Minyades

Mythology

At the time when the worship of Dionysus was introduced into Boeotia, the other women and maidens reveled and ranged over the mountains in Bacchic joy, but the Minyades 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. According to Plutarch, Aelian, and Antoninus Liberalis, with some differences in detail, Dionysus appeared to the sisters in the form of a maiden and invited them to partake in the Dionysian Mysteries. When they declined, 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 became eager to honor the god, and Leucippe, 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 Hermes changed them into bats. Plutarch adds that down to his time the men of Orchomenus descended from that family were called psoloeis, meaning mourners, and the women oleiai or aioleiai, meaning the destroyers. Another retelling in Antoninus Liberalis' Metamorphoses states that the daughters of Minyas were Leucippe, Arsippe, and Alcathoe. They criticized other women for abandoning the city to go as Bacchantes in the hills. Dionysus took on the likeness of a girl and urged them not to miss the rites or mysteries, but they paid no heed. Angered, Dionysus became a bull, then a lion, then a leopard, and from the beams of their looms flowed milk and nectar. Terror gripped the maidens; they threw lots, and Leucippe vowed to offer her son Hippasus as a sacrifice, tearing him to pieces with her sisters. Abandoning their home, they went as Bacchantes in the mountains, browsing on ivy, honeysuckle, and laurel, until Hermes touched them with his wand and changed them into flying creatures: one became a bat, another an owl, and the third an eagle owl, all avoiding the light of the sun.