Misplaced Pages

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Maniae" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In Ancient Greek mythology, Maniae or Mania (Ancient Greek: Μανίαι/Μανία, romanized: Maniae/Mania) are the spirits personifying insanity, madness, and crazed frenzy. They operate closely with Lyssa, the spirit of rage and rabies, and like Lyssa, are presumed to be daughters of Nyx. They are also associated with the Erinyes, the three fearsome goddesses of vengeance.

They are also sometimes said (though, perhaps in jest, or as a metaphor for love's sometimes cruel nature) to have been nurses of the god Eros.

Mythology

Pausanias writes that on the road from Megalopolis to Messene there was a sanctuary, which, according to local citizens, was devoted to goddesses called Maniae, and that its surrounding district was also called Maniae (Μανίας). His local sources told him that it was there that madness overtook Orestes, hence Pausanias's view that these Maniae were the vengeful Furies or Erinyes or Eumenides (Graceful Ones).

Note

1. Pausanias, 8.34.1

References

• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. ISBN 0-674-99328-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.

This article relating to a Greek deity is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Greek goddesses
• Personifications in Greek mythology
• Insanity
• Greek deity stubs