Gold tablets from Pelinna: 
One group is concerned with purification
and achievement of divine status and 
mentions Persephone. The other
group describes the landscape of the  
underworld: a spring, a white
cypress, cold water from a pool of 
Memory, and a special road
reserved for those who are mystai 
and bakkhoi.  


Now that you have died and
  now that you have come into being
  o thrice happy one, on this same day,
Tell Persephone that Bakkhios himself
  has set you free.
Bull, you jumped into milk,
...
Ram, you fell into milk.
You have wine as your fortunate honor.
And below the earth, there are 
   ready for you the same prizes
   as for the other blessed ones.


Tablets were intended for burial with 
dead initiates. Individuals
who had undergone initiation and had 
been released by the Bacchic
one, Dionysus. 

Earliest evidence comes from Olbia, 
where an inscribed bronze
mirror records inititiation of two people; 
also from Olbia, a group
of three inscribed bone tablets, 
one of which reads:
"life, death, life, truth ....Dionysoi,
 Orphikoi."

Tablets taken within context of tradition of 
Bacchic mysteries in
classical period, show that by the 
fifth century BCE rituals
associated with Dionysus were concerned 
with themes of life and
death.




Dionysus was a god whose myths about 
a double birth, death and
rebirth, and a journey to the underworld 
made him a figure
attractive to those who wished to find 
a way to escape the
anxieties of death. 

The dead of the inscriptions reach only 
the same symbolic level
reached by the dead of the sarcophagi. 
They can dance forever at a
great Bacchic party, especially if they 
die young enough to have
the required energy, but there is no promise 
of a real improvement
in status.



Wine: Way in which Dionysus was 
experienced, playfully
theomorphized into the substance he 
invented and the sacrifice most
often offered to him, in a form literally 
internalized and thus in
turn impersonated.  Substance stylized 
in ritual as the blood of the
god, yet the consumption did not imply 
that the god or hero was
ritually sacrificed. 

Mixtures of Masks: Maenads as Tragic Models

Polarities in myth (divine, mortal, 
male,female, etc.) more
frequently and spectacularly blurred 
by Dionysus and his circle
than by any other divinity.

Role of masks: all truth lies upon 
the masks and nowhere else, but
like the mask, the truth is a double one; 
it blurs the principle of
identity. 
One kind of mask is evoked by words and 
actions which engender a
vision for spectators. This imaginary "mask" 
doubles the actual
character whonot only behaves like a maenad 
(or like Dionysos) but
who appears before the eyes of the 
spectators as actually
transformed into a Bacchic figure. 


Maenads often associated with violent 
death (Agave killed Pentheus,
maenads killed Orpheus)


  Maenads as tragic models occur particularly 
in three contexts:
the killing of kin; war, and love

The cohesive force of Dionysus is most 
obvious in the satyr play
In tragedy the passionate significance of 
the Dionysiac power is
exemplified by the maenad

Antecedents:
   Andromache in Iliad 22. 460f): rushes 
through the palace "like
a maenad, with her heart in palpittions."
   Demeter (Hymn, 386) at moment Persephone
 appears, Demeter
"rushes upon her like a maenad down 
the mountain shadowy with its
forest"
     Both share rushing motion and violent emotion
          have common connection to death and love
          turn of events:
               hope to despair
               grief into delight

    Antigone  in Euripides' Phoenician Women
       Appears with bodies of slaughtered 
mother and brothers
"Not covering the delicacy of my 
grapelike cheek,
nor because of my maidenhood feeling shame
at the crimson under my eyes, the redness
of my face, I am carried on, a maenad of
the dead, throwing the covering from my hair,
relinquishing the saffron luxury of the garment,
led, sighing much, by the dead"

Destruction of household; 
lamentation for death of nearest and
dearest.

Clytemnestra, Deianira, Phaedra: 
cases of displaced maenadism
   Maenadic state: woman's desire for 
union with a beloved; if
desire had been realized, she would not 
have had to commit 
murder or die a violent death; 
in other words, would have
been no tragedy
  e.g. Chorus in Trachinian Women (216ff:)

I am raised up and I will not reject
the flute, o ruler of my mind.
Look, he stirs he up,
euhoi,
the ivy now
whirls me round in Bacchic contest

Chorus is transformed into a thiasos 
possessesd by Dionysos

Thebes and Athens define the two endpoints 
of a theatrical spectrum
that respectively define a negative and a 
positive pole of
Dionysiac action.

Satyrs


Women followers Maenads

Men==replaced by satyrs, mixture of 
animal and human traits

What kind of wildness or alterity is 
defined by image of satyrs?

What is function of this theme in Greek myth?
Satyrs constitute a race of their own 
which from first evidence is

judged negatively"the race of lazy, 
good-for-nothing Satyrs"
(Hesiod. Cat.fr. 123)

Boundary between humans and beasts becomes blurred.

Centaurs, on other hand, make up 
a real society of their own,
attached to neither a god nor a master, 
situated outside human
world and civilization. 

Satyrs do not form an isolated society. 
They accompany Dionysus,
who is present among humans with wine, 
dance, and music, surrounded
by maenads. Most notable for their raunchiness.

Capacity for astonishement.
   When faced with fire brought by 
Prometheus, discover to their
cost its chief property: it burns


Pergamene Cult of Dionysus
1. closer interrelation with theater 
    and "artisans"
2. term boukoli


   At Amastrisin Pontus a certain Aemilianus 
has "led the kommos
for Dionysys at the trieteric festival 
in a mystic way"; at the
same time he was an athlete and won 
victories "with a satyr dance"
at Cyzicus and Pergamum.

It is the dancer/actor who brings the divine alone. 

Boukoloi
    designates main body of Bacchic initiates (mustai)
     term connected with myth of 
      Telephus, who grew up in
     "bucolic" surroundings
    with the sacred marriage of Dionysus 
          at the boukoleion of
Athens
    actual cowherds in Euripides' Bacchae
    with representations of Dionysos with bull horns

The  communal Dionysia on the one 
hand and the mountain pilgrimage
of the women on the other each emphasizes 
an aspect of human
sexuality, the phallic and 
the female, and the two are brought
together in the imagery of the 
satyrs and maenads. 

In between is the nearly a-sexual figure of Dionysus

Compare epicene style of modern 
pop culture
Male leader of pop group, who for 
all the violence of music,
gestures, and words is neither 
traditionally masculine nor yet
effeminate
May be a threat to established order 
but not to the adoring young