Everything about Dionysus totally explained
Dionysus or
Dionysos (in
Greek,
Διόνυσος or
Διώνυσος; associated with
Roman Liber), is the
god of
wine, the inspirer of madness, and a major figure of
Greek mythology. He represents not only the
intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences. The geographical origins of his cult were unknown, but almost all myths depicted him as having "foreign" (for example non-Greek) origins.
He was also known as
Bacchus and the frenzy he induces,
bakcheia. He is the patron deity of
agriculture and the
theatre. He was also known as the Liberator (
Eleutherios), freeing one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine. The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the
aulos and to bring an end to care and worry. Scholars have discussed Dionysus' relationship to the "cult of the souls" and his ability to preside over communication between the living and the dead.
In Greek mythology Dionysus is made to be a son of
Zeus and
Semele; other versions of the
myth contend that he's a son of Zeus and
Persephone. He is described as being womanly or "man-womanish".
The name
Dionysos is of uncertain significance; its
-nysos element may well be non-Greek in origin, but its
dio- element has been associated since antiquity with
Zeus (
genitive Dios).
Nysa, for Greek writers, is either the
nymph who nursed him, or the mountain where he was attended by several nymphs (the
Nysiads), who fed him and made him immortal as directed by
Hermes.
The
retinue of Dionysus was called the
Thiasus and comprised chiefly
Maenads.
Worship
The above contradictions suggest to some that we're dealing not with the historical memory of a cult that's foreign, but with a god in whom foreignness is inherent. And indeed, Dionysus's name is found on
Mycenean Linear B tablets as "DI-WO-NI-SO-JO", and
Karl Kerenyi traces him to
Minoan Crete, where his Minoan name is unknown but his characteristic presence is recognizable. Clearly, Dionysus had been with the Greeks and their predecessors a long time, and yet always retained the feel of something alien.
The
bull, the
serpent, the
ivy and the wine are the signs of the characteristic Dionysian atmosphere, and Dionysus is strongly associated with
satyrs,
centaurs, and
sileni. He is often shown riding a
leopard, wearing a leopard skin, or in a chariot drawn by
panthers, and may also be recognized by the
thyrsus he carries. Besides the
grapevine and its wild barren alter-ego, the toxic ivy plant, both sacred to him, the
fig was also his symbol. The
pinecone that tipped his thyrsus linked him to
Cybele, and the
pomegranate linked him to
Demeter. The
Dionysia and
Lenaia festivals in
Athens were dedicated to Dionysus. Initiates worshipped him in the
Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the
Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced
Gnosticism.
Bacchanalia
Introduced into
Rome (c.
200 BC) from the
Greek culture of southern Italy or by way of Greek-influenced
Etruria, the bacchanalia were held in secret and attended by women only, in the grove of Simila, near the
Aventine Hill, on
March 16 and
17. Subsequently, admission to the rites were extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month. The notoriety of these festivals, where many kinds of crimes and political conspiracies were supposed to be planned, led in
186 BC to a decree of the
Senate — the so-called
Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in
Calabria (
1640), now at
Vienna — by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout all Italy except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate. In spite of the severe punishment inflicted on those found in violation of this decree, the Bacchanalia were not stamped out, at any rate in the south of Italy, for a very long time.
Dionysus is equated with both
Bacchus and
Liber (also
Liber Pater). Liber ("the free one") was a god of fertility, wine and growth, married to
Libera. His festival was the
Liberalia, celebrated on
March 17, but in some myths the festival was also held on
March 5.
Appellations
Dionysus sometimes has the
epithet Acratophorus, by which he was designated as the giver of unmixed wine, and worshipped at
Phigaleia in
Arcadia. In
Sicyon he was worshiped by the name
Acroreites. As Bacchus, he carried the Latin epithet
Adoneus, "Ruler".
Aegobolus, "goat killer", was the name under which he was worshiped at
Potniae in
Boeotia. As
Aesymnetes ("ruler" or "lord") he was worshipped at Aroë and
Patrae in
Achaea. Another epithet was
Bromios, "the thunderer" or "he of the loud shout". As
Dendrites, "he of the trees", he's a powerful fertility god.
Dithyrambos is sometimes used to refer to him or to solemn songs sung to him at festivals; the name refers to his premature birth.
Eleutherios ("the liberator") was an epithet for both Dionysus and
Eros. Other forms of the god as that of fertility include the epithet in
Samos and
Lesbos Enorches ("with balls" or perhaps "in the testicles" in reference to Zeus' sewing the babe Dionysus into his thigh, for example, his testicles).
