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DIONYSUS
Dionysus by Caravaggio Dionysus (Bacchus to Romans) was the god of drama, dance, music, fertility and wine. He was the only god to be born twice and the only one with a mortal parent. Because of his association with drinking, partying, festivals and having a good time it is not surprising that he was one of the most popular gods. Dionysus often traveled is disguise. He was known for appearing and reappearing quickly. When he wanted to make a show he arrived with a procession of nymphs and satyrs.
David Hernández de la Fuente wrote in National Geographic History: Dionysus was so much more than just the master of the vine; he was also charged with fertility, fruitfulness, theater, ecstasy, and abandon. Whether called Dionysus (his Greek name) or Bacchus (his Roman one), he is perhaps the strangest of the gods in the vast classical pantheons. Though his pagan-like cults and mysteries may seem to have existed outside the usual Greco-Roman religious and philosophical spheres, archaeological evidence in the 20th century proved that he was a fully realized god. [Source: David Hernández de la Fuente, National Geographic History, May 25, 2022]
Dionysus could bring holy ecstasy to his followers and cruel revenge to his foes. Associated with rebirth, he shaped religious practices across the Mediterranean until the dawn of Christianity. The son of an immortal god and a mortal princess, Dionysus’ role forged a crucial link between humanity and the divine, serving as a force of cyclical, unbridled nature who drew men and women out of themselves through intoxication. In that sense, Dionysus, a genial but wild and dangerously ravishing intermediary, represents one of the enduring mysteries and paradoxes of life. Dionysus’ association with wine embodies this paradox. Wine is a delicious beverage with medicinal properties, but it also intoxicates. It brings liberation and ecstasy, yet, like any initiatory experience, it also introduced the risks of losing hold of identity and control.
He is depicted as both a beautifully effeminate, long-haired youth and a corpulent, bearded mature man. The Greek Dionysus and the Roman Bacchus are functionally the same god, but there are a few key differences. Dionysus — a noble, youthful figure in myth and classical literature — is usually listed alongside the 12 Olympian gods. Bacchus, on the other hand, is often seen as a portly older man who, according to the Roman poet Ovid, could be vengeful, using his staff as both a magic wand and a weapon against those who dared oppose his cult and its ideals of freedom.
Origin of Dionysus and Myths About Him
Although not one of the original Olympians, the cult of Dionysus was very old and was celebrated throughout the Greek world and beyond. John Adams of CSUN wrote: “It has usually been claimed that Dionysos was a late arrival among the Greek gods, on the grounds that the XII Olympians as known to Homer do not yet (or ever) admit or know of Dionysos, and that his cult-places seem to point to the north (Thrace and Macedonia), to Asia Minor, or to Asia. Evidence has come to light, however, from the Mycenaean Linear-B tablets, to show that Dionysos was already known in Greece before 1200 B.C. at Pylos (the home of Nestor in the Iliad of Homer), as DI-WO-NI-SO-JO . [Source: John Adams, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), “Classics 315: Greek and Roman Mythology class]
David Hernández de la Fuente wrote in National Geographic History: Many of the myths centered on Dionysus come from different sources. One of the most popular, the Bibliotheca, is a first- or second-century A.D. compendium of myths that draws on earlier sources, such as the Homeric Hymns from the seventh to sixth centuries B.C. as well as earlier Greek plays and poems. These texts supply a standard story of Dionysus’ birth. [Source: David Hernández de la Fuente, National Geographic History, May 25, 2022]
At first glance the mysteries, and the orgiastic rites that surrounded Dionysus, seem to run counter to the harmonious and ordered view of classical Greek religion. For this reason, many scholars, especially of the German tradition, for a long time did not believe that Dionysus could be truly Hellenic. They considered him to be a foreign god, perhaps Thracian or Phrygian, and discounted the possibility that the myths around his death and resurrection could be Greek. Positivist scholars of the 19th century argued that Dionysus was an imported rather than a Greek god, and that the maenads existed only in myth and literature.
