Thyrsus
{{Short description|Wand or staff carried during Hellenic festivals and ceremonies}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Italics title}}
File:Colossal statue of Antinous as Dionysus-Osiris.jpg holding the thyrsus while posed as Dionysus (Museo Pio-Clementino)]]
In Ancient Greece a thyrsus ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|θ|ɜː|r|s|ə|s}}) or thyrsos ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|θ|ɜːr|s|ɒ|s}}; {{Langx|grc|θύρσος}}) 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.{{Cite web|title=A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), THYRSUS|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0063:entry=thyrsus-cn|access-date=2021-05-13|website=www.perseus.tufts.edu}}{{Cite journal |last=Olszewski |first=Edward |date=2019 |title=Dionysus's Enigmatic Thyrsus |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/915077 |journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society |volume=163 |issue=2 |pages=153–173 |doi=10.1353/pro.2019.a915077 |issn=2326-9243}} [https://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/2020-03/attachments/Olszewski.pdf Dionysus's Enigmatic Thyrsus] The thyrsus is typically associated with the Greek god Dionysus (and his subsequent Roman equivalent Bacchus) as a symbol of prosperity, fertility, and hedonism.{{Cite book|last=Moulton|first=Carroll|title=Ancient Greece and Rome: An Encyclopedia for Students|publisher=Gale|year=1998|isbn=9780684805030|volume=2|location=New York, NY|pages=7–9}}
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.Euripides, Bacchae, 711. 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.Diodorus. iii. 64, iv. 4; Macrobius. Sat. i. 19. Hence his thyrsus is called "a spear enveloped in vine-leaves",Ovid. Met. iii, 667 and its point was thought to incite to madness.Hor. Carm. ii. 19. 8; Ovid. Amor. iii 1. 23, iii. 15. 17, Trist. iv. 1. 43.; Brunk, Anal. iii. 201; Orph. Hymn. xlv. 5, 1. 8.
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.Ioannis Kakridis, Ελληνική μυθολογία Εκδοτική Αθηνών 1987 (in Greek) 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.The Bacchae
Literature
File:Thyrsus.jpg and topped with a pine cone]]
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.{{Cite web|last=Homer|title=The Iliad|url=http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.6.vi.html|access-date=2021-05-21|website=The Internet Classics Archive|series=VI|at=132–137}}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."{{Cite book|last=Euripides|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/618722|title=The Bacchae and Other Plays|publisher=Penguin Books|year=1972|isbn=0-14-044044-5|edition=Rev.|location=Harmondsworth, Eng.|pages=192|translator-last=Vellacott|translator-first=Philip|oclc=618722}}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.{{Cite web|last=Plato|date=|title=Phaedo|url=http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html|access-date=2021-05-21|website=The Internet Classics Archive}}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.{{Cite book|last=Goethe|first=Johann Wolfgang von|title=Faust|series=II|pages=7775–7777}}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.{{Cite book|last=Browning|first=Robert|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/869374843|title=Robert Browning : selected poems|date=2010|others=John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, Joseph Phelan|isbn=978-1-317-86491-2|location=Harlow, England|pages=56–58|oclc=869374843}}
Gallery
File:Mainade satyros Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2654.jpg|A Maenad using her thyrsos to ward off a Satyr, Attic red-figure kylix, {{circa|480}} 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
Notes
{{reflist}}
References
- Casadio, Giovanni; Johnston, Patricia A., [https://books.google.com/books?id=RgL21NPlQQQC&q=thyrsus Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia], University of Texas Press, 2009
- Ferdinand Joseph M. de Waele, [https://books.google.com/books?id=837NAAAAMAAJ&q=thyrsos The magic staff or rod in Græco-Italian antiquity], Drukkerij Erasmus, 1927
;Attribution
- {{EB1911|wstitle=Thyrsus}}
External links
{{Commons category|Thyrsus}}
- [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0063:entry=thyrsus-cn Thyrsus] at [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.04.0063 A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890)]
- [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/594724/thyrsus Thyrsus] at Encyclopædia Britannica Online
- {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20121022052657/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-dgra/1136.html Thyrsus]}} at {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20050326084508/http://ancientlibrary.com/ The Ancient Library]}}
- [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/searchresults?q=thyrsus Thyrsus] at Perseus Project
{{Greek religion|state=collapsed}}