Thyrsi

In Ancient Greece a ''thyrsus'' () or ''thyrsos'' (; ) was a wand or staff of giant fennel (''Ferula communis'') covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with '' taeniae'' and topped with a pine cone, artichoke, fennel, or by a bunch of vine-leaves and grapes or ivy-leaves and berries, carried during Hellenic festivals and religious ceremonies. The ''thyrsus'' is typically associated with the Greek god Dionysus (and his subsequent Roman equivalent Bacchus) as a symbol of prosperity, fertility, and hedonism.

Religious and ceremonial use

In Greek religion, the staff was carried by the devotees of Dionysus. Euripides wrote that honey dripped from the ''thyrsos'' staves that the Bacchic maenads carried. The ''thyrsus'' was a sacred instrument at religious rituals and fêtes.

The fabulous history of Bacchus relates that he converted the ''thyrsi'' carried by himself and his followers into dangerous weapons, by concealing an iron point in the head of leaves. Hence his ''thyrsus'' is called "a spear enveloped in vine-leaves", and its point was thought to incite to madness.

Symbolism

The ''thyrsus'', associated with the followers of Dionysus (the satyrs, ''thiasus'', and maenads or Bacchantes), is a symbol of prosperity, fertility, hedonism, and pleasure/enjoyment in general. The ''thyrsus'' was tossed in the Bacchic dance:

''Pentheus'': The ''thyrsus''—in my right hand shall I hold it?
::Or thus am I more like a Bacchanal?
''Dionysus'': In thy right hand, and with thy right foot raise it.

Literature

In the ''Iliad'', Diomedes, one of the leading warriors of the Achaeans, mentions the ''thyrsus'' while speaking to Glaucus, one of the Lycian commanders in the Trojan army, about Lycurgus, the king of Scyros:

He it was that/drove the nursing women who were in charge/of frenzied Bacchus through the land of Nysa,/and they flung their ''thyrsi'' on the ground as/murderous Lycurgus beat them with his oxgoad.

The ''thyrsus'' is explicitly attributed to Dionysus and his followers in Euripides's play, ''The Bacchae,'' a Greek tragedy describing the degradation of Thebes in vindication for the sullied name of Dionysus's mortal mother. The story surrounds the murder of the young king and indoctrination of all of the Theban women into Dionysus's cult, with the ''thyrsus'' serving as a badge of sorts for members.

To raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond/ In fawnskin habits, and put my ''thyrsus'' in their hands–/ The weapon wreathed with ivy-shoots... Euripides also writes, "There's a brute wildness in the fennel-wands—Reverence it well."

Plato describes the hedonistic connotation of the ''thyrsus'', and thereby Dionysus, in his philosophical ''Phaedo'':

I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods. For 'many', as they say in the mysteries, 'are the ''thyrsus'' bearers, but few are the mystics', – meaning, as I interpret the words, the true philosophers.

In Part II of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's ''Faust'', Mephistopheles tries to catch a Lamia, only to find out that she is an illusion and instead holds a ''thyrsus''. The play contains major themes of sin and hedonism, and makes connection to Dionysus through the ''thyrsus'':

Well, then, a tall one I will catch... And now a ''thyrsus''-pole I snatch! Only a pine-cone as its head.

Robert Browning mentions the ''thyrsus'' in passing in ''The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed's Church'', as the dying bishop confuses Christian piety with classical extravagance. Ovid talks about Bacchus carrying a ''thyrsus'' and his followers doing the same in his Metamorphoses Book III, which is a retelling of The Bacchae.

The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,/Those Pans and nymphs ye wot of, and perchance/Some tripod, ''thyrsus'', with a vase or so.

Gallery

File:Mainade satyros Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2654.jpg, A Maenad using her ''thyrsos'' to ward off a Satyr, Attic red-figure ''kylix'', BC
File:Ménade relieve romano (Museo del Prado) 04b.jpg, Roman relief showing a Maenad holding a ''thyrsus'', 120–140 AD. Prado Museum, Madrid.
File:Satyr carrying the thyrsus.jpg, A mural of a striding Satyr carrying the ''thyrsus'' painted in the 1st century AD. Archaeological park of Baiae.
File:John Reinhard Weguelin – Bacchus Triumphant (1882).jpg, ''Bacchus Triumphant'' by John Reinhard Weguelin (1882)
File:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Mailice (1899).jpg, A Bacchant holding a ''thyrsus'': ''Malice'' by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1899)

See also

* Cult of Dionysus

Notes

References

* Casadio, Giovanni; Johnston, Patricia A.,
Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia
', University of Texas Press, 2009
* Ferdinand Joseph M. de Waele,
The magic staff or rod in Græco-Italian antiquity
', Drukkerij Erasmus, 1927

;Attribution
*

External links

Thyrsus
a
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890)

Thyrsus
at Encyclopædia Britannica Online
* at

Thyrsus
at Perseus Project

{{Greek religion, state=collapsed

Dionysus
Objects in Greek mythology
Religious objects
Wands