An old story—somewhere between fact and legend—says that around 350 BC a group of priestesses of the Greek god Dionysus spent a night “driven wild by the wine.”
In simple terms, they drank too much during a ritual and, still drunk, walked all the way from Delphi to the town of Amfissa. Once there, they collapsed and fell asleep right in the middle of the main square.
Unknowingly, they had wandered into enemy territory. Amfissa was controlled by Phocian rulers, and the town was full of soldiers who might have seen the sleeping women as intruders.
But the local women of Amfissa—worried that the priestesses could be attacked or upset—surrounded them in a circle to keep them safe.
When the priestesses finally woke up, the Amfissan women brought them food and later walked them all the way back to the border, making sure they left safely.
This simple act of kindness between women is told by the Greek writer Plutarch, and it became the subject of an 1887 painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema.