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  • noun

Synonyms for bacchant

someone who engages in drinking bouts

a drunken reveller


Related Words

(classical mythology) a priest or votary of Bacchus

References in periodicals archive ?
Dionysus's aura of invincibility and success were dealt a serious blow by the rout and humiliation inflicted by Lycurgus, but Dionysus as helpless child (a quality always latent in a leader dependent on his followers for power) brought out the protective, nurturant instincts of the Bacchants as they bound, beat, and blinded the tyrant.
129-36), but such specific rewards are an unnecessary instrument in view of what else he can offer followers, who, apart from male warriors and Bacchants, include satyrs, silenoi, Pans, nature spirits, centaurs, and animals.
32) The Bacchants succeed to the role played by Hermes, Ino, and Rhea in Dionysus's infancy, by becoming nurses who fight for, protect, and literally dance attendance upon him.
For now, to be sure, I already pity you; to our sorrow, like a bacchant, you have gone completely out of your mind [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Salt.
The spectacle he presented not only placed him beyond the pale of masculinity but also threatened to unman his male viewer by dislocating him to the farthest possible extreme of socially acceptable male roles: "Beware lest you become some Lydian woman or a bacchant, you who were hitherto a man" [LANGU AGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Salt.
In this scene, the reveling bacchants exhibit behavior similar to that of the abandoned heroine: the piercing sounds of the tibia correspond to Ariadne's cries on the mountains of Dia, while the reference to the mysteries unknown to the profane (260) points to her prospective initiation, here taking the form of her "marriage" to the god:
61) Like Catullus, Ovid presents Ariadne comparing herself to a bacchant in Her.
61-70) She looks forth, alas, looks forth, just as a stone image of a bacchant, tempest-tossed by the great tides of passion, nor does she still keep the delicate headband on her golden head, nor has her breast veiled by the coveting of her light raiment, nor her milk-white bosom bound with the smooth girdle; all these, as they slipped off around her whole body, before her very feet the salt waves lapped.
In Poliziano's La fabula, "the frenzy of the Bacchants textually recalls Poliziano's own account of the Pazzi conspiracy" (21), and the play, while not denying the empirical world, "marks the emergence of the world as fable, the world as a language construction" (23).
As the chorus of Bacchants, dark-skinned women wearing veils and layers of dark fabric whirl like dervishes to a world-music soundtrack.
Where am I going, how do I stumble, bereft of my children, torn apart by these Bacchants of hell?
But here the analogy could take on another meaning, one not mentioned explicitly by Sartre, if we consider that Orpheus misses the opportunity of reclaiming Eurydice from Pluto by looking back, and it is only after being disfigured by the Bacchants that he finally can be reunited with his love.
Not only does the name Preta ("black" in Portuguese) suggest the racial focus apparent in the title of Camus's film, but the theme of dismemberment also alludes to Orpheus's death at the hands of the Bacchants, who, according to one version of the myth, rip him into pieces.
Several groups of satyrs punctuate the ranks, but the bacchants appear only once within this lavish retinue.