“Metamorphosis metamorphoseos. Dionysos and the Daughters of Minyas”, in F. Citti, L. Pasetti,...

FRANCESCO CRAPANZANO

KOYRE, GALILEOE IL ‘VECCHIO SOGNO’

DI PLATONE

Leo S. OlschkiFirenzeMMXIV

LXXIII

METAMORFOSITRA SCIENZA

E LETTERATURAa cura di

Francesco Citti, Lucia PasettiDaniele Pellacani

Centro StudiLa permanenza del Classico

Ricerche 32

ante retroque prospiciens

Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e ItalianisticaUniversità di Bologna

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ISBN 978 88 222 6384 1

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aLBerto BernaBé

METAMORPHOSIS METAMORPHOSEOS:DIOnYSOS AnD THE DAUGHTERS OF MInYAS*

1. Foreword

In the present paper, I shall focus on various versions of the same myth in which Dionysus metamorphoses himself and others, namely, the myth of Minyas’ daughters. The myth was recorded by Corinna, the Boeotian poetess, and by nicander in his Metamorphoses. However, only three prose summaries1 have been preserved. We have also a highly elaborated poetic version by Ovid.2 In my view all these versions belong within the wider narrative framework of ‘Dionysus’ antagonists punished by the god’, of which either the Homeric Hymn 7 to Dionysus or Euripides’ Bacchae could be relevant examples.3

* The Spanish Ministry of Science an Innovation has given financial support for the research of this paper (FFI201017047). I am very grateful to Richard Buxton for their interesting suggestions regarding a former draft of the text.

1 Ael. VH 3,42, Ant. lib. 10, and Plut. aet. Rom. Graec. 299E.2 Ov. met. 4,142 and 389415.3 About the Minyads’ myth and the Agrionia, see a.g. Bather, “The problem of the Bacchae”,

Journal of Hellenic studies, 1894, 14: 244263, p. 260; martin Persson niLsson, Griechische Feste von religiöser Bedeutung mit Ausschluss der Attische (leipzig: Teubner, 1906), pp. 271274; WiLLiam reginaLd haLLiday, Greek Questions of Plutarch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928 [new York: Arno Press, 1975]), pp. 164168; samson eitrem, “Minyaden”, in Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 15,2 (Stuttgart: A. Druckenmüller, 1932), coll. 20122014; waLter Friedrich otto, Dioniso, Mito y culto (Madrid: Siruela, 1997; original edition Dionysos. Mythos und Kultus [Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1933]), pp. 39, 6263, 79, 143146; G. aureLio PriVitera, “I rapporti di Dioniso con Posidone in età micenea”, Studi urbinati, 1965, 39 n.s. B 1: 219235; cLaude caLame, Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1977), pp. 241243 and 326; WaLter Burkert, Homo Necans. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (Berkeleylos Angeleslondon: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 168179; id., Religión griega, arcaica y clásica (enlarged edition, Madrid: Abada, 2007), pp. 221222; ken dowden, Death and the maiden: girls’ initiation rites in Greek mythology (londonnew York: Rouletdge, 1989), pp. 8285; GioVanni casadio, Storia del culto di Dioniso in Argolide (Roma: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1994), pp. 8499; Brigitte Le guen, Les associations de


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I shall not try to reconstruct an original version of the Minyads myth, but rather point out which aspects, out of a common stock about whose characteristics and origin we know nothing, are chosen by each individual author. Some aspects are not selfevident, but they can be deduced to a certain extent from the narration; we could say they are underlying in these versions. The analysis of the analogies and differences between narrations, and their comparison to other similar ones, will allow us to see how the capacity of metamorphosing himself and others is intrinsically linked to Dionysus’ personality and how, despite the existence of a basic narrative schema in these tales, the authors modify it with great freedom. Thus the little pun of the title, in which I used the metamorphosis, meaning, literary metamorphosis, of a metamorphosis.

