On the secrecy of Maenadic rites

This paper discusses the secrecy that surrounded some of the allegedly exclusively feminine forms of Dionysus’ cult. According to an inveterate scholarly tradition, which dates back to Rapp (1872) and became somewhat dogmatic from Dodds (1940, 1960) onwards, women who were in a state of maenadic frenzy performed their rituals a total absence of males (perhaps with the exception of a so-called “single male participant”, which, as Henrichs (1984) has shown, was a product of a scholarly misunderstanding). There is a common belief that males who intruded on such an event could expect to meet a terrible fate similar to that of Pentheus (perhaps in a slightly less drastic form). As I intend to argue, however, the ancient material does not seem to corroborate this interpretation unless we take certain poetic texts, such as Euripides’ Bacchae, at face value. Otherwise, the bulk of ancient data seems to suggest that the opposite was true.

Due to time constraints, I will only briefly sketch the history of research on these poetic texts, focusing on the ways in which the mythical or fictional material has been interpreted as a reflection of historical facts or a ritual script. Subsequently, I will present the postclassical, mostly epigraphic, material, which has been traditionally interpreted as a sign of a gradual relaxation of the previously rigid exclusivity of maenadic practices (e.g., Henrichs 1978). I will juxtapose this material with some scattered references to non-exclusive rituals in the classical period (e.g., Euripides’ Ion 550-4) and several passages (e.g. in the Bacchae) in which the unrestricted and indiscriminate participation of the community members is referred to or hinted at as an ideal. Subsequently, I will turn the attention to the richest part of the dossier provided by the iconography of the vase painting from the archaic period onwards, which follows an opposite trajectory to what has been postulated by scholars. Female participants were gradually introduced into Dionysian scenes, which had initially been monopolized by males. By the end of the sixth century BCE, the first images of unaccompanied women began to occur, and these became quite widespread in the next century. Nevertheless, images depicting an exclusively male group of revelers or worshippers are more frequent. More surprisingly (it has been noted only in passing by several scholars, e.g., Keuls 1984: 290), the images of mixed thiasoi also continued to be more common than those of maenads alone. This suggests that male participation in maenadic rites was not shocking to the ancient audiences, and that the images of and references to maenads worshipping Dionysus without the presence of males can often be taken as an effect of artistic or poetic choices, a pars pro toto of a mixed thiasos.

It needs emphasis that I do not intend to defend a thesis that radically reverses the scholarly tradition. It is clear that some exclusively feminine rituals for Dionysus existed. In addition, in mixed thiasoi, the roles of men were different from those of women.