Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In Orchomenus of Boeotia the three daughters of Minyas—usually Alcithoe (Alcithoë), Leucippe, and Arsippe (names vary)—refused to join the women in Dionysus’s rites. While others raved on the mountain with thyrsi and fawnskins, the Minyads stayed indoors at their looms, scorning the new god and telling tales to pass the day (Ovid’s long inset narratives). Dionysus warned them in disguises; they persisted. At last the house shook, looms bloomed with ivy and grape, wine ran, and beasts’ forms filled the air. Madness took the sisters: they tore apart Leucippe’s son Hippasus (or another child) as a Bacchic victim, then fled outdoors. Divine punishment completed the change: they became bats (or other night birds), hanging in dark places, enemies of daylight—eternal emblems of women who preferred the loom to the god of ecstasy. Greek local notices at Orchomenus preserve the Minyads as a Boeotian doublet of Pentheus and the Proetides: refusal of Dionysus, domestic space invaded by vine and frenzy, and metamorphosis or death as the price of saying no to the god.