bacchante n (classical mythology) a priestess or votary of Bacchus Usage(s) In Paris she became a pupil, later a good friend of aging Auguste Rodin, won her first real fame with a bronze of Anna Pavlova as a dancing bacchante. His sensuous 1895 Madonna captures a strangely melancholy bacchante, in the throes of some primeval ecstasy, clearly his "woman of lust.