In 1953, thanks to the decipherment of Linear B script — the writing system used by the Mycenaean civilization, which predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries — researchers learned that Dionysus was indeed known in Greece as far back as the 13th century B.C. Ancient Mycenaean tablets found in the palace of Pylos, in the Peloponnese region of southern Greece, mention his name and prove that Dionysus was not a god adopted from abroad, but a profoundly Greek divinity. Dionysus was thus a fully Greek god, whose popularity has spanned different time periods and guises
Dionysus's Evolution
Dionysus mosaic from Pella
Dionysus's appearance and the legends surrounding his worship did change dramatically over time. Marianne Bonz wrote for PBS’s Frontline: “Even though fairly early in his history Dionysus's appearance changed from that of a mature, bearded man of a decidedly rustic quality to a long-haired and somewhat effeminate adolescent with exotic attributes, throughout most of his history his essential character remained that of a charming rogue. He was depicted as the god who brought the joys and ecstasies of the vine, as well as the fruits of civilization, and not only to Greece but also to far-away India and Egypt. But Dionysus also could reduce even people of consequence to madness, if they crossed him. [Source: Marianne Bonz, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]
“During the Roman period a new legend developed concerning Dionysus, one that offers intriguing parallels to Christianity. According to this legend, Dionysus was killed while battling the enemies of Zeus. His body was dismembered, but Zeus restored him to immortal life. Henceforth, according to the late first-century Greek philosopher Plutarch, Dionysus became a dying and rising god, and a symbol of ever-lasting life.
“For all of their majesty and beauty, however, the Olympian deities seemed not to care about the lives of ordinary human beings. And by the arrival of the common era, with the exception of Demeter and Dionysus, these gods had become largely ceremonial. The devotion of the average Greek or Roman centered on gods of lesser rank, gods who had once been mortal and who, therefore, understood the sufferings of mortals — gods who cared.
Birth and Rebirth of Dionysus
Dionysus was the son of the beautiful mortal Semele, After conceiving a Dionysus, Semele died from shock when Zeus revealed himself to her in celestial form after Semele had been tricked by Hera to ask Zeus to reveal himself (something no mortal could withstand). Zeus then took the aborted fetus and sewed it into his leg until the infant Dionysus was born.
David Hernández de la Fuente wrote in National Geographic History: Like many of Zeus’s children, Dionysus was not the son of Zeus’s wife and queen, Hera, but the product of an extramarital affair. In the Bibliotheca, Zeus falls in love with a mortal princess Semele, and the two conceive a child. When Hera discovers the relationship, her jealousy drives her to try to destroy Semele and her unborn son. [Source: David Hernández de la Fuente, National Geographic History, May 25, 2022]
Disguised as a mortal, Hera plants a seed of doubt in the young woman’s mind that her lover isn’t a god and then gives her a way to obtain proof. Semele follows Hera’s plan and has Zeus swear an unbreakable oath to grant her any wish; then she asks Zeus to appear before her in all his divine glory. Because of his oath, Zeus cannot refuse and reveals his divinity, a sight that mortals cannot withstand. Semele burns to ashes.
Zeus manages to save their unborn son and sews him into his own leg. When gestation is complete, Dionysus bursts forth from Zeus’s thigh. This graphic and gruesome episode is not an unprecedented one in Greek mythology: Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, was born similarly, emerging fully formed from Zeus’s head. Dionysus thus became known as the “twice-born god.”
Incompatible Stories About Twice-Born Dionysus
John Adams of CSUN wrote: “ “There are two (incompatible) stories, one obviously a Theban story, the other Orphic in origin: 1) Dionysos, son of Zeus and Semele,princess of Thebes (daughter of Kadmos and Harmonia, and thus the granddaughter of Ares and Aphrodite, and great-granddaughter of Poseidon (through the line Poseidon, Agenor, Kadmos). Poseidon had had relations with Libya, who was a daughter of Epaphus, son of Io and Zeus, and thus Semele is great-great-great grandaughter of Zeus too. Angry (as usual) that Zeus had been fooling around and gotten a girl pregnant, Hera disguised herself as a nurse of Semele (Beroe) and talked Semele into asking her lover Zeus to show himself to her in his full heavenly glory. After much whining he did so, and Semele was consumed by the divine emanations (or a thunderbolt). [Source: John Adams, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), “Classics 315: Greek and Roman Mythology class]
Dionysos was six months along at the time, and Hermes snatched him up (cf. Apollo and Coronis) and sewed him up in Zeus' thigh, from which he was born three months later (cf. Athena from Zeus' forehead). Semele had a tomb in Thebes, which is in the orchestra and referred to in Euripides play, the Bacchae. Her sisters (Autonoe, Ino, and Agave) were not prepared to believe that their sister's lover was Zeus, or that Dionysos was at least semi-divine. This is the reason why Dionysos visits Thebes in the Bacchae. Dionysos later rescued his mother from Hades, and she was installed in heaven under the name Thyone.
