When the unruly band following Dionysos reached the Argeia, they were opposed, as usual, by the conservative nobles in power. The devotees engaged in drunken orgies, which did not sit well with the conservative kings. They doubted effeminate Dionysos’s divinity and extolled the virtues of warriors. When the Mainades arrived, they found Mycenai and Tiryns ruled respectively by Akrisios and Proitos, twin sons of the great Mycenaian warrior-king Abas. They had been feuding since they shared their mother’s womb, but the two found rare common cause against the new Dionysian religion. Dionysos punished Proitos for his resistance by afflicting the women of his kingdom, particularly his daughters, with madness.

The women ran off into the mountains of Arkadia and madly celebrated wild Bakkhinad rites. Then bull-like Proitos sent word to the holy man Melampous of Triphylian Pylos113 asking that he come and cure the women. When Melampous offered to do so for one-third of the kingdom, Proitos flatly refused. The hideous wantonness of the women of Tiryns deprived them of their beauty, and the men became desperate. Their demands for action prompted Proitos to agree to Melampous’s revised terms: one-third of the kingdom for himself and one-third for his brother Bias (1328T/1078R BCE).

Melampous enlisted the aid of his brother, and together they captured the possessed women led by the daughters of Proitos in the wild Aroanian Mountains near Pheneos in Arkadia. He was able to temporarily cure them by a purification cleansing at the site of Lousai (meaning “Washing”) in Arkadia. Melampous brought all the girls home safely except for Proitos’s incurable daughter Iphinoe, who died in Sicyon during the long walk home.

Upon his triumphant return, Melampous insisted that Proitos institute Dionysian rites in Tiryns. Proitos readily agreed, and once Dionysos was honored, the bouts of madness ceased. Proitos’s daughter Maira joined the Mainades and spread the Dionysian gospel throughout Arkadia. This holy woman was honored in Arkadian Mantinea with a spring named for her, and she was buried in Tegea. Grateful Proitos not only held up his part of the bargain, but he also gave Melampous and Bias his daughters in marriage. Melampous received the city of Argos and Proitos’s eldest daughter, Lysippe. Bias received the citadel of Midea, and upon the death of his first wife, he married Proitos’s daughter Iphianassa (1309T/1059R BCE).