Dionysus(Bacchus) | |
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God of wine, vegetation, fertility, festivity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre | |
Member of the Twelve Olympians | |
Abode | Mount Olympus |
Animals | Bull, panther, tiger or lion, goat, snake |
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 equivalent | Bacchus, Liber |
Egyptian equivalent | Osiris |
Dionysus (/daɪ.əˈnaɪsəs/; Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Dionysos) is a Thracian-Greek god of wine-making, vegetation, fertility, festivity, religious ecstasy, and theatre.[4][5] Dionysus was originally a Thracian god that was later adopted by the ancient Greeks as their own god. [6][7] 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.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10] Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself.[11]
According to ancient Greek sources, such as Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Dionysus was of Thracian origin.[12] Most ancient accounts say he was born in Thracia, 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".[13] However, most historians nowadays seldomly mention Dionysus' Thracian origins and only refer to him as a Greek god.[14][15][16]
Wine was a religious focus in the cult of Dionysus and was his earthly incarnation.[17] Wine could ease suffering, bring joy, and inspire divine madness.[18] Festivals of Dionysus included the performance of sacred dramas enacting his myths, the initial driving force behind the development of theatre in Western culture.[19] 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.[20] He is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god.[21]
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.
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