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Daughters of Kadmos, Semele neighbor of the Olympians,
and Ino Leukothea
who shares the sea nymphs' chambers,
come now, with Herakles' highborn mother
to the side of Melia, into the inner sanctum,
treasury of golden tripods, which Loxias honored above all,
and named Isthmian, the seat of true oracles,
O children of Harmonia,
where now he calls the local army
of heroines to gather.
--Pindar Pythian 11.1-8
[¶4.] The first time in extant Greek poetry that a word meaning "heroine" appears is in the opening lines of Pindar's eleventh Pythian ode. Here the Theban heroines Semele, Ino, and Alkmene are called on to honor Melia, a local divinity. The first two are invoked as daughters of Kadmos, while Alkmene is called "the highborn mother of Herakles." As I have argued in Chapter 1, we may assume that the word herois had some currency before Pindar's use of it, and that in any event the concept did not wait to be named before having any mythic or ritual role to play. Long before the word, the wives and daughters--and mothers--of heroes had a place in epic. That these are indeed heroines is clear from the Pindaric passage. Here, in a poem in which genealogy is not an end in itself but subordinated to other concerns, the heroines are clearly identified as mothers and daughters of heroes. Thus they are inserted once more into the genealogical context in which we first find them in Greek literature.
[¶5.] Two of these three paradigmatic heroines, the daughters of Kadmos, are associated with Dionysos, and it is they, along with his wife, Ariadne, who will concern us in this chapter. In Chapter 3 we observed that Dionysos is the only male god who does not conform to the otherwise standard pattern of divine interaction with mortal women, which reduces them to erotic objects. In this chapter we examine the god's mythic and ritual connections with the three heroines most prominent in his myth, showing how the usual pattern is subverted. In fact, as I will show, Dionysos, by confounding gender distinctions and transcending mortality, calls into question the very categories of male and female, mortal and immortal. I will argue that it is this feature of Dionysos that explains the unusual role of women in his myth and cult. At the same time, a study of these three figures, Semele, Ino, and Ariadne, reveals a constant recasting of the major motifs of the myth of Dionysos. Birth and its perils, death and its transcendence--issues that dominate the myths of the god--are worked out again in the myths of the heroines surrounding him. At the same time, the prominence of these heroines in Dionysiac cult may provide a way for the worshiper to identify with the god and reenact elements of his travails.
[¶6.] The Dionysiac material shows a high degree of consistency in working and reworking a limited number of motifs, and correspondences can easily be shown from one version to another, as well as from one figure to another. For this reason I will avoid privileging one version of any given myth over another. Thus, for example, the motif of the hostile stepmother which occurs in the Dionysos myth shows up again in the myth of Ino, where in some versions she herself takes on the role, while in others, it is taken up by her rival. These themes are inherent in the myth of Dionysos, from which variations are then generated. If there were a larger body of evidence to draw on, we might be able to say which versions were most widely known, but I am not sure that even this would tell us which versions are the most "Dionysiac."
[¶7.] In these myths themes of death and immortality are paramount. In the genealogy of the Theban royal house, as presented by Pindar, the intertwining of divine and mortal elements is immediately apparent. The heroines Semele and Ino, who themselves attain immortality, are not only the daughters of Kadmos (Kadmou korai), but also daughters of Harmonia (paides Harmonias), a goddess who is herself the daughter of Aphrodite. This feature is of particular relevance to the biography of the god Dionysos, the only Olympian god born into a mortal house. Finally, in the myth of Ariadne, the third heroine to play a significant role in Dionysiac myth, once again questions of immortality and apotheosis assume great importance.
[¶8.] This chapter offers a case study, examining the mythic and cultic interactions of a group of heroines with a particular divinity. Its aim is to situate the heroines within the Dionysiac context. If an examination of Dionysos exclusively through his mythic and cultic relations to women allows us to see him in a new light, so much the better. Others have written eloquently on Dionysos as a confounder of categories. My account builds on these but differs in emphasizing the connection between gender ambiguity and transcendence of mortality, and in relating both of these features to the special role of women in Dionysiac myth and cult.
[¶10.] It is difficult to speak with confidence about the origin and identity of Dionysos.1 Euripides' portrayal of him as simultaneously a stranger from Lydia and a native of Thebes is emblematic of this problem. Until the decipherment of Linear B in 1952, it was customary to take the myths of resistance to his cult as evidence of a historical event, and to take his foreignness at face value.2 Since the appearance of the name Dionysos on two Mycenaean tablets from Pylos, we must assume the god's presence in Greece from a much earlier date. The constant mythic feature of resistance to his cult, rather than being the trace of a historical reality, may indeed point to the fact that Dionysos is conceived as the bringer of a new technology, viticulture, and a new product, wine.3 The introduction of viticulture was of course a prehistoric event, of which no actual human memory is possible. Yet the uniqueness of this drink, with its inexplicable powers of intoxication, is expressed as an eternally new and miraculous development, and therefore brought by a god who is perceived as always arriving for the first time. Consequently, the myths of resistance hinge on the problem of integrating the new and potentially disruptive invention into ordered society. This is the "permanent crisis" to which the title of Massenzio's book on Dionysos aptly refers.4 It is Dionysos the newcomer who teaches humankind the proper use of his gift, the right mixture of water and wine. For only the god can drink it straight.5 The "exoticizing" of Dionysos is simultaneously a way of expressing the foreignness of the experience of ecstatic ritual.6
[¶11.] Even if the cult of Dionysos was present in Greece from very early on, it did not have the same significance in all periods. Iconographic studies of Attic vase-painting show that Dionysos is at first a rather minor god, attaining Olympian status only in the mid-sixth century.7 In the late fifth century, he loses his beard and mature appearance to become a beardless ephebe, or even a baby. There are also changes in the company he keeps. Early images show him in the company first of Aphrodite, and then Semele. Sometime in the late sixth century, he begins to be represented with Ariadne. This may be the expression of a growing Athenian interest in the political value of the mythic association with Dionysos through Theseus and Ariadne. While changes in the physical representation of the god make him less mature, the change of companion, from mother to wife, leads him in the other direction. We should therefore be cautious about forcing the material into a progression, from maturity to infancy, taking care instead to acknowledge the ambiguity that pervades his representation.
[¶12.] There are geographical differences as well as temporal ones. The bulk of myth places Dionysos in a Theban context, and his cult is especially strong all over Boiotia, as well as at Delphi in nearby Phocis.8 But Dionysos plays a major role in Athenian religion, with a whole series of festivals dominating the Attic calendar during the months of winter and early spring. The evidence suggests that his cult, whatever its origin, was incorporated into local traditions in Thebes at an early date and soon spread to Athens, later taking on Eastern elements. Although the cult of Dionysos appears all over the Greek world, the examples that concern us come mostly from these two areas. This geographical limitation, moreover, helps to offset the fact that strict delineation of the historical period is impossible. By concentrating on the mainland, we will at the same time be giving our attention to cults that were certainly well established by the classical period.9
[¶14.] The figure of Dionysos presented to us by Euripides in the Bacchae is a nexus of contradictions. A stranger from the East, he is also a native-born Theban. An immortal god, he must nevertheless return home to prove his legitimacy and vindicate the honor of his mortal mother Semele. A male god, he is attended almost exclusively by women, and he is taunted for his effeminate appearance. Inspired by him, peaceful maenads act in extraordinary harmony with nature, in their enthusiasm bringing forth milk and honey from the ground. For those who resist his cult, however, he brings madness, loss of identity, violence, and ultimately disintegration. Without privileging the Euripidean account, we may take it as a convenient starting point for an exploration of these contradictions, particularly as they relate to gender and immortality, and the ways in which they are played out in the myth and cult of the heroines Semele, Ino, and Ariadne.
[¶15.] Dionysos is born into ambiguity and opposition. This god, in so many ways the exception among Greek divinities, concentrates within himself the opposing terms mortal/immortal and female/male, bringing them together in a kind of mediation. The son of a mortal mother, Semele, he has, of all the Olympians, the most intimate experience of mortality, being the only one to suffer death.10 Dionysos is often characterized by a certain degree of sexual ambiguity. Female figures are prominent in his myths, and his cult is marked by a level of participation by women unknown for any other male divinity.
[¶16.] His marked relation to death begins with his birth, which is in fact synonymous with the death of his mother, Semele. His nurture is then taken over either by Semele's sister Ino, or by a group of "nurses" variously identified by local tradition. His situation is precarious, and in some versions he must be hidden. Throughout his childhood he is dependent on women for protection. Even in maturity, something of the vulnerability of childhood clings to him. Glaukos, in his speech to Diomedes in Iliad 6.130ff. tells of the pursuit of the god and his nurses (tithenas) by Lykourgos. Dionysos is terrified and leaps into the sea, where he is comforted by Thetis.11
[¶17.] Dionysos is born mortal, and the process by which he becomes immortal is far from clear. In some versions immortality is a reward for his services in bringing Hephaistos back to Olympos to release Hera from a trick throne of his invention where she has been held prisoner.12 Elsewhere, it is the second birth from Zeus' thigh that gives him access to immortality, and that will ultimately allow him to confer it on others.13 In any case it is striking that while the mythic tradition is unanimous that Herakles must suffer an anguished death before achieving immortality, there is no canonical myth of the death of Dionysos. The theme of his death occurs, as Burkert has observed, primarily in ritual contexts.14 The scholia to Iliad 14.319 preserve a tradition by which the hero Perseus not only engages in battle with Dionysos but actually succeeds in killing the god. Pausanias (2.20.4; 2.22.1) mentions the tombs of the female companions, known as Haliai, who died attempting to defend him, but says nothing to indicate that the god himself was killed.
