By way of introduction the following words of Farnell[194] will be found instructive; he is dealing with the earliest period of Greek religion, and in writing about the worship of Dionysos, says he was
vaguer in outline (than Apollo or Athene), a changeful power conceived more in accordance with daimonistic, later with pantheistic, thought, incarnate in many animal-shapes, and operative in the life-processes of the vegetative world; and an atmosphere of Nature-magic accompanied him;
then he goes on to say that
the central motives of this oldest form of ritual were the birth and death of the god—a conception pregnant of ideas that were to develop in the religious future, but alien to the ordinary Hellenic theology, though probably not unfamiliar to the earlier Cretan-Mycenaean creed. But the death of this god was partly a fact of ritual; he was torn to pieces by his mad worshippers and devoured sacramentally, for the bull or the goat or the boy that they rent and devoured was supposed to be his temporary incarnation, so that by this savage, and at times cannibalistic, communion they were filled with his blood and his spirit, and acquired miraculous powers. By such an act, and—we may suppose—by the occasional use of intoxicants and other nervous stimulants, the psychic condition that this worship evoked was frenzy and ecstasy, which might show itself in a wild outburst of mental and physical force, and which wrought up the enthusiastic feeling of self-abandonment, whereby the worshipper escaped the limits of his own nature and achieved a temporary sense of identity with the god, which might avail him even after death. This privilege of ecstasy might be used for the practical purposes of vegetation-magic, yet was desired and proclaimed for its own sake as a more intense mood of life. This religion preached no morality, and could ill adapt itself to civic life; its ideal was supernormal psychic energy.
It is only one aspect of the ritual of this religion with which we are now concerned, and which is to be illustrated by the examples given, namely, the ecstatic dance which played such an important part in it. Therefore we naturally think of the mythic Maenads[195], and more especially of their historical counterpart, the Thyiads, who are much the same as the female Bacchantes. According to the myth concerning the origin of the Thyiads, they were so called because the first priestess of Dionysos was named Thyia, and she performed orgiastic dances in his honour; hence all women who danced, or “went mad,” in honour of Dionysos were called Thyiads after her. The Maenads are depicted on many Greek vases and bas-reliefs, so that we can form a good idea of the kind of dances they were supposed to perform; and these were, of course, the actual form of the dances executed by the Thyiads. Thus, for example, on a vase in the Naples Museum four Maenads are represented dancing; two, with head thrown back, carry the thyrsus, a staff with vine-leaves, at the top of which was a pine-cone. One of them has also a torch; two others, while dancing, play, one a tambourine, the other a pipe[196]. Or again, on a cup in the Athens National Museum a Maenad is represented playing a tambourine, or timbrel, and dancing in wild fashion[197]. Another example is the dancing, accompanied by instrumental music, which is portrayed on the beautiful cylix of Hieron, “perhaps the most exquisite that ceramography has left us[198]”; the movements of the maidens are superbly executed. But instances of this kind could be greatly multiplied; they all exhibit one or other phase of orgiastic dance, “the same mad revelry, the utter exhaustion and prostrate sleep[199]”; and they represent the kind of dancing which historically was performed by the Thyiads. “Maenad,” as Miss Harrison says, “is the Mad One, Thyiad the Rushing Distraught One, or something of the kind ... Mad One, Distraught One, Pure One, are simply ways of describing a woman under the influence of a god, of Dionysos[200]”; and, of course, this madness could be caused by any other orgiastic divinity.
Those who took part in these dances are described as “raving and possessed”; their over-wrought state caused them to see visions[201]; the god was believed to be present, though invisible; and at the Dionysos festivals the maidens celebrated his presence[202], thus direct contact with him by his worshippers was effected[203].
In an interesting passage in Pausanias we read:
But I could not understand why he (i.e. Homer, in Od. XI. 581) spoke of the fair dancing grounds of Panopeus till it was explained to me by the women whom the Athenians call Thyiades. The Thyiads are Attic women who go every other year with the Delphian women to Parnassos, and there hold orgies in honour of Dionysos. It is the custom of these Thyiads to dance at various places on the road from Athens, and one of these places is Panopeus. Thus, the epithet which Homer applies to Panopeus seems to allude to the dance of the Thyiads[204].
The finest and most graphic description of this ecstatic dance is that given by Aristophanes in the Frogs, 325 ff. which is sung by the chorus of the Mystae: