This relief shows a maenad, a female follower of Dionysos, god of wine. The maenad is someone who is especially susceptible to the divine frenzy Dionysos inspires through wine. In the relief, she is dancing to some hypnotic music we can only imagine. As she dances, the fabric of her dress moves with her; look at the rippling movement of the hem above her feet. The dress is fanciful, but highly expressive. In some places it clings tightly to her body; in others, it flutters in artful patterns.
While this maenad dances, she bows her heavy-looking head and seems not to see out of her eyes; there is something very serious about her experience of Dionysos. In Euripides’ tragedy Bacchae, women possessed by Dionysos dance with vigor. They also tear animals apart and dismember Pentheus, the king of Thebes who refused to welcome the god into his city. Euripides describes them in this lyric:
When the ebony flute, melodious
and sacred, plays the holy song
and thunderously incites the rush of women
to mountain, to mountain,
then, in delight, like a colt with its mother
at pasture, she frolics, a light-footed Bacchant.
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