[¶18.] Although the god is often threatened, nowhere else is he actually murdered, outside of the Orphic tradition. Here we find the story of the infant Dionysos torn to bits by the Titans who have distracted the baby by giving him toys and a mirror. While he is looking at himself in the mirror, they attack him with knives and cook and eat him.15 As it happens, his heart remains intact, and from it he is reconstructed by the other gods. It is tempting to say that this is not the same Dionysos who was worshiped in civic cults throughout Greece, and yet this version accords with the Delphic tradition of a tomb of Dionysos.16 As incongruous as this Orphic myth seems, it is consonant with the figure of the Olympian who so completely straddles the line between mortal and immortal.17
[¶19.] If we turn now to Dionysos' relations to women, we find that his participation in ambiguity is nowhere more apparent than here. From the moment of his strange double birth, he is marked by gender confusion.18 As Segal has commented, the double birth is one of the ways in which he combines both sexes.19 According to Apollodorus (3.4.3) he is raised as a girl by Athamas and Ino. We have alluded to the theme of gender ambiguity in Euripides' Bacchae. Pentheus taunts the stranger, whom he does not recognize as a god, for his feminine appearance (453ff.). Later, as Dionysos carries out his revenge on Pentheus, the first step in the beguiling of his victim is to persuade him to assume the effeminacy of dress he had earlier despised in the god. As Dodds has pointed out in his edition of the play, neither element is a Euripidean invention. Fragments of the earlier Edonai of Aeschylus contain similar jeers at the god's appearance. "Where does this sissy come from?" is the question addressed to the captive Dionysos.20 The scene of cross-dressing has precedents in Dionysiac ritual, while in comedy (for example in the Frogs of Aristophanes) Dionysos is dressed in female garments and mocked for his effeminacy.21 In Heschyius' lexicon the dialect form dionus is defined as a "weakling and sissy" (ho gunaikias kai parathelus).
[¶20.] On the other hand, the women who serve Dionysos take on certain male roles, if not male characteristics, as nurses turn into warriors, and maenads into hunters. They defend the god when he is attacked by Perseus or Lykourgos. As Euripides portrays Agave in her madness, she believes herself to be a great lion-killer and asks her father to congratulate her on her masculine achievement.22 A Macedonian name for the maenads was Mimallones, "because they imitate men" (para to mimeisthai tous andras).23
[¶21.] It is against this backgound of gender ambiguity that we must consider the unique character of Dionysos' mythic associations with female figures. He is the only male divinity among the Olympians whose relationships to mortal women are not exclusively erotic. Apollo, Poseidon, Hermes, and especially Zeus have many encounters with mortal women on whom they father numerous children with the unfailing fertility that characterizes the gods. Otherwise, heroines or mortal women figure relatively little in their myths. Himself the product of a typical union between a god and a mortal women, Dionysos does not repeat the pattern. Unlike these divinities, he has few myths uniting him with mortal women and is credited with the paternity of very few children. By the same token, women figure in his myths in many other roles, appearing as mother, nurse, opponent, and supporter.
[¶22.] Unlike most of the other Olympians, he has no divine consort granted to him but instead elevates the heroine Ariadne to immortality, to be his wife. His myths set him apart from the other gods by making him virtually "monogamous." The status of this union is unparalleled among the myths of amorous connections of the gods with mortals and, unlike the unions of other gods and heroines, it becomes a legitimate marriage.24 The absence of erotic violence and the emphasis on marriage are reflected in Athenian iconography.25 This marriage, frequently represented in vase painting, has its ritual parallel in the hieros gamos consummated between the god and the Basilinna, wife of the Archon Basileus, during the Athenian festival of the Anthesteria.26
[¶23.] Dionysos differs from other male divinities in yet another respect, in that he is more of a son than a father. Two of the figures central to his myth are his mother Semele and his aunt and foster-mother Ino. In the matter of his birth, we may compare him to Athena, another product of Zeus' reproductive creativity. Her birth from his head effectively writes the mother out of the picture and clearly marks this goddess as "for the male in all things."27 Dionysos is also born twice, the first time snatched from the womb of the mortal, dying mother who is thus reduced to metonymic status. She fulfills her role and then, having been no more than a womb, is removed from the scene, while he will have a second birth from his father's thigh.
[¶24.] In both of these myths, we see once again the common tendency in Greek myth to sidestep the issue of maternity. This tendency expresses itself, in its mildest form, in the substitution of foster motherhood for biological motherhood, as in the myth of Erichthonios. Its more radical manifestation is the fantasy of redesigning human reproduction to eliminate the mother altogether.28 Euripides puts into the mouths of both Hippolytos and Jason wishes expressing in exaggerated form the misogyny endemic to Greek culture: "If only the gods would invent another way of having children, so that men could free themselves of this evil that is woman."29
[¶25.] Despite his second birth from his father's body, Dionysos remains his mother's son, and while partaking of her mortality, seems also to take on aspects of her feminine nature to a degree that has no parallel among the other gods. In Dionysiac myth the father's annihilating gesture toward the mother is counteracted by the son, who goes down to the depths of the Underworld to bring her back and install her in triumph in Olympos.30 In the usual scheme of things, mothers give life to their sons. In Greek myth divine mothers and mother-substitutes also frequently try to give immortality to their sons, and inevitably fail.31 Dionysos, however, succeeds in giving immortality to his mother, and in so doing, seems almost to reverse the natural order once more. Semele has been prevented from giving birth to her own son, yet he will give her immortal life. This rescue is yet another appropriation of the maternal function, this time by Dionysos, and is clearly dependent on the first appropriation, in which Zeus' thigh serves as a womb for the embryonic god. At the same time, it also fits clearly into the pattern of heroic myth, in which the son on reaching maturity returns to defend his mother (as Perseus rescued Danae). In this, Dionysos more resembles a hero than a god.
[¶26.] Semele is made immortal by the direct intervention of Dionysos. As we shall see, he also plays a large role in the apotheosis of both Ino and Ariadne. While Dionysos is not explicitly given credit for Ino's transformation into a goddess, it is because of her association with him that she is driven mad, leaps into the sea, and is immortalized. As for Ariadne, the sources are unanimous in making Dionysos the agent of her apotheosis. Connection with Dionysos, the mortal-born god, allows these heroines to escape the finality of death, in much the same way that he himself has escaped it.
[¶28.] The unusual nature of Dionysos' relations with women can also be seen from the proliferation in his myths of other female figures who are not sexual objects for the god. As we have observed, most gods have very little to do with mortal women if not for erotic purposes. Dionysiac myth, however, presents a different model of gender-relations, one that is by turns co-operative and combattive, but that is not based on the sexual domination of the female by the male. In this context women appear as the nurses and companions of the god, worshipers or resisters of his cult, and figures connected with the introduction of wine.
[¶29.] The nurses of the gods are usually nymphs, or other minor female divinities, or animals, like the goat Amalthea who nursed Zeus. Dionysos also has his share of nymph-nurses, but many of his nurses are mortal. They are generally collective entities, bands of women for whom a single name suffices: Haliai or Lenai or Thyiads.32 Mythic collective groups of "nurses of Dionysos" are often called by the same name as the nonmythic bands of worshipers of the god. Plutarch, for instance, uses the word Thyiads to refer to participants in festivals of Semele and Dionysos.33 The names differ according to local tradition, and in some cases an individual woman is named as his nurse. The Thyiads are said to take their name from one Thyia, the first priestess of Dionysos (Paus. 10.6.4). In the Theban version, the role of nurse is given to Ino, the daughter of king Kadmos, to whom we return below.
[¶30.] Female collectivities figure prominently in the myths of Dionysos. Some of these groups nurture and support the god, while others resist him. These collectivities, hostile and friendly alike, serve as prototypes of Dionysiac worshipers. Often they are a large, undifferentiated band like the "nurses" of the Lykourgos episode (Iliad 6.130ff.) or the followers in the Bacchae. More commonly in the myths of resistance, the collectivity consists of the three daughters of the king. At Orchomenos they are the daughters of Minyas, at Argos the daughters of Proitos, and at Thebes, the daughters of Kadmos.34 Although the punishment differs, the crime is always the same: refusal to recognize the god and to participate in his cult. The daughters of Minyas, like the daughters of Kadmos, end up killing one of their children, in their madness, while the unmarried daughters of Proitos are eventually cured by the seer Melampos, who marries one of them and finds husbands for the others. That their cure leads directly to their marriage points up the extent to which Dionysiac cult is a cult of married women. In the words of Calame, "If young girls were not entirely excluded from the Dionysiac mysteries, the Bacchic choruses were nevertheless composed mainly of married women. . . . That Dionysos intervenes principally in the domain of married women explains the slippage in the myth of the Proitides from the sphere of Dionysos to that of Hera, and vice versa."35
[¶31.] There is another kind of Dionysiac heroine, for the most part distinct from the nurse or prototypical maenad, whom we might call the Dionysiac "culture heroine." These figures are almost exclusively connected with the myths of introduction of wine and the resistance to it.36 Although these figures clearly belong to the sphere of Dionysos, the myths depend very little on the personal contact of the heroine with the god, and not at all on erotic contact.37 The Attic myth of Ikarios and Erigone, which serves as aition for the Aiora, a ritual incorporated into the Anthesteria, centers on Dionysos' gift of wine, and the fatal misunderstanding of that gift.38 Ikarios is killed by his neighbors who take their intoxication to be the effect of poison. In grief his daughter Erigone hangs herself. A plague follows, and a ritual reenactment of the hanging is necessary as restitution. This festival, in which the young women of Attica swing on swings, is carried out yearly in honor of Erigone. At this time a special song called the Aletis (wanderer), after another name for the heroine, is sung.39
[¶32.] Another category of heroines in wine-introduction myths are descendants of Dionysos such as the daughters of Staphylos. In these myths the principal figures are given names that connect them even more transparently with the new technology. According to Plutarch (Thes. 20.2) the brothers Staphylos and Oinopion are the sons of Ariadne and Theseus. Elsewhere, however, as we might expect from their names, they are said to be the sons of Dionysos himself. According to Apollodorus (Ep. 1.9), Thoas, Staphylos, Oinopion, and Peparethos were the sons of Ariadne and Dionysos. Diodorus (5.79.1-2) states that some call Oinopion the son of Dionysos, from whom he learned wine-making (oinopoiia). Staphylos (Grape-Cluster) has three daughters, Molpadia, Rhoio, and Parthenos. The daughters, set to watch over the father's wine, throw themselves into the sea when pigs get in and spoil it. They are rescued by Apollo, the lover of Rhoio (Pomegranate). Molpadia appears to belong to the spheres of both Apollo and Dionysos. Her name itself suggests Apolline interest in song, and the myth clearly places her under his protection. At the same time, the anger of Staphylos against his daughters has to do with the spoiling of his wine, "a drink only recently known to men," and the form their escape takes is a leap into the sea. These two details put us unmistakably in the realm of Dionysos. The recent introduction of wine and the failure to use it properly suggest a persecution story like the myth of Erigone and Ikarios, while the daughters' sea-leap calls to mind other sea-leaps, such as that of Dionysos himself and that of Ino. But Diodorus' version of the myth obscures this connection, ending with the ultimate elision of the Dionysiac element--the ritual prohibition against wine in the cult of Hemithea.
