Reference may also be made to Pausanias, V. xvi. 5, where we read of the “Sixteen Women” who get up two choruses, that of Physcoa and that of Hippodamia; the former was loved by Dionysos, and she is said to have been the first to pay reverence to him; and therefore “among the honours which Physcoa receives is a chorus named after her and arranged by the Sixteen Women.”
The Thyiads are, as already mentioned, the same as the female Bacchantes often spoken of Pausanias, for example, makes a reference to them:
... Beyond the theatre is a temple of Dionysos; the image of the god is of gold and ivory, and beside it are female Bacchantes in white marble. They say that these women are sacred, and that they rave in honour of Dionysos[208].
It is to these that Euripides refers in the Bacchae[209]. Diodorus speaks of them thus:
... In many towns of Greece every alternate year Bacchanalian assemblies of women gather together, and it is the custom for maidens to carry the thyrsus and to revel together, honouring and glorifying the god; and for the (married) women to worship the god in organized bands, and to revel in every way to celebrate the presence of Dionysos, imitating thereby the Maenads who from of old, it is said, constantly attended the god[210].
The male correlatives of Maenads, or rather Thyiads, are the Kouretes, who took their part in the Orphic mysteries. They were
the young population considered as worshipping the young male god, the Kouros; they were “mailed priests” because the young male population were naturally warriors. They danced their local war-dance over the new-born child, and, because in those early days the worship of the Mother and the son was not yet sundered, they were attendants (prospoloi) on the Mother also ... they are divine (theoi), and their dancing is sacred[211].
Clement of Alexandria refers to them thus:
The mysteries of Dionysos are wholly inhuman; for while he was still a child and the Kouretes were dancing their armed dance about him, the Titans stole upon him, deceived him with childish toys, and tore him to pieces[212].
A typical instance of myth regarded as reality. We are only dealing here, however, with a few examples of the ecstatic dance among the Greeks. Those given will suffice for present purposes.