Bacchanalia.

    The Latinized form of the Dionysiac orgies that accompanied worship of the god Dionysus (Bacchus), the Bacchanalia were especially notorious in Rome, where their celebration was banned in 186 bce. They incorporated rites of the Greek Dionysiac mysteries, but some scholars suggest that Eastern traditions were involved as well. The ceremonies, characterized by ecstatic abandon, included drunkenness, wild dancing, and the dismembering of live animals.
     Ancient Dionysiac rituals were conducted by maenads (bacchantes), mortal young women who became possessed with the wanton spirit of the god. In antique representations they are often accompanied by satyrs; together they sang, danced, played music, drank wine, and existed in an almost perpetual state of sexual excitement. Traditional attributes of the bacchic revelers include animal skins and garlands (although satyrs are usually nude); maenads carry the thyrsus, a pole wreathed with ivy and topped with a pine cone, which served as both a magic wand and a weapon.
    An enormously popular theme in the postclassical visual arts, especially painting, bacchanalia are usually depicted as woodland revels, with figures associated with Dionysus as celebrants: satyrs and fauns, nymphs and maenads, centaurs, and sometimes the god himself. Dionysus’s marriage to Ariadne is often depicted as a bacchanal.

See also Centaurs; Cybele; Dionysus; Orpheus, Death; Pan; Priapus; Satyrs and Fauns; Silenus