2. the texts

Aelian makes a reference to how the cult to Dionysus was spreading quite quickly and had already reached Orchomenos, where it was also quite successful, albeit with one exception: Minyas’ daughters had not taken part in those rites and were punished by being metamorphosed and by the death of leucippe’s son.4

They say that only the daughters of Minyas, leucippe, Arsippe, and Alcithoe, rebelled against the dance in honour of Dionysos, and they did so for love of their husbands; for this reason they did not become maenads of the god. He was angry. They sat at their looms and toiled industriously in honour of Ergane, and suddenly ivy and vines began to envelop the looms and snakes made their lair in the baskets of wool. Wine and milk dripped down from the ceiling. But not even these events persuaded the women to join in the worship of the god. Then they committed a terrible act, not on Cithaeron, but no less serious than the one perpetrated on Cithaeron.5 The daughters of Minyas tore to pieces, as if he were a fawn, the young child of leucippe, a boy still of tender years. This was their first act of madness, and then they rushed off to join the women who had been maenads from the first. The latter chased them away because of their pollution, and they then became birds, one changing herself into a crow, the second into a bat, and the third an owl.

Technites Dionysiaques à l’époque Hellénistique (nancy: A.D.R.A.Paris: De Boccard, 2001), nn. 20 and 21; aLBerto BernaBé, Dioses, héroes y orígenes del mundo. Lecturas de mitología (Madrid: Abada, 2008), pp. 151153; id., “las Agrionias y el mito de las Miníades. Razones de un ritual”, in ana maría gonzáLez de toBia (ed.), Mito y Performance. De la Grecia a la Modernidad (la Plata: Centro de Estudios de lenguas Clásicas, 2010), pp. 361385.

4 Ael. VH 3,42. Transl. by nigeL g. wiLson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1997).5 That is, Pentheus’ dismemberment (cf. Eur. Bac. 11181136).


metamorphosis metamorphoseos: dionysos and the daughters of minyas

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The version of Antoninus liberalis shows very similar characteristics, including the sacrifice of Hippasus, son of leucippe:6

[nikandros tells this tale in the fourth book of his Metamorphoses, as does Corinna]. 1. The daughters of Minyas, son of Orchomenos, were leukippe, Arsippe and Alkathoe. They turned out to be startlingly diligent. They strongly criticized other women because they abandoned the city to go as Bacchai in the hills, until Dionysos took on the likeness of a girl and urged the Minyades not to miss out on the rites or mysteries of the god. 2. But they paid no heed to him. At this Dionysos was angered and instead of a girl became a bull, then a lion, then a leopard. From the beams of their looms there flowed for him milk and nectar. 3. At these portents terror gripped the maidens. Without delay the three drew lots into a pot and shook it. The lot fell to leukippe and she vowed to offer a sacrifice to the god her own son Hippasos whom she tore to pieces with the help of her sisters. 4. Abandoning their paternal home, they went as Bacchai in the mountains, browsing on ivy, honeysuckle and laurel, until Hermes touched them with his wand and changed them into flying creatures. One of them became a bat, another an owl and the third an eagle owl. And all three continuously avoided the light of the sun.

On the other hand, Plutarch mentions only one episode, Hippasus’ death:7

They relate that the daughters of Minyas, leucippe and Arsione and Alcathoe, becoming insane, conceived a craving for human flesh, and drew lots for their children. The lot fell upon leucippe to contribute her son Hippasus to be torn in pieces.

Finally, Ovid8 offers a much longer version, which fulfils, nevertheless, his own literary compositional needs. I only reproduce the most significant points of this last version. The context of the quoted passages is the following: Ovid initially mentions one of the sisters, who in his version is called Alcithoë.9

But Alcitho, daughter of Mynias, will not celebrate the Bacchic rites,in acceptance of the god. She is rash enough to deny that Bacchusis the son of Jupiter, and her sisters sharein her impiety.

He then narrates in great detail how the priest had commanded the celebration of a feast, warning in advance that if his god were to be offended, his wrath would be unsurpassed. Ovid takes the opportunity of describing

6 Ant. lib. 10.7 Plut. aet. Rom. Graec. 299E. Transl. by Frank coLe BaBBitt, vol. 4 (Cambridge, Mass.

london: Harvard UPHeinemann, 19361).8 Ov. met. 4,142 and 389415.9 Ibid. 4,14. Transl. by anthony s. kLine (<http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Ovhome.htm>).


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those elements characteristic, almost archetypical, of the Bacchic rites. He then mentions how mothers and wives obey the priest:10

The young women and mothers obey,leaving their baskets and looms, and their unfinished tasks.

