maenads
maenads,women inspired to ritual frenzy by Dionysus. Maenadic rituals took place in the rough mountains of Greece in the heart of winter every second year. Having ceremonially left the city, maenads (probably upper-class women) would walk into the mountains shouting the cry ‘to the mountains’. Here they removed their shoes, left their hair down, and pulled up their fawn-skins. After a sacrifice of cakes, they started their nightly dances accompanied by tympanon and aulos (in sound more similar to the oboe than the flute). Stimulated by the high-pitched music, the flicker effects of the torches, the whirling nature of the dances, the shouting of euhoi, the headshaking, jumping, and running, the maenads eventually fell to the ground—the euphoric climax of their ecstasy.
Maenadic ritual strongly stimulated the mythical imagination: the Bacchae of
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