[¶33.] A second group of sisters, the Oinotropoi or Oinotrophoi, have the suggestive names Oino, Spermo, and Elais, and the power to turn whatever they touch into the substances (wine, grain, and oil, respectively) from which they take their names. They are in fact also descendants of Dionysos, being the daughters of Anios, the son of Apollo and Rhoio, and seem to be a doubling of the daughters of Staphylos. Their myth has to do not with the introduction of wine, but with the exploitation of this and other forms of agricultural production. The young women are taken along against their will by the Greeks on the expedition against Troy, for the purpose of provisioning the army, and are rescued by Dionysos, who turns them into doves.40
[¶34.] These figures are most closely paralleled by those connected to another divinity who introduces a new technology. Demeter, associated with the introduction of agriculture, is attended by the wife and daughters of Keleos, and we know from Pausanias (1.39.2) that Metaneira, at least, received cult honors. These heroines, however, are firmly placed within the cult of a female divinity. In the myths of male divinities, only the Hyperborean Maidens who worship Apollo resemble in any way these Dionysiac heroines.41 As we have noted, the daughters of Staphylos and Anios are also in some way connected to Apollo. Why that should be the case is not clear, although perhaps these myths express certain other affinities between the two deities who share the sanctuary at Delphi.
[¶36.] Thus far I have traced the god's mythic connections with women. We may now consider how these connections are reflected in ritual. Here again we find that Dionysos is anomalous. What sets him apart from the other male gods is that, although he is served by male priests, a large number of rituals in his honor are performed exclusively by women. In general the strong sexual dimorphism of Greek life is also expressed in religious contexts.42 It is customary, for example, for male divinities to be served mainly by male priests and celebrants, and female divinities to be served by priestesses.43 Even the gods invoked in oaths are divided by sex, with men calling on male deities and women calling on female ones.
[¶37.] At times the rituals are restricted by sex as well, and for the most part, when women enact religious ritual without men, it is in honor of a female deity. For example, Demeter and Kore are frequently served by priestesses, and one of their most important festivals, the Thesmophoria, is celebrated exclusively by women. The goddess Artemis, the protector of the young, is attended by women, and her rituals are enacted by women and young people of either sex. These restrictions do not apply to all festivals of a particular god, and indeed a civic goddess such as Athena was honored by the entire city, most notably at the Panathenaia. The cults of Dionysos are by no means all restricted to women, nor is he the only god to have such cults.44 Nor do women have a role to play in all Dionysiac cults. Nonetheless, the sheer number of Dionysiac cults calling for the exclusive participation of women is remarkable.45 Moreover, as we shall see, these cults involve the formation of religious associations of women such as the "official" maenads of Athens, the Gerarai who participate in the Anthesteria, the Sixteen Women who organize the chorus of Physkoa, and the college of women who sacrifice to Semele at Erchia.
[¶38.] As an example of a Dionysiac cult restricted to women, let us consider the festival known at least to modern scholars as the Oreibasia, which took place during the winter months at Delphi.46 This festival, whose name means "mountain running," comes closest to an enactment of the ecstasies of the maenads presented by Euripides. To this festival came delegations of official Maenads from many cities including Athens. Plutarch describes the rescue of a group of Thyiads who unwittingly wandered into the city of Amphissa in Phocis during a time of war, and exhausted by their frenzy, fell asleep in the marketplace. The women of Amphissa, fearing that harm would come to them, stood watch silently around them until they revived and could be given a hot dinner and safe conduct to the borders (de mul. virt. 249e-f).
[¶39.] The mythic groups of women we have discussed above, whose madness is in itself service to the god, are thought of as prototypical maenads, the forerunners of the willing celebrants of the god in historical times. Plutarch tells us of a ritual at Orchomenos, the Agrionia, which he connects with the myth of the daughters of Minyas. It seems that the descendants of these women, known as Oleiae (Murderesses) are pursued by the priest of Dionysos, sword in hand. "Any one of them that he catches he may kill, and in my time the priest Zoïlus killed one of them. But this resulted in no benefit for the people of Orchomenos; but Zoïlus fell sick from some slight sore and, when the wound had festered for a long time, he died."47 This ritual, with its parallel to Lykourgos' pursuit of Dionysos and his nurses, shows the familiar oscillation between worshiper of the god and victim of the god that we have seen in the myth of Pentheus. The element of pursuit is common to both the myth and the ritual, while the value of the group of women can be either positive or negative. In the myth of Lykourgos, the women are allies of Dionysos, whereas in the cult at Orchomenos, they are treated as antagonists.
[¶40.] Women's worship of Dionysos, although segregated, could also be located at the heart of the city. The Athenian festival of the Anthesteria, which occurred in the month Anthesterion in early spring, took place over several days.48 Its name indicates a connection with flowers, and at this time children three years old were crowned with garlands. The first day of the festival saw the opening and tasting of the new wine, while on the second the citizens took part in drinking contests. At this time the dead were supposed to circulate freely in the city. All temples were consequently cordoned off, to avoid pollution, with the exception of the temple of Dionysos in the Marshes, which was opened on this day alone. On this day also, with its ill-omened connection with the dead, there took place a ritual of great importance for women, the holy marriage (hieros gamos) of the Basilinna with Dionysos.49 Her marriage with the god, whether purely metaphorical or not, was accompanied by sacrifices performed by a group of chaste older women, the Gerarai.
[¶41.] Most of what we know about the hieros gamos, whose secrets were carefully guarded, comes from the oration Against Neaira, which gives evidence for the secret rites (ta arreta hiera), the date on which the temple was opened, and even the text of the oath of the Gerarai (59.74-79).50 Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 3.5) is less detailed but more matter-of-fact about the hierogamic nature of the ritual: "But the king inhabited what is now called the Boukolion, near the Prytaneion (a proof of this is that even today the union and marriage of the king's wife with Dionysos takes place there)."51
[¶42.] As men excluded from women's mysteries, these writers are limited in what they can tell us, although the insinuating tone of Ps.-Demosthenes derives in part from a courtroom strategy of implanting suspicions of impropriety in the minds of his hearers. It may be argued that no evidence for the exclusion of men from anything but the hieros gamos itself exists and that, moreover, from this all women except the Basilinna were also excluded. The texts themselves suggest otherwise, showing much sketchier acquaintance with the entire ritual than we find in the case of other more clearly public rites. I would suggest as a parallel a ritual dedicated to Dionysos at Bryseai in Lakonia, where Pausanias tells us, in strikingly similar language, that "only women are allowed to see the image in the temple, for women perform the sacrificial rights by themselves in secret."52 Similarly, Plutarch (Quaest. Gr. 12, 293c) says that the Herois is mostly secret. There is a mystikos logos known only to the Thyiads, and the public portions of the ritual allow him only to conjecture the meaning of the whole. These rituals seem to be in some way cognate with the hieros gamos of the Anthesteria and suggest that the Gerarai had their secrets too.
[¶43.] The bits of information we do have, despite possible voyeuristic distortion, permit us to make several observations. The hieros gamos of Dionysos with the Basilinna takes place on the most ill-omened day of the year, a day permeated by death. It is in this context that we must view the consorting of the god with the representative of all the women of Athens, a ritual that would have direct bearing on the prosperity of the city for the next year.53 The dead are the bringers of prosperity, and this proximity to pollution is necessary for the good of the community. But the union is not without its threatening side, for it is a union with Dionysos in his Underworld aspect. Here, as Jeanmaire has pointed out, is an illustration of the saying of Heraclitus, "Hades and Dionysos are one and the same."54 If Dionysos can be equated with the king of the Underworld, then marriage with him is a kind of death. This funereal union recalls the fatal marriage that produced Dionysos himself, and it takes place in a climate of ambiguity that is by now familiar.