A detailed, and somehow bookish, list of the god’s epithets and a song of praise to his beauty and power follow. He finishes by pointing out the noteworthy exception of the attitude of Minyas’ daughters.11

Only the daughters of Mynias remain inside,disturbing the festival, with the untimely arts of Minerva,drawing out strands of wool, twisting the threads with their fingers,or staying at their looms, and plying their servants with work.Then one of them speaks, spinning the thread lightly with her thumb.«While the others are leaving their work, and thronging to this false religion,let us, restrained by Pallas, a truer goddess, lightenthe useful work of our hands».

At this moment, Ovid interrupts the narration by presenting other stories as told by the sisters, but he resumes the tale to narrate the prodigies that foretell the power of the god, described in great and profuse detail, and the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas into bats:12

The story was finished, and the daughters of Minyasstill pressed on with their work, spurning the god and profaning his festival,when suddenly harsh sounds sprang up from unseendrums, pipes with curved horns sounded,and cymbals clashed. Saffron and myrrh perfumed the air,and unbelievably their looms began to grow like greenwood,the cloth they were weaving put out leaves of hanging ivy,part altered to vines, and what were once threadschanged into tendrils: vine shoots came out of the warp,and clusters of dark‑coloured grapes took on the splendour of the purple fabric.now the day was past, and the time had comewhen you could not say that it was light or darkness,but a borderland of light and uncertain night.Suddenly the ceiling shook, the oil lamps seemed to brighten,and the house to shine with glowing fires,and fill with the howling of fierce creatures’ deceptive phantoms.Quickly the sisters hide in the smoke‑filled house,

10 Ov. met. 4,910.11 Ibid. 4,3239.12 Ibid. 4,389415.



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and, in various places, shun the flames and light.While they seek the shadows, a thin membrane stretchesover their slender limbs, and delicate wings enfold their arms.The darkness prevents them knowing how they have losttheir former shape. They do not rise on soft plumage,but lift themselves on semi‑transparent wings,and trying to speak emit the tiniest squeak,as befits their bodies, and tell their grief in faint shrieks.They frequent rafters, rather than woods, and, hating the light,they fly at night, and derive their name (vespertiliones), from the evening (vesper).

3. thematic comPonents oF the myth

In order to be able to make the comparison straightforward, I shall divide the myth into four parts, which I shall then analyse separately:

a) Reasons for antagonismb) Prodigies showing the god’s powerc) The god’s wrathd) Consequences of the god’s wrath: madness and metamorphosis.

4. comParison oF comPonents

4.1. Reasons for antagonism

The reasons for the Minyads’ antagonism toward the god are quite similar in all versions, though each author stresses some over others. Aelian points out that the daughters of Minyas were the only ones who ἀφηνιάσαι τῆς χορείας «rebelled against the dance». The verb ἀφηνιάσαι graphically describes how they «reject the bridle». Minyas’ daughters are presented as untamed mares who do not want to be subjected to the bridle. The proper behaviour is to take part in the god’s chorus. The expression «and they did so for» (αἴτιον δὲ ὅτι) presents the only known cause of their behaviour: their love for their husbands (ἐπόθουν τοὺς γαμέτας). However, a few lines later, Aelian points out a second reason: their conscientiousness: «they toiled industriously in honour of Ergane» (ἐπονοῦντο περὶ τὴν Ἐργάνην εὖ μάλα φιλοτίμως). The mentioning of Ergane, an epithet of Athena,13 marginally introduces the topic of the conflict between gods: Athena is the goddess of labour and order, while Dionysus is the god of festivity and disorder.

13 See, for example, Soph. fr. 844 Radt, lycurg. 6 fr. 22, Paus. 1,24,3.


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In his version, Antoninus liberalis omits the topic of conjugal love and only underlines the motif of these women’s dedication to work, which he considers it to be excessive and far from normal: «They turned out to be startlingly diligent» (ἀπέβησαν ἐκτόπως φιλεργοί). He does, however, draw attention to another aspect, namely, the order related to the civic space, to the city, by mentioning that the daughters of Minyas censor the rest of the women because they abandon the city and lose their selfcontrol in the mountains (ὅτι ἐκλιποῦσαι τὴν πόλιν ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν ἐβάκχευον).

