PLATE LVII
A Maenad
This vigorously drawn figure represents a Maenad at the height of her orgiastic frenzy. Her slightly raised foot and the flutter of her garments show that she is dancing wildly rather than moving swiftly forward. She wears a girdle of fawn-skin, and is crowned with a wreath of ivy from beneath which flow long loose tresses of her hair. Behind her and to one side her thyrsos (ritual wand) stands obliquely in the ground. In each hand she holds a part of the fawn which in her madness she has just rent asunder, as the blood still dripping from the wounds testifies. From a red-figured lekythos of about 475 b.c., from Gela (Monumenti Antichi, xvii, Plate LV a). See pp. 269-70.
