Minyads
As minyades ( Greek Μινυάδες ), the three daughters Alkathoe ( Ἀλκαθόη even Alkithoe ) Arsinoe ( Ἀρσινόη even Arsippe ) and Leukippe ( Λευκίππη even Leukonoe ) of Minyas king of Orchomenus ( Boeotia called).
The sisters refuse to attend the celebrations of Dionysus and prefer to stick with their weaving work. The enraged God frightens them with a multitude of miraculous signs (music and fragrances, the fabric turns into vine and ivy tendrils, snakes come out of the wool basket, milk and honey drips from the ceiling, the house shakes, animal roars can be heard etc. ) then the sisters themselves are seized with Bakchian frenzy. They tear ( Sparagmos ) Hippasus , the son of Leukippe, and go raving into the mountains.
Eventually they were turned into night birds by Hermes .
Plutarch reports that at the Orchemnonic Dionysus festival of Agriona, a woman from the family of the Minyads was persecuted by the Dionysus priest as the ritual representative of the god. If the woman was caught by the priest, he was allowed to kill her with the sword.
The minyads were considered prototypical child murderers in antiquity.
swell
- Ovid Metamorphoses 4, 1-40. 4, 390-415
- Plutarch quaestiones Graecae 38
- Claudius Aelianus Varia historia 3.42
- Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 10 (after Nikandros from Kolophon Heteroiumena )
Remarks
- ↑ Plutarch, moralia 299f.