Ovid presents these women in their most radical attitude. In this case, the young women not only either act by omission, or restrict themselves to criticise other women’s attitudes, but consider the mysteries to be unnecessary and deny Bacchus his status as Jupiter’s son and, therefore, his condition of divinity. However, the poet knows how to preserve quite subtly ancient elements of the myth in 4,910, though these references are made not to the daughters of Minyas, but to the other women, those who follow the god’s commands.14 He thereby underlines two aspects of these women: their social condition and their working condition. They are mothers and wives, women within the social order, and they dedicate themselves to those tasks attributed to them by society. However, they do accept, as they should, the temporary disruption of their obligations as mothers and wives, as well as the hindrance to their achievement of household tasks.

Ovid insists also on the Minyads’ diligence, their devotion to the goddess Pallas, patron goddess of feminine work. It is their pride in their dedication to work, and their awareness of the usefulness of what they do, which leads them to deprecate the Dionysian cult, supposedly because they regard it as useless. The poet shows his disapproval of this particular attitude as well in his splendid intempestiva turbantes festa Minerva «disturbing the festival, with the untimely (arts of) Minerva» (4,33). The reference to Minerva reintroduces the element of conflict between the gods, which would be clearly stated in the radical statement Pallas, melior dea «Pallas, a truer goddess» (4,38). The qualification as intempestiva and the expression turbantes festa imply that the author considers the feast important and that the young women’s work, since it is carried out when it should not be, disturbs it.

4.2. Prodigies showing the god’s power

A second important element of the myth is the fact that the god sends Minyas’ daughters a number of warning signs, whose main features relate to plants, and to products usually associated with the god, affecting the women’s

14 Parent matresque nurusque, «The young women and mothers obey».



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working tools. In Aelian, ivy and vines turn up in the looms and serpents appear in the little needlework baskets. Wine and honey drip from the ceiling.

A very similar catalogue of prodigies appears in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (7):15

But suddenly they began to see miraculous apparitions.First of all, wine gushed out over the dark swift ship,sweettasting and fragant, and there rose a smellambrosial, and the sailors were all seized with astonishment as they shaw it.Then along the top of the sail there spreada vine in both directions, hung with many grape clusters.About the mast dark ivy was winding,all flowering, and pretty berries were out in it.and all the toles were decorated with garlands.

The only difference here is that the working tool is a boat and the reason for the god’s warnings is the fact that some pirates have tried to seize it. The description is significantly richer because the appearance of the god’s characteristics constitutes a feast for the senses. The prodigies are not only seen, but also smelled (εὐώδης, ὀδμή) and heard (κελάρυξ). Even the wine seems to be tasted (ἡδύποτος). This is only logical, since this is a poetic text, whereas the other preserved Greek texts are much more austere summaries.

Antoninus liberalis separates in his narrative the prodigy from the god’s warning, since the warning is not made by means of a prodigy (which would come after Dionysus’ metamorphosis), but rather the god adopts the shape of a young maiden (another metamorphosis) and urges the daughters of Minyas to pay homage to the god, which they disregard. Dionysus also metamorphoses into a youth in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus:16

I will make remembrance: how he appeared by the shore of the barren sea, on a juttling headland, in the likeness of a youth in first manhood.

Ovid, for his part, eliminates the element of the god’s warning. He presents a poetical description, closer to that of the Homeric Hymn. All senses are also affected here: the sound of the invisible drums, flutes, cymbals and the howling of beasts; the smell of myrrh and saffron; the vision of the transformation of looms into ivy and vines and the shining of the torches at night. In a poetical display, Ovid does not describe the growth of plants in

15 h.Hom. 7,334342. Transl. by martin L. west (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2003).16 h.Hom. 7,24.


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the looms, but rather the looms and the fabrics metamorphose into plants, announcing the immediate metamorphosis of the Minyadae themselves.

4.3. The god’s wrath

The topic of the metamorphoses of the god is not present in Aelian; in Ovid there is only a slight trace of it in 4,404 falsaque saevarum simulacra ulu lare ferarum «and fill with the howling of fierce creatures’ deceptive phantoms». The god does not selftransform, but creates images of fierce creatures. In Antoninus liberalis the god is transformed into a bull, a lion and a panther. The theme is old, since already in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus the god transforms itself into a lion and into a bear:17

But the god became a lion in the ship,a terrible lion in the bows, and he roared loud; and amidshipshe made a shaggy‑maned bear, to signal his power.

