Sparagmos

Sparagmos is the tearing and rending of living flesh. The very definition of this word is repulsive. It's hard to imagine in what context or story this would ever be read in. Certainly not a story I would enjoy reading too much, that's why the term is interesting. It's not the sort of thing you read in the paper police reports, see on the news, or witness in a bar fight. Although I suppose it's possible. So, being morbidly curious, I looked up sparagmos to get it in context and I found a nauseating example at http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1075464.

In Euripides' Bacchae, King Pentheus seeks to suppress the Dionysian cult with force, but is unable to prevent the women of Thebes from swarming into the mountains, among them his mother Agave and her two sisters. The king has Dionysus arrested, but the god easily frees himself and entices Pentheus to disguise himself as a woman and sneak into the woods to spy on the activities of the raving maenads. Adorned in a long, womanly robe and wearing a wig with long, blond curls, he is led as a victim to the maenads. With their bare hands they tear him limb from limb, his own mother tearing out his arm and shoulder. When the women return to the city, she returns with the head of Pentheus impaled on a stick. Only later, as she comes to her senses, does she realize that activities of the cult have lead to the sparagmos of her own son.

A description of sparagmos from Bacchae (lines 745-746):

... And then you could have seen a single woman with bare hands,
tear a fat calf, still bellowing with fright,
in two, while others clawed the heifers to pieces.
There were ribs and cloven hooves scattered everywhere,
and scraps smeared with blood hung from fir trees.
And bulls, their ranging fury gathered in their horns,
lower their heads to charge, then fell, stumbling
to the earth, pulled down by hordes of women
and stripped of flesh and skin more quickly, sire,
than you could blink your royal eyes.

Quite frankly, this is horrifying. Needless to say I didn't look for pictures. This is my first time encountering sparagmos and I have to say it is shocking. I don't quite remember how the topic was even broached in class. I guess sparagmos was normal back in the day of Greek mythology, and typical in stories. I noticed in these two examples it is just women committing these acts. Although on another web site it said that Oedipus Rex self-mutilated himself by gouging out his own eyeballs, which would be a form of sparagmos?? Appearantly sparagmos is important to know while reading this mythology and possibly important to know for the exam.