Evius is an epithet of his used prominently in
Euripides' play,
The Bacchae.
Iacchus, possibly an epithet of Dionysus, is associated with the
Eleusinian Mysteries; in
Eleusis, he's known as a son of
Zeus and
Demeter. The name "Iacchus" may come from the Ιακχος (
Iakchos), a hymn sung in honor of Dionysus. With the epithet
Liknites ("he of the winnowing fan") he's a fertility god connected with the
mystery religions. A winnowing fan was similar to a
shovel and was used to separate the chaff from the grain. In addition, Dionysus is known as
Lyaeus ("he who unties") as a god of relaxation and freedom from worry, and as
Oeneus he's the god of the
wine press.
In the Greek
pantheon, Dionysus (along with
Zeus) absorbs the role of
Sabazios, a
Phrygian deity. In the
Roman pantheon, Sabazius became an alternate name for Bacchus....
Mythology
Birth
Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the
Olympian pantheon. His day of birth was
December 25 in the calendar we've today. His mother was
Semele (daughter of
Cadmus), a mortal woman, and his father Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus's wife,
Hera, a jealous and vain goddess, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant. Appearing as an old
crone (in other stories a nurse), Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her husband was actually Zeus. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele's mind. Curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he agreed. Therefore he came to her wreathed in bolts of lightning; mortals, however, couldn't look upon a god without dying, and she perished in the ensuing blaze. Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus by sewing him into his thigh. A few months later, Dionysus was born. In this version, Dionysus is borne by two mothers (Semele and Zeus) before his birth, hence the epithet
dimetor (two mothers) associated with his being "twice-born".
Early life
The legend goes that Zeus gave the infant Dionysus into the charge of Hermes. One version of the story is that Hermes took the boy to King
Athamas and his wife
Ino, Dionysus' aunt. Hermes bade the couple raise the boy as a girl, to hide him from Hera's wrath. Another version is that Dionysus was taken to the rain-
nymphs of
Nysa, who nourished his infancy and childhood, and for their care Zeus rewarded them by placing them as the
Hyades among the stars (see
Hyades star cluster). Other versions have Zeus giving him to Rhea, or to Persephone to raise in the Underworld, away from Hera. Alternatively, he was raised by
Maro.
When Dionysus grew up he discovered the culture of the vine and the mode of extracting its precious juice; but Hera struck him with madness, and drove him forth a wanderer through various parts of the earth. In
Phrygia the goddess
Cybele, better known to the Greeks as Rhea, cured him and taught him her religious rites, and he set out on a progress through Asia teaching the people the cultivation of the vine. The most famous part of his wanderings is his expedition to
India, which is said to have lasted several years. Returning in triumph he undertook to introduce his worship into Greece, but was opposed by some princes who dreaded its introduction on account of the disorders and madness it brought with it. (See
Pentheus or
Lycurgus.)
As a young man, Dionysus was exceptionally attractive. Once, while disguised as a mortal sitting beside the seashore, a few sailors spotted him, believing he was a prince. They attempted to kidnap him and sail him far away to sell for ransom or into slavery. They tried to bind him with ropes, but no type of rope could hold him. Dionysus turned into a fierce lion and unleashed a bear onboard, killing those he came into contact with. Those who jumped off the ship were mercifully turned into dolphins. The only survivor was the helmsman,
Acoetes, who recognized the god and tried to stop his sailors from the start. In a similar story, Dionysus desired to sail from
Icaria to
Naxos. He then hired a
Tyrrhenian pirate ship. But when the god was on board, they sailed not to Naxos but to Asia, intending to sell him as a slave. So Dionysus turned the mast and oars into snakes, and filled the vessel with ivy and the sound of flutes so that the sailors went mad and, leaping into the sea, were turned into dolphins.
Other stories
When
Hephaestus bound
Hera to a magical chair, Dionysus got him drunk and brought him back to Olympus after he passed out.
Pentheus
Euripides wrote a tale concerning the destructive nature of Dionysus in
The Bacchae. Since Euripides wrote this play while in the court of King
Archelaus of
Macedon, some scholars believe that the cult of Dionysus was malicious in Macedon but benign in
Athens. In the play, Dionysus returns to his birthplace,
Thebes, ruled by his cousin,
Pentheus. He wanted to exact revenge on the women of Thebes, his aunts
Agave, Ino and
Autonoe and his cousin Pentheus, for not believing his mother Semele when she said she'd been impregnated by Zeus, and for denying that Dionysus was a god and therefore not worshipping him. Pentheus was slowly driven mad by the compelling Dionysus, and lured to the woods of
Mount Cithaeron to see the
Maenads, female worshippers of Dionysus who often experienced divine ecstasy. When the women spotted Pentheus, they tore him to pieces like they did earlier in the play to a herd of cattle. Brutally, his head was torn off by his mother Agave as he begged for his life.