[¶45.] As I have argued, Dionysos enjoys a special relation to death and to women. I have hinted at a kind of exchange by which the god confers on his female associates something of his own special status with regard to death. In this section I elaborate on this, examining the cases of individual heroines. At the same time I stress the homology between Dionysos and these heroines, not only at the broadest thematic level, but in the recurrence of motifs. From version to version and figure to figure, the same motifs are repeated: pregnancy and childbirth with their attendant dangers, protection of children versus persecution or even infanticide, the benevolent mother or nurse versus the hostile stepmother, the threat of death and rescue from it. These motifs are for the most part presented in pairs, which point to the contradictory nature of much of human experience. Slater, for example, has pointed out the hostility toward children that pervades Dionysiac myth.55 A mythic tradition that acknowledges the culture's ambivalence toward children is not far from projecting that ambivalence onto women, who are themselves already seen as deeply equivocal beings. In this collection of repeating and interwoven motifs, the roles assigned to women are inconsistent. The woman is simultaneously the good mother and the bad mother, simultaneously identified with and opposed to the child. Her interests are at times the same as his, and at others split off. Slater deserves credit for this important insight into the Dionysiac material. Nonetheless, I part company with his assessment of the myths, as I see in them male projections onto women, rather than reactions to clinically explicable behaviors acted out by actual women.56
[¶47.] The familiar outlines of the myth of Semele state the themes that will be worked out in variations in the myths of Ino and Ariadne. Her genealogy is given in Theogony 975ff. She is the daughter of Kadmos of Thebes and Harmonia, the daughter of Aphrodite, and her sisters are Ino, Agave, and Autonoe. She also has a brother, Polydoros, about whom little more is heard. She is listed among the heroines whom Zeus has seduced, in Iliad 14.323-25, where the son she bears him is called "Dionysos . . . delight of mortals" (charma brotoisin).
[¶48.] Her seduction by Zeus is followed by some kind of impiety, whether on her part or that of her sisters, and she is blasted by lightning. Keune suggests that in the earliest versions, her death may be brought on by infidelity, and he connects this with Stesichorus' account of the death of Aktaion as punishment for an attempt on Semele.57 Apollodorus makes this into a slander on her by her sisters (3.4.3). In some versions her sisters' incredulity about the identity of the father of Semele's child leads to her destruction. In others she falls victim to the hostility of Hera who engineers her death. In the form of an old woman, she persuades Semele to ask Zeus to appear to her as he appears to his wife. The mortal woman cannot survive exposure to the god's true form and is destroyed in a flash of lightning.58 Semele's chamber becomes a holy place, an abaton, a place where no one may walk (Paus. 9.12.3-4).
[¶49.] The tradition that Semele was made immortal is quite old, our earliest attestation being Theogony 942: "a mortal woman [bore him] an immortal [son], but now they are both gods" (athanaton thnêtê nun d' amphoteroi theoi eisin). This change of state was accompanied by a change in name, memorialized in the Homeric Hymns:
And so farewell Dionysos the in-sewn,
with your mother Semele, whom now they call Thyone.
(Homeric Hymn 1.20-21)
[¶52.] Diodorus Siculus (4.25.4) makes the connection explicitly: "For according to the myths, he brought up his mother Semele from Hades, and, sharing with her his immortality, he called her by a new name, Thyone." This name, generally connected with the verb thuein ("to rage, rush") suggests the movement of the Thyiads.59 It had sufficient currency as to appear side-by-side with the old name on an Attic vase from the last quarter of the sixth century.60
[¶53.] Various places were identified as the spot where Dionysos brought his mother up from the Underworld. Pausanias recounts two differing local traditions, one connected with the temple of Artemis Soter at Troizen and the other with the Alcyonian Lake (2.31.2 and 2.37.5), although he himself is sceptical about the story. "I cannot bring myself to believe even that Semele died at all, seeing that she was the wife of Zeus" (trans. Jones), but here we are bound to take his reporting of local traditions more seriously than his opinions about them. The traditions mentioned by Pauasanias point to the fact that the worship of Semele, as part of the cult of Dionysos, was by no means restricted to Thebes. We know from the Greater Demarchia that the women of Erchia in Attica sacrificed to Semele in the month of Elaphebolion, the same month in which they sacrificed to her son.
[¶54.] The dossier may be completed with the mention of a festival dedicated to the mother of Dionysos at Delphi. Our informant is Plutarch (Quaest. Gr. 12, 293d). At Delphi, he tells us, there was celebrated every eight years a series of three festivals, the second of which is called Herois, the earliest attested Greek word for "heroine."61 Plutarch here suffers from the same disability as does the orator of the speech Against Neaira in his descriptions of the hieros gamos: this festival is limited to women, and he is not allowed to know its content, much less to participate in it. As he says, "The greater part of the Herois has a secret import (mystikon logon) which the Thyiads know; but from the portions that are performed in public, one might conjecture that it represents the evocation (anagoge) of Semele [from the Underworld]" (trans. Babbitt).
[¶55.] As discussed in Chapter 2, the heroine's biography is so much a part of the hero's that it is almost impossible to separate them. It is consequently impossible to isolate the main themes of Semele's myth from those of Dionysos. The dangers of her own pregnancy and death are congruent with the dangers of his babyhood. We can nonetheless ennumerate certain recurring motifs. As the wife of Zeus, Hera makes an appearance as the wicked step-mother, who wishes to destroy both her rival and her rival's children. The death of Semele while carrying a child introduces the theme of interrupted maternity. Hera's murderous impulses toward the baby Dionysos and the efforts to protect him reflect the ambivalence toward children that, as Slater has remarked, runs through the Dionysiac material.62 Finally, the rescue of Semele from the Underworld parallels not only the numerous rescues of Dionysos, but also the rescues that he will undertake on behalf of the other heroines.
[¶57.] Of all the heroines associated with Dionysos, Ino has perhaps the richest tradition. As noted in Chapter 2, where she is compared to Herakles, she is one of the few heroines who can compete with male heroes in range of action. The earliest reference to her is in the Odyssey, where she appears to save Odysseus from drowning. Here she is identified as "Kadmos' daughter, slender-ankled Ino--Leukothea, who once was a mortal endowed with human speech, but now deep in the sea has a share of honor among the gods," (5.333-35). The general outline of her myth is as follows:63 Entrusted with the baby Dionysos after the death of her sister Semele, Ino incurs the enmity of Hera, who is no friend to the lovers of Zeus and their children. Both Ino and her husband Athamas are driven mad by the goddess, and he kills their son Learchos. Ino at this point leaps into the sea holding her other son, Melikertes. The sea-leap changes them both: she becomes Leukothea, "the white goddess," and her son, now known as Palaimon, becomes the hero of the Isthmian games at the Isthmos of Corinth.64
[¶58.] This heroine, like the others associated with Dionysos, becomes immortal and like Semele, she acquires a new name. Dionysos is not directly responsible for her transformation into a goddess, although in one version he does save her from the anger of Athamas (Hyginus, Fab. 2). The sea-leap is, however, a characteristically Dionysiac manoeuvre familiar from the Iliad passage discussed above.65 In this way the apotheosis of Ino takes place as much under the sign of Dionysos as does that of Semele.66
[¶59.] Athamas marries more than once, and the many myths of Ino consequently tell of deadly rivalries between her and the other wives. There is no unanimity on the order of the wives, although usually Nephele is the first wife, Ino the second, and Themisto the third.67 Here the theme of the wicked stepmother, which we have already seen in Hera's persecutions of Semele, surfaces again. Ino turns out to be an ambivalent figure, at times taking on the stepmother role herself, while at others, being the persecuted one. Some sense can be made of the multiplicity of versions, since it is generally the supplanting wife who tries to kill the children by the previous marriage. Thus, in the versions in which Ino is the second wife, she concocts a plot to kill Helle and Phrixos, children of the first wife, Nephele. She persuades the women to roast the seed before planting it. When famine ensues, she manufactures an oracle calling for the sacrifice of the king's son. The plot is discovered, and Ino leaps into the sea with Melikertes to escape Athamas' wrath (Hyginus Fab. 2). In another version, the plot of Euripides' tragedy, Ino is the prior wife and therefore the persecuted one.68 Athamas, thinking her dead, has married Themisto. He then discovers that she is actually engaged in Bacchic orgies on Parnassos, and secretly reintroduces her into the house, perhaps as a servant. When Themisto finds out, she decides to murder Ino's sons Learchos and Melikertes, but Ino, by a trick of switching clothing, engineers matters so that Themisto kills her own children. In this way, despite being the persecuted victim, she maintains the ambivalence with which she is portrayed in other versions. Athamas kills Learchos, but "Ino, together with her younger son Melicertes, threw herself into the sea and became a goddess" (Ino cum minore filio Melicerte in mare se deiecit et dea est facta, Hyg. Fab. 4).
[¶60.] In Ino we have as problematic a figure of motherhood as possible. Ino's maternity in different versions is by turns threatened, interrupted, and perverted. As the foster mother of Dionysos, she takes the place of a real mother and attracts Hera's enmity as if she were the real mother.69 She destroys the children of a rival, either out of pure jealousy or in order to protect her own. Nonetheless, her conduct toward her own children is not above suspicion. Under the influence of madness, she tries to kill them or perhaps to rescue them. The lebes (cauldron) in which one of them is placed could be called the ultimate projection of maternal ambivalence. Is this her attempt to resuscitate or immortalize the child killed by its father, or is she herself engaged in murder? According to Apollodorus (3.4.3), Ino throws Melikertes into a boiling cauldron before leaping with him into the sea. Another source offers an equally confusing picture: either she herself throws Learchos into the lebes or she grabs Melikertes just as his father is about to throw him in (schol. Lycoph. 229). That the cauldron embodies simultaneously the threat of death and the promise of rebirth is clear from the myth of Medea, and it should undoubtedly be read as ambivalent in this context as well.70 Finally, even the leap into the sea with her son Melikertes is ambiguous. For Ino it is an escape from Athamas, and the path to divinity. For Melikertes it seems to bring only death, albeit a heroic one. It is true that Hyginus (Fab. 224) counts him among mortals who become gods, but elsewhere he is clearly a hero.
