Leaving aside another occurrence of Dionysus' "foot" (in Sophocles, Antigone, v. 1143), the lecture focused on Plutarch's 36th Greek Question, which begins: "When the women of the Eleans implore Dionysus with a hymn, why do they engage him to appear among them with an ox's foot?" This question, the hymn itself (of which Plutarch is the only witness) quoted after it, and Plutarch's commentary on it, are related to books 5 and 6 of Pausanias' Description of Greece, which is dedicated to the Elidian region. In contrast to other readings, the results of the analysis presented in the lecture are as follows:
- Plutarch's statement that "the Elean women" sing this hymn to Dionysus is to be taken literally; the Elean women must not be identified with the body of the sixteen Elidian women (which is distinguished from them in Pausanias as in Plutarch's work).
- The cultic obligations of the sixteen women and those of Elean women in general are different; according to Pausanias, the differences concern various acts in the context of hero worship.
- The topographical reference expressed in the hymn ("temple by the sea") is to be taken seriously; the conjecture "temple of the Eleans" is not justified.
- Pausanias and Plutarch testify to cultic activities intended to bring about the epiphany of Dionysus and performed, on the one hand, by a small group of male religious specialists during the feast of the Thyia (Pausanias), on the other, by a multitude of women of undifferentiated status (Plutarch) on an unspecified occasion; these two categories of cultic acts are located in different parts of the Elidian region, far apart from each other (the first in the vicinity of the city of Elis, the second by the sea, at a considerable distance from this urban center).
- This does not rule out the simultaneous worship of the rite performed by men and the summoning of Dionysus by women.
- In their hymn, the Elean women who call upon Dionysus to appear among them ask for his epiphany "with an ox's foot", not "with a bull's foot"; the invocation "worthy bull" at the end of the hymn, repeated incantatorily, does not designate the sacrificial animal, but refers to a cultic restitution of the god, associated with the women's sexual desires.