Lycurgus
When King
Lycurgus of
Thrace heard that Dionysus was in his kingdom, he imprisoned all the followers of Dionysus; the god fled, taking refuge with
Thetis, and sent a drought which stirred the people into revolt. Dionysus then made King Lycurgus insane, having him slice his own son into pieces with an axe, thinking he was a patch of ivy, a plant holy to Dionysus. An
oracle then claimed that the land would stay dry and barren as long as Lycurgus was alive, so his people had him
drawn and quartered; with Lycurgus dead, Dionysus lifted the curse.
Prosymnus
A better-known story is that of his descent to Hades to rescue his mother Semele, whom he placed among the stars. He made the descent from a reputedly bottomless pool on the coast of the
Argolid near the prehistoric site of
Lerna. He was guided by
Prosymnus or Polymnus, who requested, as his reward, to be Dionysus'
lover. Prosymnus died before Dionysus could honor his pledge, so in order to satisfy the shade of his
erastes the god fashioned a
phallus from an olive branch and sat on it at Prosymnus' tomb. This tradition was widely known but treated as a secret not to be divulged to those not privy to the god's mysteries. It was the source of the custom of parading wooden
phalloi at the god's festivities. This story is told in full only in Christian sources (whose aim was to discredit pagan mythology). It appears to have served as an explanation of the secret objects that were revealed in the
Dionysian Mysteries.
Ampelos
Another
pederastic myth of the god involves his
eromenos,
Ampelos, a beautiful
satyr youth whom he loved dearly. According to
Nonnus, Ampelos was killed by the river
Pactolus, riding a bull maddened by the sting of
Ate's gadfly, as foreseen by his lover. The
Fates granted Ampelos a second life as a vine, from which Dionysus squeezed the first wine.
Secondary myths
A third descent by Dionysus to Hades is invented by
Aristophanes in his comedy
The Frogs. Dionysus, as patron of the Athenian dramatic festival, the
Dionysia, wants to bring back to life one of the great tragedians. After a competition
Aeschylus is chosen in preference to
Euripides.
When
Theseus abandoned
Ariadne sleeping on Naxos, Dionysus found and married her. She bore him a son named Oenopion, but he committed suicide or was killed by
Perseus. In some variants, he'd her crown put into the heavens as the constellation Corona; in others, he descended into
Hades to restore her to the gods on Olympus.
Callirhoe was a
Calydonian woman who scorned a priest of Dionysus who threatened to inflict all the women of Calydon with insanity (see
Maenad). The priest was ordered to sacrifice Callirhoe but he killed himself instead. Callirhoe threw herself into a well which was later named after her.
Acis, a
Sicilian youth, was sometimes said to be Bacchus' son.
Consorts/Children
In art
Classical
Naturally, the god appeared on many
kraters and other wine vessels from
classical Greece. His iconography became more complex in the Hellenistic period, between severe archaising or
Neo Attic types such as the Dionysus Sardanapalus and types showing him as an indolent and androgynous young man (such as ).
E. Kessler has theorized that a mosaic appearing on the triclinium floor of the House of Aion in Nea Paphpos,
Cyprus details a monotheistic worship of Dionysus. In the mosaic, other gods appear but may only be lesser representations of the centrally-imposed Dionysus.
Post-classical
Parallels with Christianity
Martin Hengel argued Dionysian religion and Christianity to be significantly parallel, stating that "Dionysus had been at home in Palestine for a long time", and Judaism was influenced by Dionysian traditions.
The modern scholar
Barry Powell thinks that Christian notions of eating and drinking the "flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus. In another parallel Powell adduces, Dionysus was distinct among Greek gods as a deity commonly felt
within individual followers. Another example of possible influence on Christianity, Dionysus' followers, as well as another god,
Pan, are said to have had the most influence on the modern view of
Satan as
animal-like and
horned.
Wine was important to Dionysus, imagined as its creator; the creation of wine from water figures also in Jesus's
Marriage at Cana. In the
19th century, Bultmann and others compared both themes and concluded that the Dionysian theophany was transferred to Jesus; Heinz Noetzel's
Christus und Dionysos disagrees, arguing Dionysus never actually did turn water into wine. Martin Hengel replied that opposing traditions would be anachronistic, and that since all Palestinians were familiar with the transformation of water to wine as a miracle, it was expected from the Messiah to perform it.