[¶61.] In Chapter 2 we discussed the widespread diffusion of Ino's cult throughout the Greek world, mentioning the many festivals and other observances in her honor. As we noted above, her cult is dual in nature, since at times she is honored with heroic cult, and at others with divine cult. The combination of lamentation and rejoicing in her festival rejected by Xenophanes is also found in the cult of the hero Hyakinthos, whose festival is made up of two days completely different in mood, but it is not common.71 The case of Ariadne, which we shortly have occasion to consider, appears to be the only other example.
[¶63.] Ariadne, the only "official" wife of Dionysos, is connected by tradition and etymology with Crete and plays an important role in the myth of the Athenian hero Theseus.72 Although the tradition of marriage to Dionysos is generally presumed to be older than that of marriage to Theseus, the standard narrative inverts the order of events. It runs something like this: The daughter of the Cretan king Minos, Ariadne betrays her father by helping the Athenian hero Theseus to kill her brother the Minotaur and to escape. In the most famous version, she gives him a ball of string, which allows him to find his way out of the Labyrinth, the home of the monster. Elsewhere, she simply shows him the secret of negotiating the Labyrinth, which she has learned from its maker, Daidalos, or lights the way with a crown that was, according to Hyginus, originally a gift from Dionysos.73 He takes her with him, but for one reason or another does not manage to bring her back home to Athens. Instead, he abandons her on the island of Naxos, either from carelessness, or because he has fallen in love with Aigle (Plut. Thes. 29), or because Artemis or Dionysos (in a dream, according to Diodorus 5.51.4) has ordered him to do so. In our earliest account, in the Odyssey (11.324-25), Artemis intervenes at this point to kill her, on the orders of Dionysos (Dionusou marturiêsi). In most versions, however, she is rescued from her desolation by the god Dionysos, who carries her off to make her his wife and bring her to Olympos, setting her crown in the heavens.74 Ariadne, who after all never makes it to Athens, nevertheless becomes very important in Athenian iconography of Dionysos. Numerous vases show their marriage, or present them riding in state together in a chariot. In fact the hieros gamos that takes place in Athens during the Anthesteria is sometimes seen as the representation of the marriage of Ariadne and Dionysos.75
[¶64.] In this myth the motif of infidelity is elaborated in several ways. If the marriage to Dionysos is prior to the union with Theseus, then the death at the hands of Artemis is a punishment for her infidelity.76 In such a version, the theme of marriage with a god would preserve the menacing quality it so often has in Greek myth and would present a perfect parallel to the version of Semele's myth in which she is punished for infidelity with Aktaion. (Koronis is another heroine punished by her immortal lover for betraying him with a mortal.) The supplanting of Ariadne by Aigle is comparable to the replacement of Ino by Themisto, or Nephele by Ino. As Semele was abandoned by Zeus, and Ino by Athamas, so Ariadne was abandoned by Theseus. Conversely, the rescue of Ariadne by Dionysos recalls his rescue of his own mother, the anagoge of Semele celebrated by the Thyiads at the festival of the Herois.
[¶65.] Plutarch (Thes. 20) gives us a very peculiar local version, attributed to one Paion the Amathusian, according to which Theseus leaves the pregnant Ariadne on the island of Cyprus and is then unable to return to her. By the time he gets back, she has died in childbirth, and he atones by setting up statuettes in her honor and instituting sacrifices to her. In the same passage Plutarch tells of a sacrifice on the second day of the month of Gorpiaios, at which a young man performs a ritual couvade, lying down and mimicking the cries of a woman in childbirth. Here again we find the exchange of gender roles that permeates the cult of Dionysos. At the same time the myth and the ritual both emphasize the dangers of childbirth, a theme already apparent in the myth of Semele. Plutarch also tells us that the Naxians believe that there were two Ariadnes, one the bride of Dionysos, and the other the woman abandoned by Theseus, who died on Naxos and was given honors there, "for the festival of the first Ariadne is celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honor of the second are attended with sorrow and mourning."77
[¶66.] The story of the two Ariadnes is not very convincing, nor do we need it to explain the phenomenon of a cult in which death and immortality are combined. I believe it is no coincidence that of the relatively few examples of this kind of mixed cult, two of them are in honor of heroines associated with Dionysos. This is not the only notice concerning Ariadne's death. Pausanias (2.23.8) tells us of the tomb of Ariadne in the precinct of Cretan Zeus. It seems that, like Dionysos, Ariadne may have both immortality and a place of burial.
[¶67.] In addition to the images set up by Theseus in honor of Ariadne, he also dedicated an image of Aphrodite given to him by Ariadne and instituted a Labyrinth dance, called the crane-dance by the Delians (Plut. Thes. 21.1). Can this testimony be connected with other elements of the myth of Ariadne? The earliest attestation for this heroine, in the Iliad, connects her with dance, specifically with the choros that Daidalos made for her:
And on it, the famous smithy worked a dancing floor
like the one that once in broad Knossos
Daidalos fashioned for Ariadne of the beautiful hair.
(18.590-92)
[¶70.] The word choros can be translated as "dance" or "dancing-place."78 Although in the Homeric passage it almost certainly indicates a "dancing-place," this does not prevent us from connecting the choros made by Daidalos for Ariadne with the Labyrinth dance instituted by Theseus.79 Dance is a common feature of Dionysiac worship. When Pausanias mentions the mass grave of the Haliai, women who helped Dionysos fight against Perseus, he also refers to the individual grave of Choreia (Choral Dance), one of the Haliai (2.20.4) who, according to the Argives, was given separate burial because of her high rank. Her name takes on greater meaning in light of Pausanias' explanation (10.4.3) of Homer's reference to kallichoros Panopeus (Od. 11.581). He tells us that it refers to the Thyiads' custom of stopping to dance at various places, including Panopeus, along the road from Athens to Delphi.80 Thus, dance is a point of contact between Ariadne, the official wife of Dionysos, and the maenads and Thyiads who follow him.
[¶71.] As we have noted, aside from Ariadne, Dionysos has very few liaisons with mortal women, most of them found only in later sources.81 Pausanias reports that at the festival of the Heraia, there were two choral dances, "one called that of Physkoa and the other of Hippodameia. This Physkoa they say came from Elis in the Hollow, and the name of the deme where she lived was Orthia. She mated with Dionysos and bore him a son called Narkaios. . . . They also say that Narkaios and Physkoa were the first to worship Dionysos. So various honors are paid to Physkoa, especially that of the chorus, named after her and managed by the Sixteen Women" (5.16.5-7, adapted from Jones). Hippodameia is honored for founding the Heraia (out of gratitude to Hera for her marriage to Pelops), and Physkoa, for her role in founding the local Dionysiac cult. Thus the two choruses are founded in honor of heroines who themselves founded cults, and they are set up by a group of women, the successors of the original Sixteen Women of Elis and Pisa who made peace between their two cities. As with the Athenian Thyiads, we find in a Dionysiac context an apparently independent religious association of women.
[¶72.] Physkoa, who is united erotically with Dionysos, could also be considered the first mythic Thyiad at Elis.82 In general the canonical mythic tradition distinguishes sharply between the lovers and the followers of Dionysos. That Physkoa is both lover of the god and founder of his cult suggests that the distinction is somewhat artificial. It is also tempting to make a connection between the choros of Ariadne and that of Physkoa.83 This may seem to be an isolated local tradition, but there is other evidence to challenge the distinction. We have already shown that Ariadne's connection to dance brings her into the sphere of Dionysos' worshipers, the Thyiads and the Haliai. Thus Ariadne's choros is a point of similarity with Physkoa, the first Thyiad of Elis, while Semele is connected with Thyia and the Thyiads by means of her divine name, and Ino by her function as nurse of Dionysos.84
[¶74.] The three heroines we have discussed in detail all transcend death in one way or another, and all of them are honored in ritual that marks this fact: Ariadne and Ino have festivals that combine mourning and rejoicing, while the mysteries of Semele seem to tell of her return from the Underworld. These heroines are all possessed of a striking doubleness, marking their mortal and divine aspects. Ariadne has two husbands to mark her two aspects, a mortal one who abandons her and an immortal one who stays with her forever. Ino and Semele each have a mortal name and an immortal one.85 Above all, these heroines have two fates: a human death and an immortal life.
