They tear up animals with their bare hands, let milk flow out of an inanimate rock with one blow and suckle wild animals. Whole swathes of land are said to have frightened them - The Maenads - The holy followers of Dionysus. At least that is how the ancient author Euripides describes it. Sounds like a fairy tale, but for hundreds of years these holy women were not fiction, but real. The author gets to the bottom of this myth and tries to find evidence for the real maenads. In an extensive collection of inscriptions and texts by ancient authors, she finds references to the secret rituals that the women performed in honour of Dionysus. Contrary to the prevailing order at that time, women all over Greece set off for the mountains to let their god, Dionysus, take possession of them. In the process the women broke al.