maenads will do for Pentheus.
In whose brain was it that the legend grew Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue, Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard, Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!
Out in a bloody rain to feed our fields Amid the Maenad roar of nitre's song And sulfur's cantus firmus.
She flattered herself that no one knew, and yet one day she emerged from a maenad dance to the sound of distant Pan pipes, her disheveled hair hot and sweaty on her bare neck - and then with the shock and jerk, feeling the pins taut in the French knot at her neck, her hands just touching the keys of her office Selectric, and the girl at the next desk staring.
A pile of Cassandras, Harlequins and Columbines, jolted along high above the passersby, all possible grotesquenesses, from the Turk to the savage, Hercules supporting Marquises, fishwives who would have made Rabelais stop up his ears just as the Maenads made Aristophanes drop his eyes, tow wigs, pink tights, dandified hats, spectacles of a grimacer, three-cornered hats of Janot tormented with a butterfly, shouts directed at pedestrians, fists on hips, bold attitudes, bare shoulders, immodesty unchained.