[¶75.] As we have already had occasion to note, heroines are more likely to cross the boundary from mortal to immortal than male heroes. The heroines associated with Dionysos do this with striking consistency. Are they immune to death because they are under the protection of Dionysos, or are they drawn into his sphere because of their ability to transcend death? Throughout this discussion, I have spoken of these figures as heroines who become immortal. From the standpoint of myth, this is true, for this is the way in which the mythic narrative is shaped. There is in fact a larger historical problem that must be mentioned. Semele, Ino, and Ariadne are all local heroines whose myths are intertwined with the myth of Dionysos. They are also figures all of whom at one time or another have been considered to be goddesses in their own right. Although I reject the "faded god" theory as a general account of the origin of heroes (see the discussion in Chapter 3), we must nonetheless consider whether it has explanatory power for individual figures. A case has been made for the original divine status of all three of these heroines. Some scholars consider there to be a connection between the name Semele and a local Thracian or Semitic deity, a kind of mother goddess.86 Similarly, Leukothea seems to be a sea goddess, and Ariadne a Cretan nature goddess whose cult was found throughout the Aegean islands, and particularly on Naxos.87
[¶76.] By talking in mythic terms, I have taken a deliberately nonhistorical approach to this problem. Nonetheless, the question can be reformulated from a historical perspective. If in fact Semele, Ino, and Ariadne were originally goddesses in other places, how did they come to be attached to the cult of Theban-born Dionysos? Dionysos himself provides a cautionary example for the difficulty of speculating on the origin of the Greek gods. Nonetheless, we can reframe the question by asking what it is about this god that could attract to his myth and cult female figures previously worshiped as divine in other parts of the Aegean. Allowing for the possibility that the myths of apotheosis reflect actual syncretic activity, I think we might sketch an answer. The frequently invoked method of incorporation of a foreign divinity into an already existing mythic structure is to demote her or him to mortal or heroic status, and then incorporate this figure into the myth of a local god. No other god would so easily lend himself to this project as Dionysos, who is mired in mortality and yet transcends death.
[¶77.] Yet, it is this very feature of Dionysos that provides material for a strong attack against the syncretic model. Here we must take cognizance of the objections of Walter Otto: "The hypothesis [sc., of Semele's original divinity] does unheard-of violence to the myth as it comes down to us in all of the sources. The myth not only presents Semele as a mortal, but it lays the greatest emphasis on the fact that she was not a goddess and nevertheless gave birth to a god. . . . The mortality of the mother, therefore, must have been one of the essentials of the myth of Dionysus."88 As evidence for her original mortality, Otto also points to the necessity of giving Semele a new divine name, and to the heroic character of her cult at Thebes.
[¶78.] In this matter I am in agreement with Otto. We have had occasion before to comment on the shifting status of the heroines who are central to this study. Those with the most detailed myth and widespread cult are the ones who most often make the transition to divinity. As we observed above, it was at one time commonly held that this mythic transition was the trace of an earlier historical moment in which heroines were in fact goddesses. As I have argued thoroughout, I believe that this possibility of transcending heroic status is paradoxically one of the characteristics of heroines, and that this does not in any way undermine the integrity of the category but rather gives it its specificity. Only by insisting on the existence of heroes as a clearly marked religious category, and by recognizing the specific place of female heroized figures within this category, can we make sense of the phenomena.
[¶80.] In Chapter 3, I speculated that a symbolic exchange of natures takes place between Dionysos and his heroines, in which the god partakes of femininity while transmitting to the heroines something of his immortality. In further investigating this claim, we have seen a whole network of correspondences between the myths of Dionysos and of the heroines connected to him. At times the exchange of characteristics seems to operate with respect to the categories of both gender and existential status, forming a kind of chiastic pattern. Dionysos shows signs of mortality in the Orphic myths and the story of Lykourgos, while his female followers take on the male activities of hunting and war. Not only do issues of gender and immortality shape the narratives of all the figures involved, but we have also found that many of the specific motifs of Dionysiac myth are recapitulated in the myths of these heroines.
[¶81.] At the same time we have found that women have a far greater role to play in Dionysiac worship than in the worship of other male gods. Let us consider what relationship there might be between the high visibility of female figures in Dionysiac myth and the unusual role of women in Dionysiac cult. It seems that, in myth, Dionysos' birth from a mortal woman makes him vulnerable to death and therefore accessible to mortals, particularly to (mythic) mortal women. Attempts have been made to speculate about the benefits of Dionysiac cult for ancient Greek women. Notable among these is the work of Ross S. Kraemer, which draws on cross-cultural evidence to explain the appeal of ritual possession to marginal groups.89 Froma Zeitlin has pointed out the caution that is necessary in reading Greek ritual in this way. The notion that maenadic or other temporary ecstatic behaviors enacted by women operated as safety valves must be examined critically. Often these festivals, while allowing women temporary freedom to act in ways that were normally forbidden, at the same time reinscribe a male fantasy of feminine nature unbound. Thus the alternative version of women's nature which the festival offers may be as socially conditioned and as much a projection as the everyday one.90 Recognizing the importance of this critique, as well as the difficulty of assessing religious motivations in any society, much less an ancient one, I will nonetheless offer a few suggestions of my own about the possible benefits of participation in Dionysiac ritual for ancient Greek women.
[¶82.] Given the level of identification between god and worshiper in Dionysiac cult, and the fact that women worshiped the mother of Dionysos as well as the god himself, we might suppose that there was a promise of blessedness in the afterlife held out to the women who participated in a festival like the Herois at Delphi.91 After all, this is the appeal of the Eleusinian mysteries, which are also closely tied to myths of victory over death. We may also find a point of comparison in the role of the mother in these two cults. Demeter is not only mother to her daughter Kore, but in some sense an earth mother, while Semele's short-lived maternity gives her special status in the cult of Dionysos.92 A possible clue may be found in the previously mentioned conjecture of Plutarch, that the meaning of the festival of Herois has to do with Semele's return from the Underworld (Quaest. Gr. 12, 293d). Perhaps the ultimate promise of Dionysiac cult in one of its aspects was triumph over death for the women who followed the god. We must not assume that Greek ritual roles for women were conceived for the benefit of the participants. Nonetheless, it is tempting to think that the cults of Dionysos offered women not only a temporary loosening, however compromised, of the rigid bonds of the gender roles in which they lived out their daily lives, but also that brief respite from the constraints of mortality that all of humankind desires.
[¶83.] A distinctive feature of many Dionysiac cults restricted to women is the prominent part played by one of the heroines. In order to understand the significance of these rituals for female worshipers, we must take account of the "pivotal" role the heroine at times plays between the god and the worshiper. By this, I mean that the heroine is presented at a moment in her own myth which has thematic resonances with the myth of Dionysos, and which simultaneously invites the mortal female participant to recreate that moment. For example, the mysteries of the festival of Herois focus worship on the moment in which the god wins victory over death for his mother. This moment is, in its turn, a recapitulation of the god's own victory over death and attainment of immortality. At the same time the ritual may allow the worshipers themselves to hope for some mitigation of the horrors of death.
[¶84.] For another example, let us return to the hierogamy of the Anthesteria, which may have been a reenactment of the marriage of Dionysos and Ariadne, with a mortal woman standing in for the heroine. The taboos that surround this ritual point to the extreme danger associated with marriage between a mortal and a god, for which we have only to think of the union that produced Dionysos himself. The hierogamy was experienced directly only by one presumably highly privileged woman, with the assistance of the Gerarai, but it seems likely that the event was the focus for women's worship of Dionysos during this part of the festival. If the Basilinna was, in the words of Daraki, "Athènes devenue femme," she was at the same time the stand-in for all Athenian women, in her union with the god.
[¶85.] We know less of the particulars of cults of Ino, but according to Conon, there were mysteries in her honor.93 Plutarch's account of the Roman cult of Mater Matuta, whom he closely identifies with the Greek Ino-Leukothea, suggests that it allows women to identify with the foster-mother role taken on by the heroine. During the festival of Matuta, women show affection for their sisters' children.94 Pausanias tells us of a cave at Brasiai where Ino was supposed to have nursed the infant god, and it is possible that this spot may have been the focus of cult.95 In each of these cases, women worshiped Dionysos through the mediation of a female figure. By mediation I do not mean intercession, but a process by which the female worshiper could identify with a being more like herself than the male god, for all his sexual ambiguity, could ever be. In this way the various festivals emphasize rescue by the god (with perhaps a hint of a promise of immortality), care for the infant god, or union with the mature god.
[¶86.] Even if, as we have suggested, Dionysos' vulnerability and sexual ambiguity make him particularly available to women as a figure for identification, there still seems to be a two-step process, in which the heroines play a major role. Whether the prominence of heroines is the key to women's participation in Dionysiac cult, or the result, we cannot say. In either case, I would suggest, the heroine reenacts elements of Dionysos' myth in ways that are accessible to female worshipers, and this reenactment facilitates identification with the god.
FOOTNOTES:
1 Out of a vast bibliography on the god Dionysos, I have found the following works particularly helpful: H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos: Histoire du culte de Bacchos (Paris, 1951); E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), as well as his commentary on the Bacchae (Oxford, 1960); W. Otto, Dionysus, Myth and Cult, trans. Robert B. Palmer (Bloomington, 1965); M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich, 1967); M. Massenzio, Cultura e crisi permanente: La "Xenia" dionisiaca (Rome, 1970); M. Daraki, Dionysos (Paris, 1985). See now also T. H. Carpenter and C. A. Faraone, eds., The Masks of Dionysos (Ithaca, 1993).
2 See, for example, W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (London, l955) 146.
3 This is not to deny that there was historical resistance to Dionysiac cult, as any reader of Livy knows. The suppression of the Roman Bacchanalia of 186 B.C.E. can, however, only be understood in the context of social and political pressures in Roman society after the second Punic War. See C. Gallini, Protesta e integrazione nella Roma antica (Bari, 1970).
4 See above, n. 1.
5 Both literary and iconographic evidence clarify this point. Greek wine was traditionally mixed with water before drinking, and the proper mixing of wine distinguished the human symposium from the revels of satyrs and the god's solitary drinking. See J.-L. Durand, F. Frontisi-Ducroux, and F. Lissarrague, "Wine: Human and Divine," in A City of Images: Iconography and Society in Ancient Greece, ed. Claude Bérard et al., trans. D. Lyons (Princeton, 1989) 121-29.
