Methe

The personification of drunkenness, found in the retinue of Dionysus.

According to Nonnus, she was the wife of the Assyrian king Staphylus and by him the mother of Botrys. After Staphylus' death, Dionysus, who was his friend, named the state of drunkenness after Methe. He also made the names Staphylus and Botrys viniculture terms, namely "bunch of grapes" and "grapes," respectively.

Dionysus later adorns Methe with a wine-colored robe and she joins him on his Indian campaign.

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Iconography

Drunkenness was depicted drinking out of a crystal cup in a work of Pausia, in the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus.1 In the temple of Silenus at Elis she was depicted offering the god a cup of wine.2

References

Notes

  1. Pausanias. Description of Greece ii, 27.3.
  2. ibid. vi, 24.8.

Sources

  • Nonnus. Dionysiaca xix, 42 ff.; xx, 11; xx, 123.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.