2) Dionysos, son of Zeus and Persephone: In this story Persephone slept with Zeus in the form of a serpent, and the 'original' name of the child was Zagreus. But at HERA's instigation the TITANS seized the child, tore him apart, and ate him (cannibalism). Only his heart was preserved, and Athena took it to Zeus, (a) who swallowed it (as he swallowed Metis, Athena's mother); (b) who served it up to Semele in a drink, which made her pregnant. The result was Dionysus, the 'Twice-Born' (one of his cult-titles at Thebes).
Dionysus’ Early Life
Dionysus was born (alphabetically) at Dracanum, Icarus, Naxos and on a Mount Nysa (which is apparently in Ethiopia, Libya, India, Thrace, or somewhere else). Apparently Dionysos was raised on this Mount Hyades (though he was also raised elsewhere by Aunt Ino, who was given the child by Hermes; and also at Macris in Euboea). [Source: John Adams, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), “Classics 315: Greek and Roman Mythology class]
Dionysus was raised by nymphs, who taught him how to make wine, a skill he shared with mankind. Zeus was proud of the joy he brought mankind and made him a god even though he was only half mortal. Later Dionysus was killed and eaten by the Titans but Zeus saved his heart from which he was reborn and the Titans were killed by Zeus lightning bolts.
According to some myths, when Dionysus grew up, he descended into Hades to rescue his mother, which also established him as the god of death. His duel role as god of fertility and death meant that he appeared and disappeared in a seasonal cycle of birth, death and rebirth. According to another legend Dionysus was kidnaped by pirates and scared them by growing vines all over the ship from which the pirates leapt overboard and were turned into dolphins.
Dionysus’s Travels
Dionysus and the pirates
David Hernández de la Fuente wrote in National Geographic History: Cured of his madness, Dionysus continues to travel, and he is not alone. In many of the tales surrounding him, he is accompanied by an entourage who worship Dionysus in a state of drunken revelry, holding lavish festal orgia (rites) in his honor. Among them are nymphs called maenads — also known as the Bacchae, or bacchantes, who form the crux of his traveling retinue (the thiasus). [Source: David Hernández de la Fuente, National Geographic History, May 25, 2022]
Pan, the hirsute fertility god associated with shepherds, often took part, along with satyrs and sileni — wild creatures that were part man, part beast. The thiasus comprised animals such as big cats (leopards, tigers, lynx) and snakes as well. The group brings the gift of wine wherever it goes.
Dionysus’ odyssey takes him from Greece across Turkey and into Asia. In Thrace Dionysos and his women are frightened at 'male aggression' and run away into the sea (near Thasos) where they are put up for the night in the home of Thetis. Some modern scholars theorize that ancient Greeks believed that anywhere grapevines could be found and wine was cultivated, Dionysus had once visited. When Dionysus reaches India, on a chariot pulled by panthers, he conquers the land with wine and dance rather than weapons and war.
Dionysus encounters different peoples and not all welcome him. Those who reject his teachings are swiftly and brutally punished. In Thrace (parts of modern Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey), he encounters King Lycurgus, who refuses to recognize his status as a god and imprisons his followers. To demonstrate his power, Dionysus drives the king insane. Lycurgus kills his own son after mistaking him for a grapevine. Recovering his senses, the king is horrified, but Dionysus is not satisfied. He demands that the king be put to death or no fruit will grow in the kingdom. On hearing that, the king’s people seize Lycurgus and feed him to man-eating horses to appease the god.
Famous Stories Involving Dionysos
Dionysos and the Pirates: John Adams of CSUN wrote: “(Homeric Hymn to Dionysos, Hymn I): One day the god, who was on the Island of Icarus, was captured by Tyrrhenian pirates, who had agreed to give him passage to Naxos, but decided to hold him for ransom instead (Arion and the dolphin story: Herodotus I). Since he was (of course!) very handsome, they also tried to rape him. Suddenly flutes were heard; ivy and grapevines fouled the oars and sails; wild beasts appeared on the deck (lions, panthers, bears). The sailors jumped into the sea, but were transformed into dolphins. One of them was put in the sky as a constellation (Delphinus) as a warning to sailors to behave.
