Minyades

The Minyades (also Minyads) were the daughters of Minyas, king of Orchomenus in Boeotia, who refused to join the worship of Dionysus and were punished for it. In Ovid’s version they keep spinning and weaving through the god’s festival and are turned into bats. In the Boeotian tradition recorded by Plutarch they are driven mad and one of them gives her own son to be torn apart.

Who Were the Minyades?

Their father Minyas was an early king of Orchomenus, famous for his wealth; the people of Orchomenus were called Minyans after him, and his treasury was one of the wonders of Greece (Pausanias 9.36.4–6; 9.38.2). The sources give his daughters different names. Plutarch names three: Leucippe, Arsinoe and Alcathoe (Plutarch, Greek Questions 38). Ovid names Alcithoe, who is the one who denies Dionysus, and Leuconoe, who tells one of the stories (Metamorphoses 4.1–3, 4.167–168, 4.274). Alcathoe and Alcithoe are two spellings of the same name.

The Daughters of Minyas and Dionysus

Ovid’s Version: The Refusal and the Bats

In Ovid, the people of Thebes have accepted the new god, Bacchus, and a priest has called the women to keep his festival: the maidservants and mistresses must put aside their work, wear fawn skins, loose their hair and carry the thyrsus, and the priest warns that the god will be angry if he is slighted (Metamorphoses 4.4–9). The crowds obey. Only the Minyades stay inside, spinning wool and weaving, and they keep their maids at work (4.32–35). Alcithoe denies that Bacchus is the son of Jupiter, and her sisters join her (4.1–3).

To pass the time, the sisters tell stories as they work: one tells of Pyramus and Thisbe (4.55–166), Leuconoe of the Sun’s love for Leucothoe (4.167–270), and Alcithoe of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (4.274–388). While they are still at their work, drums sound without being seen, flutes and cymbals play, and the air smells of myrrh and saffron. Their looms begin to turn green: the cloth becomes ivy and vine, threads become tendrils, and purple glows in the grapes. At dusk the house seems to shake, torches blaze, and the sound of wild beasts howls. The sisters hide in the smoky house, shunning the light, and a membrane spreads over their small limbs and thin wings enclose their arms. They have no feathers but hold themselves up on transparent wings, and when they try to speak they make only a tiny squeak. They live in houses, not woods, hate the light, and fly by night; their name in Latin comes from the evening (4.389–415).

The Boeotian Tradition: Madness and Hippasus

Plutarch gives a darker account, tied to a rite at Orchomenus. The three daughters of Minyas went mad and craved human flesh. They drew lots for their children, and the lot fell to Leucippe to give her son Hippasus, who was torn to pieces. Their husbands put on mean clothes from grief and were called the Psoloeis (the “grimy” ones); the women were called the Oleiai, “destroyers”. At the yearly festival of the Agrionia the priest of Dionysus chases the women descended from this family with a drawn sword, and may kill any he catches. Plutarch says that in his own time the priest Zoilus killed one of them, fell ill of a wound that festered, and died, after which the people of Orchomenus took the priesthood away from his family and chose the best man of the whole people (Plutarch, Greek Questions 38).

Minyades Sources

Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.1–54, 4.167–168, 4.274 and 4.389–415; Plutarch, Greek Questions 38; Pausanias 9.36.4–6 and 9.38.2.

See Also: Dionysus, Minyas, Pentheus, Semele