Minyades
group of mythical characters
The Minyades (Ancient Greek: Μινυάδες, romanized: Minuádes, lit. 'daughters of Minyas') were three Orchomenian (Arcadian) princesses in Greek mythology. These sisters were protagonists of a myth about the perils of neglecting the worship of Dionysus.
Names and family
The names of the Minyades were Alcathoe (or Alcithoe), Leucippe (Ovid uses "Leuconoe", instead) and Arsippe (Claudius Aelianus calls her "Aristippa"; Plutarch calls her "Arsinoë).
They were daughters of Minyas, king of Orchomenus, Boeotia.
Mythology
At the time when the worship of Dionysus was introduced into Boeotia, and while the other women and maidens were reveling and ranging over the mountains in Bacchic joy, these sisters alone remained at home, devoting themselves to their usual occupations, and thus profaning the days sacred to the god. Dionysus punished them by changing them into bats, and their work into vines. Plutarch, Aelian, and Antoninus Liberalis, though with some differences in the detail, relate that Dionysus appeared to the sisters in the form of a maiden, and invited them to partake in the Dionysian Mysteries. When the sisters declined the invitation, the god metamorphosed himself successively into a bull, a lion, and a panther, and the sisters were driven mad.
In this state of madness, they were eager to honor the god, and Leucippe, who was chosen by lot to offer a sacrifice to Dionysus, gave up her own son Hippasus, whom the sisters tore to pieces. The sisters afterwards roamed over the mountains in a frenzy, until at last Hermes changed them into bats.
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This entry incorporates text from “Minyades” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.