Satyrs, Maenad And The Theatre
The mythical male followers of Dionysos were the satyrs, creatures who were part man and part goat with horses' tails. His female followers, both in myth and reality, wer called Bacchants ("women of Bacchus") or maenads ("mad women").
Satyrs were addicted to wine, revelry and lust and were usually depicted naked, in a permanent state of sexual arousal. They often pursued maenads, but were happy to consummate their desire with any creature or even with inanimate objects. The Athenian satry play was a bawdy comedy, usually performed after a tragedy, with a chorus of men in satyr costumes. In Athens, drama took place at two festivals of Dionysos, the Great Dionysia and the Lenaia. His cult involved, in particular, an ecstaatic release brought on by dance, music and wine, hence one of Dionysos' cult names, Lusios ("releaser").
Maenads dressed in faun skins and wore garlands of ivy. Each carried a thyrsus, a staff with a pine-cone like decoration on the end, and gathered in a ritual group to go to the mountains, where they would sing and dance to exhaustion in celebration of the god. It was said that maenads would rip apart a sacrificial animal with their bare hands and eat it.
World Mythology
ISBN 0-8050-4913-4
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