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Dionysus
| DionysusBacchus | |
|---|---|
God of wine, vegetation, fertility, festivity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre | |
| Member of the Twelve Olympians | |
 Second-century Roman statue of Dionysus, after a Hellenistic model (ex-coll. Cardinal Richelieu, Louvre).[1] | |
| Abode | Mount Olympus |
| Animals | Bull, panther, tiger or lion, goat, snake, leopard |
| Symbol | Thyrsus, grapevine, ivy, theatrical masks, phallus |
| Festivals | Bacchanalia (Roman), Dionysia |
| Genealogy | |
| Parents | |
| Siblings | Several paternal half-siblings |
| Consort | Ariadne |
| Children | Priapus, Hymen, Thoas, Staphylus, Oenopion, Comus, Phthonus, the Graces, Deianira |
| Equivalents | |
| Roman | Bacchus, Liber |
| Egyptian | Osiris |
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (/daɪ.əˈnaɪsəs/; Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Diónysos) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre.[3][4] He was also known as Bacchus (/ˈbækəs/ or /ˈbɑːkəs/; Ancient Greek: Βάκχος Bacchos) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Romans) for a frenzy he is said to induce called baccheia.[5] As Dionysus Eleutherius ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful.[6] His thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents.[7] Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself.[8]
His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek.[9][10][11] In Orphism, he was variously a son of Zeus and Persephone; a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus; or the twice-born son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. The Eleusinian Mysteries identify him with Iacchus, the son or husband of Demeter. Most accounts say he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner. His attribute of "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults, as he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called "the god who comes".[12]
Wine was a religious focus in the cult of Dionysus and was his earthly incarnation.[13] Wine could ease suffering, bring joy, and inspire divine madness.[14] Festivals of Dionysus included the performance of sacred dramas enacting his myths, the initial driving force behind the development of theatre in Western culture.[15] The cult of Dionysus is also a "cult of the souls"; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.[16] He is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god.[17]
Romans identified Bacchus with their own Liber Pater, the "Free Father" of the Liberalia festival, patron of viniculture, wine and male fertility, and guardian of the traditions, rituals and freedoms attached to coming of age and citizenship, but the Roman state treated independent, popular festivals of Bacchus (Bacchanalia) as subversive, partly because their free mixing of classes and genders transgressed traditional social and moral constraints. Celebration of the Bacchanalia was made a capital offence, except in the toned-down forms and greatly diminished congregations approved and supervised by the State. Festivals of Bacchus were merged with those of Liber and Dionysus.
- ^ Another variant, from the Spanish royal collection, is at the Museo del Prado, Madrid: illustration.
- ^ Rosemarie Taylor-Perry, 2003. The God Who Comes: Dionysian Mysteries Revisited. Algora Press.
- ^ Hedreen, Guy Michael. Silens in Attic Black-figure Vase-painting: Myth and Performance. University of Michigan Press. 1992. ISBN 9780472102952. p. 1
- ^ James, Edwin Oliver. The Tree of Life: An Archaeological Study. Brill Publications. 1966. p. 234. ISBN 9789004016125
- ^ In Greek "both votary and god are called Bacchus". Burkert, p. 162. For the initiate as Bacchus, see Euripides, Bacchae 491. For the god, who alone is Dionysus, see Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 211 and Euripides, Hippolytus 560.
- ^ Csapo, Eric (2016-08-03). "The 'Theology' of the Dionysia and Old Comedy". In Eidinow, Esther (ed.). Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 118. ISBN 978-1-316-71521-5.
- ^ Olszewski, E. (2019). Dionysus’s enigmatic thyrsus. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 163(2), 153–173.
- ^ Sutton, p. 2, mentions Dionysus as The Liberator in relation to the city Dionysia festivals. In Euripides, Bacchae 379–385: "He holds this office, to join in dances, [380] to laugh with the flute, and to bring an end to cares, whenever the delight of the grape comes at the feasts of the gods, and in ivy-bearing banquets the goblet sheds sleep over men."
- ^ Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought, Allsworth press, 2002, pp. 118–121. Google Books preview
- ^ Reginald Pepys Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: an interpretation, Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 109 Google Books preview
- ^ Zofia H. Archibald, in Gocha R. Tsetskhladze (Ed.) Ancient Greeks west and east, Brill, 1999, pp. 429 ff.Google Books preview
- ^ Rosemarie Taylor-Perry, 2003. The God Who Comes: Dionysian Mysteries Revisited. Algora Press.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
julianwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
iconographywas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
Brockettwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Riu, Xavier (1999). Dionysism and Comedy. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 105. ISBN 9780847694426.
- ^ Corrente, Paola. 2012. Dioniso y los Dying gods: paralelos metodológicos. Tesis doctoral, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
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