Thiasus

Dionysus and members of his thiasos on an Attic red-figure calyx-krater, 520–510 BCE (Louvre Museum)

In Greek mythology, the thiasus (Greek thiasos), was the ecstatic retinue of Dionysus, often pictured as inebriated revelers. In vase-paintings or bas-reliefs, lone female figures brandishing the thyrsos can be recognized as members of the thiasus. Many of the myths of Dionysus are connected with his arrival; the grandest such vision was his "triumphant" return from India, represented in many Roman bas-reliefs and sarcophagus panels and celebrated with rapturously elaborated detail in Nonnus' Dionysiaca.

Dionysus and his train on a Roman sarcophagus (Capitoline Museums, Rome

The most significant members of the thiasus were the human female devotees, the maenads, who little by little replaced immortal nymphs. Also included in the retinue were various nature spirits, including the sileni and human dancers representing them, with phalluses much in evidence, pans, and centaurs. In the vase paintings the ithyphallic sileni are dancing and the retinue is sometimes shown being brought before a seated recipient, the tragic human welcomer of the gift of wine, Ikarios/Semachos and his daughter, Erigone. On the sixth-century François Vase Dionysus is accompanied in procession by the three Horai.

Heracles followed the Thiasus for a short while following his loss of a drinking contest to Dionysus.

More generally, thiasoi were any of the numerous worship cults of Ancient Greece whose existences were protected by law. The original marine thiasos of Skopas, depicting Poseidon and his train, was taken to Rome and irretrievably lost, but the theme is well known in Roman art, from tiny decorative reliefs and large sarcophagus panels to extensive mosaics.