Dionysos' Madness: Hera finally caught up with young Dionysos, and like his great-grandmother Io, he goes mad and runs away from his nurses to Egypt; through Syria; and (Phrygia, where Cybele (Rhea) cured him of his madness. He adopted Phrygian clothing out of gratitude. David Hernández de la Fuente wrote in National Geographic History: After his extraordinary (re)birth, Zeus entrusts the infant Dionysus to the messenger god, Hermes. The baby is shielded from Hera and cared for and raised by nymphs. Hera’s jealous rage does not end with Semele’s death. She aims to punish Semele’s son, too, and decides to drive Dionysus mad. Stricken, the young god wanders aimlessly through the lands east of Greece, winding up first in Phrygia, a kingdom in the west-central part of Anatolia (modern Turkey). There, the mother goddess Cybele — whose own cult was associated with, and apparently resembled, Dionysus’ retinue — purifies him, perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit.[Source: David Hernández de la Fuente, National Geographic History, May 25, 2022]
Dionysos at Thebes: The story of Dionysos and his first-cousin Pentheus, king of Thebes, and the god's revenge for his own and his mother’s disgrace at the hands of his family. The story is told in full in Euripides' last play The Bacchae (produced in 405 B.C.). In Thebes, the native city of Dionysus’ mother, the princess Semele. The god’s cousin King Pentheus opposes the Dionysian cult and provokes the god’s anger. Pentheus spies on a group of Theban women practicing their bacchanalian rites on a mountainside. The frenzied women — which included Pentheus’s own mother, Agave — mistake him for a wild animal, and tear him apart with their bare hands in their intoxication.
Birth of Dionysus depicted on a Roman sarcophagus
Dionysus and the Sleeping Beauty: A Roman sarcophagus from the third century A.D. depicts Dionysus discovering the sleeping mortal princess Ariadne. The pair fell in love, married, and had children, including Oenopian (the personification of wine), Staphylus (associated with grapes), and Thoas. This magnificent composition depicts a well-known episode from classical mythology. After helping the Athenian prince Theseus kill the monstrous Minotaur, Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, flees with him. Theseus cruelly abandons her on the island of Naxos, and she is devastated by his abandonment. Ariadne falls asleep and is discovered by Dionysus, who arrives on Naxos accompanied by his retinue.
He immediately falls in love with her, and they marry. The decoration of the sarcophagus shows a band of satyrs playing instruments and maenads dancing wildly. Centaurs appear as well, including a mother holding her little son in her arms. The episode is a fitting scene for a sarcophagus like this one, from the third century A.D.: There is a parallel between a deceased person’s hope for salvation after death and the immortality that Dionysus grants Ariadne. Near the top of the facade is a human figure whose features are unfinished. It may have meant to be the deceased, whose features may also have supplied the likeness for the unfinished Ariadne. Likewise, a central blank space at the top was possibly intended for an inscription.
Dionysus and King Midas’s Gold Touch
King Midas was the famed monarch with the golden touch. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Midas acquired his powers as a gift from the god Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) for offering Dionysus’ foster father Silenus hospitality. Silenus had wandered off in a drunken stupor and found himself at the court of King Midas, where he spent 10 days drinking and regaling the court with stories. When Silenus returned to Dionysius, Dionysius told Midas he could choose his own reward. Midas hastily responded that he wanted anything he touched to turn to gold. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, July 12, 2020]
The problem, of course, was that Midas was unable to eat anything. In Ovid’s version a distraught and hangry Midas begs Dionysus for help and the ‘gift’ is revoked. In the 19th century children’s version written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Midas accidentally turns his own daughter into gold. Aristotle is less forgiving and writes in his Politics that Midas’s insatiable greed led to his death from starvation. In all three versions the lesson is clear: wealth is less important than family and food.
Other versions of the Midas story also have him dying in unpleasant ways. According to Hyginus, the Roman-era author of a collection of fantastic tales called the Fabulae, Midas didn’t learn much from his run-in with Dionysus. After losing his alchemical powers he became a devotee of the half-goat deity Pan. In a musical contest between Pan and Apollo, Midas foolishly pronounced that Pan was the winner. The incensed Apollo punished Midas by turning his ears into those of a donkey. Unable to conceal his disfigurement, Midas committed suicide by drinking bull’s blood.