These animals were related to the god, who is invoked as ἄξιε ταῦρε by women from Elis:18

Then they chant twice the refrain:Worthy bull!

He is also invoked as a bull, a lion or a serpent by the bacchantes in Euripides’ tragedy:19

Appear as a bull or a many‑headedsnake (for us) to see or a fire‑blazinglion to behold!

and is often depicted in iconography in a chariot drawn by panthers.

4.4. Consequences of the god’s wrath

The consequences of Dionysus’ wrath are mainly two, destructive madness and the metamorphosis of the antagonist, though only the second of these effects appears in all versions.

17 Ibid. 7,4446.18 Plut. aet. Rom. Graec. 299B = carm. pop. 871 Page. Transl. by BaBBitt (cit. n. 7).19 Eur. Bac. 10171019. Transl. by richard seaFord (Warminster: Aris & Phillips 1996).



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4.4.1. Destructive madness

Aelian’s narration is a little bit rough. We are told that the first omens were not effective and he adds that the daughters of Minyas, in a fit of madness, tear up leucippe’s son and that this fact causes their persecution by «the women who had been Maenads from the beginning», that is, those who were only possessed by a positive μανία (I shall return to this point later). We should infer, since the author is not explicit about it, that is the god who provokes that madness in them. The theme has parallels in Euripides’ Bacchae, where Agave is obfuscated by the god in order to dismember her own son, Pentheus.

Antoninus liberalis’ tale is also a peculiar one. It is not madness but terror that inspires them, and the death of the child is narrated as if it were the result of the women deciding to make a human sacrifice to the god in order to appease him, and draw lots which child to sacrifice. This substitution is, without a doubt, an adaptation.

For his part, Plutarch, who mentions only this part of the myth, refers to the madness again (which is more logical), but in a slightly more sinister tone. In this case, the possessed Minyadae want human flesh, supposedly to eat it, and this seems to be their exclusive motive. The theme of the lot, nonetheless, reappears. The most logical sequence in the original myth is that the women are possessed by madness, want to devour a child, and make a draw to see who is going to be the victim.

Ovid does not show any interest in the theme of madness as a punishment from the god, since he is not writing in theological terms. Rather, for obvious reasons, the narration of the metamorphosis is of paramount interest, and the theme of madness would distract him from his narration.

4.4.2. The metamorphosis

The end of the myth is the metamorphosis of the guilty females, on which all (except for Plutarch) agree: they are transformed into similar animals.20 Only Antoninus liberalis gives reasons for the selection of these particular animals: they are nocturnal birds, so the daughters of Minyas will never see the sunlight again.

20 Aelian tells us that they transform involuntarily, supposedly due to the power of the god himself, into a crow, a bat, and an owl; Antoninus liberalis relates that they transform thanks to Hermes’ wand, and they do into a bat, an owl, and an eagle owl; in Ovid’s poem, Dionysus transforms the three of them into bats, in a scene following the one describing the metamorphoses in the looms.


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In the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus the pirates are metamorphosed as well but, since they are sailors, they, logically, turn into sea animals, into dolphins:21

The others all leapt out into seawhen they saw it, to avoid an ill doom,and they turned into dolphins.

5. reasons For a myth

now that the variants have been examined, I would like to go a little bit further in order to try to establish the ideological bases of this myth, aside from the details of the plot.

5.1. Hostility towards the god

We should start, then, with the first thematic element, the hostility towards the god’s rituals. The hypothesis put forward by Rhode defended that Dionysus was a god that had arrived late to the Greek pantheon, a fact which would explain his scarcely being mentioned in Homer and, among other characteristics beyond the scope of this paper, the myths of hostility of kings against the god, from which the stories of lycurgus and Pentheus are clear examples.22 However, references to Dionysus in Mycenaean tablets of the second millennia B.C.E.23 destroys this hypothesis of the late arrival of the god to Greece. Moreover, we have also seen that only Ovid is so radical as to put into the women’ mouths a denial of Dionysus’ divine character. The oldest sources do not insist on this aspect, but rather present other reasons, namely, conjugal fidelity, diligence, the civic dimension, and control. This is so because Dionysus and his cult seem to undermine the pillars of an orderly civic life: work, family and the control of violence to facilitate the advancement of good behaviour. To sum up, Dionysus seems to be the antithesis of civilized life.

