TELETE

the daughter of Nicaea and Dionysus and regarded as the personification of Initiation into a mystery cult.

Her mother Nicaea, a passionate huntress of exquisite beauty, was beloved by a shepherd, Hymnus, who followed her and watched her closely. She finally became angry and shot him with one of her arrows.

Eros swore to avenge this murder and when she was heated by the hunt and washing herself in a stream, Eros led Dionysus to her so that he could see her bathing. But Dionysus found as much approval by her as Hymnos and she threatened him with whose fate.

Being thirsty by her hunting she drank from the river and, not realising that Dionysus had turned the river into wine, became intoxicated and fell asleep. Dionysus now took that which he desired. what he couldn't get before.

As soon as she regained her senses she tried to kill her raper. As that was impossible, and after giving birth to a daughter Telete, she hung herself.

Telete later became one of the devotees of Dionysus and stands for the female principle of the Dionysos cult. As personification of the initiations rites she is closely connected to Orpheus.

From Pausanias, Description of Greece Book IX:

"By the side of Orpheus the Thracian stands a statue of Telete, and around him are beasts of stone and bronze listening to his singing. There are many untruths believed by the Greeks, one of which is that Orpheus was a son of the Muse Calliope, and not of the daughter of Pierus, that the beasts followed him fascinated by his songs, and that he went down alive to Hades to ask for his wife from the gods below. In my opinion Orpheus excelled his predecessors in the beauty of his verse, and reached a high degree of power because he was believed to have discovered mysteries, purification from sins, cures of diseases and means of averting divine wrath."