Coming off the heels of her Achillean victory, Stesichore may feel proud enough to establish a troop of dancers to celebrate her kleos but she’d better start practicing with the rhombos instead cause next week she’s going up against the hero’s many times great granddaughter.
And Polyxena, Myrtale, Stratonike Olympias was such a badass Dionysian:
All the women of these parts were addicted to the Orphic rites and the orgies of Dionysos from very ancient times (being called Klodones and Mimallones), and imitated in many ways the practices of the Edonian women and the Thracian women about Mount Haemus, from whom, as it would seem, the word threskeuein came to be applied to the celebration of extravagant and superstitious ceremonies. Now Olympias, who affected these divine possessions more zealously than other women, and carried out these divine inspirations in wilder fashion, used to provide the revelling companies with great tame serpents, which would often lift their heads from out the ivy and the mystic winnowing baskets, or coil themselves about the wands and garlands of the women, thus terrifying the men. (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 2.5-6)
That she even wore her sacred regalia into battle:
But Duris the Samian says that the first war carried on by two women was that between Olympias and Eurydice, during which Olympias advanced attired in the manner of a Bacchant, with drums beating. (Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 13.10f)
Tagged: march madness