Indeed, although it would be too lengthy to determine here the characteristic features of such a complex god as Dionysus, we may focus on three very impor

21 h.Hom. 7,51-53.22 erwin rohde, Psyche. Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, vol. 2 (Tübingen:

Maar, 18982), pp. 5 ff., 23 ff. (English Translation: Psyche; the cult of souls and belief in immortality among the Greeks [Freeport n.Y.: Books for librairies Press, 1972]).

23 Cf. a detailed report in aLBerto BernaBé, “Dionysos in Mycenean World”, in Redefining Dionysos, ed. by Alberto Bernabé, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristobal, Raquel Martín Hernández (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 2337.



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tant ones: his relation to nature, the liberation and the μανία. I suspect that the first two do not require much explanation, but the third one does.

One of the prototypical features of Dionysus is his being ‘furious’, not so much because he is possessed by fury as because he typifies divine possession. The Greek word designating this, μανία, denotes ‘frenzy’, not only in the sense of ‘delirium’, of losing the sense of reality, but also as an intensifying expe rience of mental power, a sort of outraged vitality and euphoria that leads to surpassing the limits of normality.24 This divine possession is characteristic of Dionysian cults and in most cases it does not have malignant secondary effects. The rites to the god are performed outside the city, outside the realm of order, in the fields, at night, and usually take place without incident. In myth, it is only when certain individuals show their opposition to these cults that the madness of women, provoked by Dionysus, becomes the means of the god’s punishment against those who have been hostile towards him, whether this punishment is directed against the possessed or any of their relatives. Therefore, the antagonists, those who oppose the god’s designs, suffer an exemplary punishment, their own madness, which can lead them either to act against members of their own families, or to find their own destruction at the hands of another maddened person.

Apparently, the daughters of Minyas have not committed any crime, quite the contrary. They are loving wives, hardworking in the extreme. In brief, they impeccably fulfil the roles that ancient Greece assumptions reserved for women. But Dionysus, the miscreant god, demands their worship: the women should abandon their work and gather at might in order to go into a sort of trance during the bacchic rite. They do not respond, because they think that such practices go against their morals, their diligence, their condition as women comme il faut.

5.2. Dionysus’ warnings

It seems clear that the warning of the god metamorphosed into a young maiden is an adaptation by Antoninus liberalis or nicander. The more general plot is that Dionysus will warn mortals by means of prodigies in which plants or products related to him invade manmade areas, looms or warehouses; the natural world, the ivy that crowns his followers, the vine that is pressed to make wine, bursts into the working tools. Thus, serpents appear

24 Burkert, Religión griega (cit. n. 3), p. 219; cf. José Luis caLVo martínez, “Sobre la manía y el entusiasmo”, Emerita, 1973, 41: 157182.


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in needlework baskets, serpents that are, for the Greeks, animals coming from the depths of the Earth, inbetween the world of the living and the world of the dead, animals dangerous for an orderly life, but natural to the bacchic sphere. In contrast to the need to make a living by having to work, milk and honey are effortlessly produced in the sisters’ loom, as we are told they were produced in the mountains during the rapid movement of the bacchants. Wine is distilled without having to be pressed. Dionysus is presented at one time as the god of mutation of all things, on the borderline between life and death, a cornucopia of pleasures alien to working demands.

5.3. The god’s wrath

The daughters of Minyas are unable to take heed of the god’s warning. Their ordered and civic spirit does not recognise the deep sense of the intromission of the natural, automatic, noncivic element within the realm of the οἶκος. This is why the god takes revenge, either mutating himself in order to provoke terror or causing μανία at its most radical level, which is madness. In reality, one and the other are both sides of the same coin. The antagonist is obfuscated, abandoning any sense of reality. The moderate μανία they reject makes the daughters of Minyas fall into its most extreme variant, and they therefore end up committing the most nefarious acts from the social point of view, namely, murder, dismembering, even devouring, their own children.