6 Guthrie (1955) 172 makes this point, although he also believes in Dionysos' actual foreignness.
7 This section owes much to the work of T. H. Carpenter, Dionysian Imagery in Archaic Greek Art (Oxford, 1986).
8 For Boiotian cults of Dionysos, see A. Schachter, Cults of Boiotia. BICS suppl. 38.1 (1981) 1:172-95.
9 Hellenistic developments in Dionysiac worship are for the most part beyond the scope of the present project. On this topic see Jeanmaire (1951) 417-82; A. Henrichs, "Changing Dionysiac Identities," in Jewish and Christian Self-definition, vol. 3: Self-Definition in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. Meyer and Sanders (London, 1982) 137-60; 213-36.
10 See in particular Otto (1965), especially 189-201, for a discussion of the significance of Dionysos' relation to death. He also has a great deal to say on the subject of Dionysos' relations with women. Much of it is quite perceptive, although marred by Victorian attitudes. See, for example, his remarks on "the slighter importance of [female] sexual desire" (178).
11 I do not, as some commentators have, take the use of the word nurses to indicate that the god is still in his infancy, but read it rather as a generic term for his followers. See G. Privitera, Dioniso in Omero (Rome, 1970) 61n.18; R. Seaford, "Dionysos as Destroyer of the Household: Homer, Tragedy, and the Polis" in Carpenter and Faraone (1993) 116n.3. This passage is discussed at length in Chapter 3.
12 This version is implied in a fragment of Alcaeus (349 Campbell). See D. L. Page, ed., Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford, 1955) 258-60. See also Pausanias 1.20.3.
13 This is implied in Diodorus' account (5.52.2), in what is perhaps a late rationalization, when he says that Zeus killed Semele before she could bear Dionysos, so that that the child would have not one but two immortal parents, and so itself be born immortal.
14 W. Burkert, Homo Necans (Berkeley, 1983) 176.
15 Clem. Al., Protr. 2.18 = Orph. frg. 34-35 Kern. See M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983) 140-75.
16 Callim. frgs. 643, 517 Pfeiffer; Plut. Isis 365a. See O. Kern, "Dionysos," RE 5.1 (1905) 1019. See also Burkert (1983) 123f.; West (1983) 150-52.
17 See Marcel Detienne, Dionysos mis à mort (Paris, 1977) 163-207; Albert Henrichs, "`He Has a God in Him': Human and Divine in the Modern Perception of Dionysos," in Carpenter and Faraone (1993) 26-29.
18 See Henrichs (1982) 158-59 on role reversal in the Dionysiac material. See also M. Jameson, "The Asexuality of Dionysos," in Carpenter and Faraone (1993) 44-64, which reaches similar conclusions to my own. I prefer, however, to speak of "sexual ambiguity" rather than "asexuality."
19 C.P. Segal, "The Menace of Dionysos: Sex Roles and Reversals in Euripides' Bacchae," in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers, ed. Peradotto and Sullivan (Albany, 1984) 201. Segal notes (196-97) that Dionysos and women are both associated with threats to the social order.
20 podapos o gunnis, Aristoph. Thesm. 136 = Aesch. frg. 61 Nauck.
21 See Dodds (1960) xxviii ff. and 133-34 on the ritual aspects of cross-dressing, with references. See also C. Gallini, "Il travestismo rituale di Pentheo," SMSR 34 (1963) 211-28, who connects the scene in the Bacchae with the Oschophoria and other initiatory cross-dressing.
22 Bacchae 1202-15; 1233-43. See Segal (1984) 206-7.
23 Etym. Mag. (587.53).
24 Diodorus 44.61.5 refers to Ariadne as the "wedded wife" (gunaika gametên) of Dionysos.
25 See S. Kaempf-Dimitriadou, Die Liebe der Götter in der attischen Kunst (Berne, 1979) 12, 30-32. As C. Bérard and C. Bron note in "Bacchos au coeur de la cité. Le Thiase dionysiaque dans l'espace politique," in L'Association dionysiaque dans les sociétés anciennes (Rome, 1986) 22-23, one of the striking paradoxes of Dionysiac erotic imagery is the total absence of rape, pursuit, and violence. On the contrary, scenes of the god and Ariadne are represented by the "official" iconographic conventions of marriage.
26 Richard Hamilton, Choes and Anthesteria: Athenian Iconography and Ritual (Ann Arbor, 1992) 53-56 has recently called into question the traditional association of the hieros gamos with the Anthesteria. See below.
27 Aesch. Eum. 737f.: to d' arsen ainô panta, plên gamou tukhein, / apanti thumô, karta d' eimi tou patros.
28 On the "dream of a purely paternal heredity," see J.-P. Vernant, "Hestia-Hermès," in Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs (Paris, 1971) 2:133; M. Arthur, "The Dream of a World without Women," Arethusa 16 (1983) 97-116. See also Chapter 3, this volume.
29 Hipp. 616-24, Medea 573-75. Clearly these utterances are not to be taken as the expression of the playwright's own sentiments, but rather as revelatory of the characters who speak them.
30 Paus. 2.31.2, 2.37.5; Plut. De ser. num. vind. 566a; Diod. 4.25.4.
31 E.g., Thetis and Achilles, Medea and her children, Demeter and Demophoön. See L. Slatkin, The Power of Thetis (Berkeley, 1991) and "The Wrath of Thetis" TAPA 116 (1986) 1-24. I plan to return to this topic in another project.
32 Roscher under "Dionysos" lists the following as names for the women in Dionysos' entourage: Bacchai, Mainades, Thyiades, Lenai; and in Macedonia, Klodones and Mimallones. Athenaeus (5.198e) calls them Mimallones, Bassarai, and Lydai.
33 Semele: Quaest. Gr. 12, 293d. Dionysos: De mul. virt. 249e-f.
34 Sources for the Minyades: Plut. Quaest. Gr. 38, 299e-f; Ant. Lib. 10; Ovid Met. 4.1-40, 390-415. For the Proitides: Hes. frg. 131 M-W = Apollod. 2.2.2. According to Apollodorus, Hesiod says that they were driven mad for a slight against Dionysos, while Akusilaos says that Hera was the offended deity. For another group of daughters, see Semachidai in the Appendix.
35 C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque (Rome, 1977) 242-43. Burkert (1983) 172 has a slightly different reading, based on the fact that the divine anger of the myth is attributed in some versions to Hera. As he puts it, "Thus, Dionysos' priest returns again to Hera's sphere of power, for she is the goddess of marriage." See also his comments on the traditional antagonism between the cults of Dionysos and Hera, and their complementarity (185).
36 See Massenzio (1970) passim, for a provocative treatment of these myths.
37 It is only in Ovid that Dionysos has an erotic encounter with Erigone: Liber et Erigonem falsa deceperit uva ("Bacchus tricked Erigone with a false bunch of grapes," Met. 6.125). This is one of the scenes of caelestia crimina which Arachne weaves in her ill-fated competition with Athena. Whether Ovid is relying on a version long since lost, or shaping the tale for his own purposes, we cannot say.
38 Eratosthenes, Katast. 8 (Robert 79); Apollod. 3.14.7; Schol. Iliad 22.29; Hyg. Fab. 130; Ovid Met. 6.125. See Massenzio (1970) 13ff., Burkert (1983) 241-43, and Daraki (1985) 87ff.
39 Kern, "Dionysos," RE 5.1 (1905), 1020. See also RE s.v. "Aiora."
40 See under Oinotrop(h)oi in Appendix.
41 On the Hyperborean Maidens, see J. Larson, Greek Heroine Cults (Madison, 1995) 118-21, who stresses more their connection with Artemis.
42 See pp. 43-44 with n.22 above.
43 E. S. Holderman, A Study of the Greek Priestess (Chicago, 1913) emphasizes this phenomenon. J. A. Turner, HIEREIAI: Acquisition of Feminine Priesthoods in Ancient Greece (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1983) affirms the general rule while exploring exceptions. See also I. Savalli, La Donna nella società della Grecia antica (Bologna, 1983) 93-95 and Giampiera Arrigoni, Le Donne in Grecia (Rome, 1985) xxi n. 11.
44 Cf. the cult of Ares Gynaikothoinas at Tegea (Paus. 8.48.4-5).
45 L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1909) 5:160 cites the cult of Dionysos at Brysiai as the only one that excluded men. On Dionysiac cult in general, he adds that "the woman-ministrant was more essential generally to this cult than to that of any other male divinity, and was never excluded as she frequently was in the others." As I indicate below, I believe that there may have been other occasions when men were excluded. See R. Seaford, Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford, 1994).
46 While no inscriptional source supports using this word for the activities on Parnassos, as Dodds did in his commentary on the Bacchae, he is not alone in extrapolating the name from Euripides. See, for example, W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985) 291. Henrichs, "Die Maenaden von Milet" ZPE 4 (1969) 223-41 explicitly addresses this issue in his discussion of third-century inscriptions from Miletos and the Maeander area, emphasizing the importance of mainland precedent in the establishment of the cult, and treating the oreibasia as a distinct part of that cult. He concludes that Euripides had cult realities in mind. Both authors cite Plut. De mul. virt. 249e-f and Paus. 10.4.3 and 10.32.7 as independent testimony to the practice, if not its name.
47 Quaest. Gr. 38, 299e-300a (trans. F. C. Babbitt). That this event also had political ramifications is evident from Plutarch's comment that from then on the priesthood was made hereditary rather than elected.
48 On the Anthesteria see Jeanmaire (1951) 48-56; Burkert (1983) 213-47; Daraki (1985) 72ff; Hamilton (1992) passim.
49 Thus Jeanmaire (1951) 54-55, for whom it is a crucial point. Burkert, on the other hand, considers it out of the question that the marriage could have taken place on a day of ill omen. Recently Hamilton (1992) has also challenged the assumption that this event took place at the Anthesteria. If he is correct, this would not diminish the centrality of the ritual but would obviously call into question its association with death.