Dionysus and Bacchus Cults
Because his half-breed status made his position at Olympus tenuous, Dionysus did everything he could to make his mortal brethren happy. He gave them rain, male semen, the sap of plants and "the lubricant and stimulant of dance and song" — wine. In return the Greeks held winter-time festivals in which large phalluses was erected and displayed, and competitions were held to see which Greek could chug his or her jug of wine the quickest. Processions with flute players, garland bearers and honored citizens dressed as satyrs and nymphs were staged, and at the end of the procession a bull was sacrificed. [Source: "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin]
Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In Greek drama, Bacchus is described as an effeminate, long-haired, and dangerous deity who brought Asian magical practices into Greece. The primary and most popular outlet for the worship of Dionysius was the cult of Bacchus, one of a number of secretive mystery cults that migrated to and subsequently became popular in ancient Rome. Adherents of Bacchus, or Bacchants, were known for throwing wild parties that involved dancing, religious ecstasy, possession, and loud music. The ancient musicologist Aristides Quintilianus described the appeal of the cult in the following way, “This is the purpose of Bacchic initiation, that the depressive anxiety of less educated people…be cleared away through the melodies and dances of the ritual in a joyful and playful way.” It’s an insulting way to describe people, but easy to see how celebrations to honor the god of wine could turn out to be joyful and raucous affairs. But in 186 B.C. things came to a head, scandalous information about their practices came to light, the cult of Bacchus was investigated, and participants were strictly punished. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, June 08, 2019]
A text believed to be from funeral of an Dionysus cult initiate read: “I am a son of Earth and Starry Sky; but I am desiccated with thirst and am perishing, therefore give me quickly cool water flowing from the lake of recollection.” The “long, cared way which also other...Dionysus followers gloriously walk” is “the holy meadow, for which the initiate is not liable for penalty” or “shall be a god instead of a mortal.”
See Separate Article: DIONYSUS CULT europe.factsanddetails.com
Homeric Hymn to Dionysus
“I will tell of Dionysus, the son of glorious Semele, how he appeared on a jutting headland by the shore of the fruitless sea, seeming like a stripling in the first flush of manhood: his rich, dark hair was waving about him, and on his strong shoulders he wore a purple robe. Presently there came swiftly over the sparkling sea Tyrsenian1 pirates on a well-decked ship —a miserable doom led them on. When they saw him they made signs to one another and sprang out quickly, and seizing him straightway put him on board their ship exultingly; for they thought him the son of heaven-nurtured kings. They sought to bind him with rude bonds, but the bonds would not hold him, and the withes fell far away from his hands and feet: and he sat with a smile in his dark eyes. [Source: Anonymous. “The Homeric Hymns and Homerica” translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914]
Dionysus procession
Then the helmsman understood all and cried out at once to his fellows and said: “Madmen! what god is this whom you have taken and bind, strong that he is? Not even the well-built ship can carry him. Surely this is either Zeus or Apollo who has the silver bow, or Poseidon, for he looks not like mortal men but like the gods who dwell on Olympus. Come, then, let us set him free upon the dark shore at once: do not lay hands on him, lest he grow angry and stir up dangerous winds and heavy squalls.”
“So said he: but the master chid him with taunting words: “Madman, mark the wind and help hoist sail on the ship: catch all the sheets. As for this fellow we men will see to him: I reckon he is bound for Egypt or for Cyprus or to the Hyperboreans or further still. But in the end he will speak out and tell us his friends and all his wealth and his brothers, now that providence has thrown him in our way.”
Influence of Dionysus
David Hernández de la Fuente wrote in National Geographic History:Surveying different belief systems in the ancient world, it is easy to spot Dionysus’ influence in other traditions. The term “Osiris-Dionysus” is used by some historians of religion to refer to a group of gods worshipped around the Mediterranean in the centuries prior to the emergence of Christianity. These gods shared a number of characteristics, including being male, having divine fathers and mortal virgin mothers, and being reborn as gods.[Source: David Hernández de la Fuente, National Geographic History, May 25, 2022]
The Egyptian god Osiris, for instance, was equated with Dionysus by the Greek historian Herodotus during the fifth century B.C. By late antiquity, some gnostic and Neoplatonist philosophers had expanded the syncretic equation to include Aion, Adonis, and other gods of the mystery religions. Scholars also note links between the life-giving wine of the Dionysian cult and the centrality of wine in the Christian Eucharist, as well as parallels between the Greek god and Christ himself. The sixth-century B.C. classical cult known as Orphism centered on the belief that Dionysus was torn to pieces and then resurrected. Twentieth-century thinkers such as James Frazer saw Dionysus and Christ in the context of an eastern Mediterranean tradition of dying-and-rising gods, whose sacrifice and resurrection redeemed their people.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2024