5.4. Metamorphosis

Dionysus, the god of transformations, after having changed his antagonists into the antithesis of their previous personalities (from sensible women, exemplary mothers and wives and unfailingly dedicated to their work, into mad women, killers of their own children, and fugitives across the mountains) wraps up his punishment in an exemplary manner, turning them into nocturnal birds. They, who did not want to abandon their husbands’ side at night and wanted to work all day, are forced to be errant at night forever.

The great paradox is that the reality of facts ends up showing that the man who pursues the crazy god or the women who reject a cult to him for the sake of common sense are in the end the ones who are going against the order of things and finish up catastrophically: Minyas daughters, mad and killing the child of one of them, and Pentheus, miserably dismembered, a victim of the unrestrained madness of his mother and his closest female relatives.



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The myths of Dionysus’ antagonists, in as much as they are a paradigmatic explanation of reality, issue a series of warnings: against a continuously enforced and rigid order in which a society cannot survive; against the possibility of the fulfilment of the social role of females without any loosening of the social structures, against the certainty that, under such conditions, female citizens will at some point lose control, at least for the few days in which the ritual takes place, after which the social order should be immediately reestablished. Dionysus’ celebrations will have a lot to do, in these cases, with controlled disorder, in order to avoid destruction, a sort of exhaust valve to avoid total havoc. If this controlled alteration of order were to fail, a much greater alteration, an unrestrained dementia, a feast of destruction and blood, will then take place.

This is why this myth, or myths such as this, were used as ideological arguments in festivals such as the Agrionia, in honour of Dionysus ἀγριώνιος, ‘the wild one’, a festival which used to take place in Orchomenos and other places in Greece. It has not been proved that in ancient times these rites involved human sacrifices. In any case, although the Agrionia took place to celebrate the transgression of the ordered world, and a liberation from civilized morals, but the effect of the festival was salutary, since it allowed for regeneration, a refoundation of order after the parenthesis of the festival.25

6. concLusion

The metamorphosis of the daughters of Minyas introduces an interesting proposal, similar to the famous statement by Tancredi, a character of Tomasi di lampe dusa’s Il gattopardo: «If we want things to stay as they are, things have to change».26 The great paradox is that the god who metamorphoses himself, who metamorphoses others, presents in this myth his deep capacity for changing, for liberating and provoking the most extreme happiness and horror in order to service the preservation of order, norms and boring social stability. The restraining bridle enables ritual liberation to take place; the rite liberates in order to reimpose restraint.

25 BernaBé, “las Agrionias” (cit. n. 3).26 «Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi!».


— 265 —

InDICE

Francesco citti – Lucia Pasetti, Metamorfosi tra scienza e letteratura:temi e lessico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » V

aLBerto BernaBé, Metamorphosis metamorphoseos: Dionysos andthe daughters of Minyas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 1

Luis arturo guichard, Catálogos de metamorfosis de época imperialy tardoantigua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 15

enrico magneLLi, Metamorfosi in poesia e poesia di metamorfosiin età ellenistica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 41

Pietro Li causi, Hybridization as Speciation? Greek Folk Biology(and Aristotle) on the Mutation of Species . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 63

matteo marteLLi, Dissoluzioni, distillazioni e passaggi di stato nelcorpus degli alchimisti Greci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 81

damien neLis, Ovidio, Metamorfosi 1,416451: nova monstra efoedera naturae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 101

aLessandro Barchiesi, Per una lettura delle Metamorfosi di Ovidio ... » 123

Lucia Pasetti, Immagini e lessico della metamorfosi in Apuleio . . . » 137

Bruna Pieri, Conversione come metamorfosi nelle Confessioni diAgostino: sondaggi lessicali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 175

maria conForti, Medea and the phoenix: a note on Ovidian imageryand the prolongatio vitae in early modern medicine . . . . . . . . . . . » 219

aLessandro ottaViani, Lo sguardo onirico di Pitagora: vis vegetativafra metamorfosi e cristallizzazione . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 231

Indice dei nomi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » 249


“Metamorphosis metamorphoseos. Dionysos and the Daughters of Minyas”, in F. Citti, L. Pasetti,...

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