Peter Wick argues that the use of wine symbolism in the
Gospel of John, including the story of the
Marriage at Cana at which Jesus turns water into wine, is intended to show Jesus as superior to Dionysus.
Possible parallels have also been suggested between Pentheus' arrest and questioning of Dionysus in Euripides'
Bacchae and the arrest and questioning of Jesus by Pontius Pilate. Some people have also argued that the attitude of Dionysus is similar to Jesus' attitude as presented in the Gospels.
Modern views
Dionysus has remained an inspiration for artists, philosophers and writers into the
modern era. In his book
The Birth of Tragedy, the German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche contrasted
Dionysus with the god Apollo as a symbol of the fundamental, unrestrained
aesthetic principle of force, music, and intoxication versus the one of sight, reason, form, and beauty represented by the latter. The two remain intrinsically related and dependent upon one another in an endless state of conflict.
The
Russian poet and
philosopher Vyacheslav Ivanov elaborated the theory of
Dionysianism, which traces the roots of literary art in general and the art of tragedy in particular to ancient Dionysian mysteries. His views were expressed in the treatises
The Hellenic Religion of the Suffering God (1904), and
Dionysus and Early Dionysianism (1921).
Inspired by
James Frazer, some have labeled Dionysus a
life-death-rebirth deity. The mythographer
Karl Kerenyi devoted much energy to Dionysus over his long career; he summed up his thoughts in
Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Bollingen, Princeton) 1976.
Dionysus is the main character of Aristophanes' play
The Frogs, later updated to a modern version by
Stephen Sondheim ("The time is the present; The place is ancient Greece"). In the play, Dionysus and his slave Xanthius venture to Hades to bring a famed writer back from the dead, with the hopes that the writer's presence in the world will fix all nature of earthly problems. In Aristophanes' play,
Euripides competes against Aeschylus to be recovered from the underworld; In Sondheim's,
George Bernard Shaw faces
William Shakespeare.
Both
Eddie Campbell and
Grant Morrison have utilised the character. Morrison claims that the myth of Dionysus provides the inspiration for his violent and explicit graphic novel
Kill Your Boyfriend, whilst Campbell used the character in his
Deadface series to explore both the conventions of
super-hero comic books and artistic endeavour.
Walt Disney has depicted the character on a number of occasions. The first such portrayal of Dionysus was in the "
Pastoral" segment of Walt Disney's 3rd classic
Fantasia. He is portrayed as an overweight drunk man who rides a drunken
donkey; wears a
tunic and cloak, and grape leaves on his head; and carries a goblet of wine. He is friends with the
fauns and
centaurs, and is shown celebrating a harvest festival. Other portrayals have appeared in both the Disney
movie and of Hercules. He was depicted as an overweight drunkard as opposed to his youthful descriptions in myths. He has bright pink skin and rosy red cheeks hinting at his drunkenness. He always carries either a bottle or glass of wine in his hand, and like in the myths, wears a wreath of grape leaves upon his head. He is known by his roman name in the series 'Bacchus', and in one episode headlines his own festival known as the 'Bacchanal'.
In music Dionysius (together with
Demeter) was used as an archetype for the character Tori by contemporary artist
Tori Amos in her
2007 album
American Doll Posse, and the Canadian rock band
Rush refer to a confrontation between Dionysus and
Apollo in the
Cygnus X-1 duology.
In literature, Dionysius has proven equally inspiring.
Rick Riordan's series of books
Percy Jackson & The Olympians presents Dionysus as an uncaring, childish and spoilt god who as a punishment has to work in Camp Half-Blood. In
Fred Saberhagen's 2001 novel,
God of the Golden Fleece, a young man in a post-apocalyptic world picks up an ancient piece of technology shaped in the likeness of the Dionysus. Here, Dionysus is depicted as a relatively weak god, albeit a subversive one whose powers are able to undermine the authority of tyrants.
Names originating in Dionysus
Dion, Deon, Deion
Denise (also spelled Denice, Daniesa, Denese, and Denisse)
Denis or Dennis (including the derivative surnames Denison and Dennison)
Denny
Nis (as of the Nordic surname Nissen)
Nils (Nicholas is another origin)
Dénes (Hungarian)
Bacchus (Roman)
Dionisio, Dyonisio (Filipino), Dionigi (Italian)
Διονύσιος, Διονύσης (Dionysios, Dionysis; Modern Greek)
Deniska (diminutive of Russian Denis, itself a derivative of the Greek)Further Information
Get more info on 'Dionysus'.
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