50 This oration, once said to be the work of Demosthenes, is now usually ascribed to "Pseudo-Demosthenes." W. K. Lacey, The Family in Classical Greece (Ithaca, 1968) 10, questions the usefulness of this distinction.
51 The phrase used is summeixiv . . . tô Dionusô kai o gamos. The sexual meaning of summeixis here has been disputed. See P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1993) on this passage. Although the events leading up to it may have been public, the sacred marriage itself was apparently witnessed by no one.
52 [See print edition for Greek] (3.20.3). Trans. adapted from Jones and Ormerod. See n. 45 above.
53 Jeanmaire (1951) 51-52. See also Daraki (1985) 78, who speaks of the queen as "Athènes devenue femme."
54 ôutos de Aidês kai Dionusos (Heraclit. frg. 15 Diels-Kranz). See Jeanmaire (1951) 56; also Daraki (1985) 80-81.
55 P. Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family (Boston, 1968) 222-24. This point is later taken up in the work of B. Simon, Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece: The Classical Roots of Modern Psychiatry (Ithaka, 1978) 119, 257.
56 For a highly critical view of Slater's work, see H. Foley, "Sex and State in Ancient Greece," Diacritics 5.4 (1975) 31-36. A slightly more sympathetic discussion appears in M. Arthur, "Review Essay: Classics," Signs 2.2 (1976) 395-97.
57 J. B. Keune, "Semele," RE 2A.2 (1923) 1344.
58 See Brelich, Gli eroi greci (Rome, 1958) 89 on the death by lightning as a hero's death.
59 For example, schol. Lycoph. 143: thuados [Bakkhês para to thuô to ormô ("Thyiad: Bacchant, from the verb thuo, to rush or be inspired")].
60 On a hydria in Berlin by the Leagros group (Berlin 1904; LIMC s.v. "Semele" 22), a woman named both Semele and Thyone stands by as Dionysos mounts his chariot. See Carpenter (1986) 24. A. Kossatz-Deissmann in LIMC s.v. "Semele," however, regards the second inscription, usually read as "Thyone," as meaningless. I have not been able to inspect the vase. Dr. Ursula Kästner of the Berlin Antikensammlung has kindly done so and assures me that while the reading "Thyone" is suspect, the inscription is not meaningless but requires further study.
61 For this festival, and a survey of evidence for the Thyiads, see M.-C.Villanueva Puig, "A propos des thyiades de Delphes," in L'Association dionysiaque dans les sociétés anciennes (Rome, 1986) 31-51.
62 Slater (1968). See note 55, above.
63 J. Fontenrose, "The Sorrows of Ino and of Procne," TAPA 79 (1948) 125-67 provides a detailed review of the evidence. His method, however, which involves forcing selected versions into a story-pattern, leads him to some extraordinary conclusions, such as that Ino and Semele were originally identical (147).
64 This is substantially the version given in Apollod. 3.4.3, but see 1.9.1-2 for another version.
65 In a forthcoming piece on Arion of Methymnos, I explore the Dionysiac associations of leaping into the sea.
66 In an unusual variation, Plutarch (De frat. am., 492d) suggests that Leukothea is in fact responsible for the immortalization of Dionysos.
67 S. Eitrem, "Leukothea," RE 12.2 (1912) 2293-306 reviews the evidence, commenting on the difficulties caused mythographers by the various wives of Athamas.
68 Hyg., Fab. 4 gives us the hypothesis of this lost play. Fab. 1-5 all concern the story of Ino, offer several permutations. Other sources include schol. Lycoph. 22 and 229; Eust. 667.5 on Iliad 7.86; Eust. 1543.20-32 on Od. 5.333; Apollod. 1.9.1-2. See J. G. Frazer's notes to this last passage (Cambridge, Mass., 1921) 1:74-77.
69 Plutarch, who equates her with Matuta, presents her as the figure of disinterested sisterly affection, suggesting that women at her shrine pray for their sisters' children because Ino was fond of her sister and took care of her sister's son, while being unlucky with her own children (Quaest. R. 17, 267e; cf. De frat. am. 492d). See below, n.95.
70 See L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (1921) 42-43; contra Fontenrose (1948) 166-67.
71 For the Hyakinthia, see Didymos quoting the Lakonika of Polykrates in Athenaeus 4.139d-f. See Chapter 3, n.64.
72 For general discussion of the Ariadne material, see R. Wagner,"Ariadne" RE 2.1 (1896) 803-11; A. M. Marini, "Il mito di Arianna nella tradizione letteraria e nell'arte figurativa," Atene e Roma n.s. 13 (1932) 60-97, 121-42; Johan Meerdink, Ariadne, een Onderzoek naar de oorsponkelijke Gestalte en de Ontwikkeling der Godin (Wageningen, [1939]); T.B.L. Webster, "The Myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus," Greece and Rome n.s. 13 (1966) 22-31. The most extended ancient treatment is Plut. Thes. 19-21. Others include Diod. 4.61, Apollod. Ep. 1.7-10, the scholia to Od. 11.322 and Iliad 18.591, and Eust. on the same passages.
73 String: scholia to Od. 11.322, Apollod. Ep. 1.9; secret of the labyrinth: Hyg. Fab. 42; Diod. 4.61.4; crown: Hyg. Astr. 2.5. This crown is, somewhat illogically, connected with the one given Theseus by Amphitrite (Bacch. 17). See Webster (1966) 24-26 for an attempt to sort out the different versions.
74 Eratosth. Kat. 5; AR. 3.1003; Arat. Phaen. 71; Ovid Fasti 3.459 and Met. 8.176-79.
75 See Bérard and Bron (1986) 22-23. It has been suggested that this festival, and the mythic marriage of Dionysos and Ariadne with which it has been connected, show the effects of Athenian propaganda. While the myth of marriage to Ariadne may have been politically convenient for the Athenians, this does not mean that it was invented out of thin air. It could only be viable if it reflected something in the character of the god Dionysos as he was perceived by his worshipers.
76 Webster (1966) 23-25 reads Odyssey 11.321 as Dionysos' punishment of Ariadne for running off with Theseus. As support for this, he cites the passage of Hyginus mentioned above, in which she lights the way for Theseus with Dionysos' crown.
77 Trans. B. Perrin, Plutarch's Lives, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1967).
78 Schol. T. Iliad 18.590 glosses khoros as ton prov khoreian topon (a place for the dance). D. Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic (Leyden, 1974) 43-63 discusses the choros and its associations with both Ariadne and Aphrodite (as well the associations between these two figures).
79 See Calame (1977) 108 on Theseus as a "mythic choregos," and on the significance of Ariadne's alliance with him.
80 See Boedeker (1974) 152 on the epithet kallichoros.
81 In addition to Physkoa, discussed below, there are Althaia, the mother of Deianeira by Dionysos (Hyg. Fab. 129 and Apollod. 1.8.1); Araithyrea, mother of Phlias by Dionysos (Paus. 2.12.6); Karya, beloved of Dionysos (Servius, Ad Verg. ecl. 8.29); Pallene, won by the god in a wrestling match (Nonnos Dion. 48.90ff.). His connections with men are even more limited. See Chapter 3.
82 R. Hanslik, "Physkoa," RE 20.1 (1941) 1166.
83 See Calame (1977) 244.
84 Webster (1966) notes that from the late fifth century, Attic painting shows Ariadne dressed as a maenad (p. 29). For Ariadne and dance, see Calame (1977) 225-26.
85 Ovid in the Fasti (3.511-13) gives even Ariadne a new divine name: tu mihi iuncta toro mihi iuncta vocabula sumes, / nam tibi mutatae Libera nomen erit (As you have shared my bed, so you shall share my name, for in your changed state your name shall be Libera [trans. adapted from Frazer]). In so doing, he is making use of a familiar equation of the old Roman gods Liber and Libera with Dionysos and his female partner. See J. G. Frazer's commentary (Hildesheim, 1973) 3:109-10.
86 P. Kretschmer, "Semele und Dionysos," in Aus der Anomia, archäologische Beiträge Carl Robert dargebracht (Berlin, 1890) 21. Larson (1995) 91 takes for granted Semele's original divinity.
87 R. F. Willetts, Cretan Cults and Festivals (London, 1962) 193-97.
88 Otto (1965) 70.
89 "Ecstasy and Possession: The Attraction of Women to the Cult of Dionysos," HThR 72 (1979) 55-80.
90 F. I. Zeitlin, "Cultic Models of the Female: Rites of Dionysos and Demeter," Arethusa 15 (1982) 129-57; Seaford (1994) 258, 311.
91 For Henrichs (1982) 139, 153-54, 160, this was a major component of Dionysiac religion for both men and women.
92 Even if we discount the possibility that her name may connect her to the Thracian-Phrygian earth goddess, as maintained by Kretschmer (1890).
93 Henrichs (1969) shows that in Miletos, Ino was an important model for women worshiping Dionysos, and that she was invoked for the founding of thiasoi.
94 De frat. am. 492d. In this and two other passages (Quaest. R. 16-17, 267d-e and Camillus 5.1-2), he stresses women's enactment of the ritual and its connection with the myth and cult of Ino-Leukothea. Extrapolation from Roman to Greek practice is hazardous, but Plutarch is himself Greek and familiar with Greek practices.
95 Paus. 3.24.4. Schachter, Cults of Bolotia (BICS supplement 38.2 [1986]) 62-64 discusses the evidence for Boiotia and the problems of interpretation.
