Editing Thyrsus (section)

== Literature ==
[[File:Thyrsus.jpg|thumb|''Thyrsus'' staff tied with ''[[Tainia (costume)|taenia]]'' and topped with a [[Conifer cone|pine cone]]]]
In the ''[[Iliad]]'', [[Diomedes]], one of the leading warriors of the [[Achaeans (Homer)|Achaeans]], mentions the ''thyrsus'' while speaking to [[Glaucus (son of Hippolochus)|Glaucus]], one of the [[Lycia|Lycian]] commanders in the [[Troy|Trojan]] army, about [[Lycomedes of Scyros|Lycurgus]], the king of [[Skyros|Scyros]]:
<blockquote>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.<ref>{{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}}</ref></blockquote> 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.
<blockquote>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."<ref>{{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}}</ref></blockquote>[[Plato]] describes the hedonistic connotation of the ''thyrsus'', and thereby Dionysus, in his philosophical ''[[Phaedo]]'':
<blockquote>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.<ref>{{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}}</ref></blockquote>In Part II of [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]]'s ''[[Goethe's Faust|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'':
<blockquote>Well, then, a tall one I will catch... And now a ''thyrsus''-pole I snatch! Only a pine-cone as its head.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Goethe|first=Johann Wolfgang von|title=Faust|series=II|pages=7775–7777}}</ref></blockquote>[[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.
<blockquote>The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,/Those [[Pan (god)|Pans]] and [[Nymph|nymphs]] ye wot of, and perchance/Some [[Sacrificial tripod|tripod]], ''thyrsus'', with a vase or so.<ref>{{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}}</ref></blockquote>