Dionysus

See also Iacchus, his name in the Eleusinian Mysteries or Zagreus, the Orphic child-god identified with him.

Dionysus was the god of wine, fertility and ecstatic worship, later also a patron of the theatre. He was the son of Zeus and the Theban princess Semele, and was said to have discovered the vine and to have spread its cultivation. He had a dual nature: he brought joy and divine ecstasy, but also brutal and blinding madness, reflecting the dual nature of wine. Neither Dionysus nor his followers could be held by fetters: the bonds fall from his hands in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (7), and in Euripides the chains drop from the imprisoned Bacchants of their own accord (Bacchae 443–450).

Dionysus’ Early Years

Dionysus’ Birth

Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, a daughter of Cadmus of Thebes. Hesiod (Theogony 940–942) says that a mortal woman bore an immortal son to Zeus, and that now both are gods. Zeus came to Semele secretly, and Hera, who learned of the affair, persuaded Semele to ask Zeus to come to her as he came to Hera. Zeus had promised to give her whatever she wished, and so he came with thunder and lightning. Semele died of the sight, and Zeus took the unborn child out of the fire and sewed it into his own thigh, from which Dionysus was born in time (Apollodorus 3.4.3). Euripides (Bacchae 286–297) also has Teiresias tell the story of the birth from the thigh of Zeus.

Raising by the Nymphs

After the birth, Zeus gave the child to Hermes, who brought him to Ino, Semele’s sister, and her husband Athamas. Hera, still jealous, drove them mad; Zeus then turned the child into a kid to hide him, and Hermes carried him to the nymphs of Nysa in Asia, who brought him up and whom Zeus later placed among the stars as the Hyades (Apollodorus 3.4.3). In the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (26) the nymphs received and nursed him in the fragrant caves of Nysa, and when he grew up he wandered through the woods wreathed with ivy and laurel, with the nymphs in his train.

Dionysus’ Family

Ariadne

Dionysus saw Ariadne on the island of Naxos, where Theseus had left her after killing the Minotaur (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.9). Apollodorus says that he fell in love with her and carried her off to Lemnos, where she bore him Thoas, Staphylus, Oenopion and Peparethus. Hesiod (Theogony 947–949) says that Dionysus made Ariadne his wife, and that Zeus made her deathless and unageing for him. Phanus and Staphylus, sons of Dionysus, are among the Argonauts in Apollodorus (1.9.16).

Other Children

Pausanias says that the people of Lampsacus, who revered Priapus above all other gods, called him a son of Dionysus and Aphrodite (9.31.2). Later writers made other personifications his children, but these are not found in the early poets.

The Cult of Dionysus

Dionysus’ Wanderings

Dionysus travelled widely to spread his worship and the cultivation of the vine. Apollodorus (3.5.1) says that he was the discoverer of the grape vine and that he travelled through many lands. He was accompanied by the Maenads, women who followed him in the mountains and woods; the Homeric Hymn speaks of the nymphs in his train, filling the forest with their cries. While other gods had temples to be worshipped at, the followers of Dionysus worshipped him in the woods, where they might go into a state of ecstasy and madness.

Other stories show what happened to those who opposed him. In the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (7) pirates from Tyrrhenia seized the young god and tried to carry him off. The bonds fell from his hands, wine flowed through the ship, a vine grew up the mast with clusters of grapes and ivy covered it with flowers and berries. Dionysus then appeared as a lion, and the pirates leapt into the sea and became dolphins. He spared only the helmsman.

A different fate befell Pentheus at Thebes. When Dionysus returned to the city, he drove the women to Cithaeron in Bacchic frenzy. Pentheus, the son of Agave, tried to stop the rites, and was torn apart by his own mother, who took him for a wild beast in her madness (Apollodorus 3.5.2). Euripides made this story the subject of the Bacchae. Lycurgus, son of Dryas and king of the Edonians in Thrace, also opposed the god. Homer tells how he chased the nurses of Dionysus down Mount Nysa with an ox-goad, so that the god fled in terror into the sea to Thetis; Zeus blinded Lycurgus for it, and he did not live long (Iliad 6.130–140). In Apollodorus Dionysus drove him mad: he killed his own son Dryas with an axe, thinking he was lopping a vine, and when the land stayed barren the god’s oracle demanded his death, so the Edonians bound him on Mount Pangaeum, where horses destroyed him (3.5.1).

Those who welcomed him were rewarded. In Attica Icarius welcomed him and received a vine-branch and the art of wine-making; when Icarius shared the drink with shepherds, they drank it unmixed, believed they had been bewitched and killed him, and his daughter Erigone, led to the body by the dog Maera, hanged herself (Apollodorus 3.14.7). Hyginus adds that Dionysus punished the Athenian girls with the same madness until the shepherds were punished and a festival of swinging was founded for Erigone, and that Icarius, Erigone and the dog were set among the stars as Arcturus (Boötes), Virgo and the Dog Star (Fabulae 130; Astronomica 2.4). Ovid tells how he granted King Midas the golden touch for returning his foster-father Silenus (Metamorphoses 11.85–145).

Return from the Underworld

Dionysus was also one of the very few characters able to bring a dead person back from the underworld. Although Semele had died before he was born, he wished to bring her out of Hades. Apollodorus (3.5.3) says that he brought his mother up from Hades, gave her the name Thyone, and escorted her to heaven; Pausanias was shown the place of the descent at Lerna (2.37.5) and at Troezen (2.31.2). Hesiod says that both Semele and her son are gods. The descent was so well known that Aristophanes could make a comedy of it: in the Frogs Dionysus goes down to Hades dressed as Heracles to bring back a tragic poet, judges a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, and returns with Aeschylus.

Dionysus’ Key Concepts

Dionysus became one of the most important gods in everyday life and was associated with several key concepts.

Rebirth

One concept was rebirth after death. In the Orphic tradition, a variant quite separate from the Theban story above, Dionysus was torn to pieces by the Titans and born again. Diodorus says that this Dionysus was born in Crete to Zeus and Persephone and that Orpheus taught in his rites that he was torn to pieces by the Titans (5.75.4); Pausanias says that Onomacritus, who composed rites for Dionysus, took the name of the Titans from Homer and made them “the authors of the god’s sufferings” (8.37.5). Nonnus tells the story at length: at the prompting of Hera the Titans, their faces whitened with chalk, caught the child while he gazed into a mirror and cut him apart with a knife (Dionysiaca 6.155–205). The child-god of this story is Zagreus, whose page tells it in full. The story was echoed in the life of the vine, which is cut back sharply and lies dormant in winter in order to bear fruit.

Possessed by a greater power

Another concept was that under the influence of wine, one could feel possessed by a greater power. Unlike other gods, Dionysus was not merely a god to be worshipped, but was also present within his followers.

The festival for Dionysus

Athens kept more than one festival of Dionysus. Thucydides mentions the older Dionysia celebrated at the sanctuary of Dionysus in the Marshes (2.15.4) and the City Dionysia, held at the opening of spring, when the vines begin to put out leaves (5.20.1). The City Dionysia became one of the most important events of the year, and its focal point was the theatre of Dionysus. Most of the great Greek plays were first written to be performed at the festivals of Dionysus. The Bacchae of Euripides, which takes the god himself as its subject, and the Frogs of Aristophanes, in which he is the main character, are two of them.

See Also: The Wanderings of Dionysus, Semele, Zagreus, Ariadne, Pentheus, Maenads, Satyrs, Silenus, Priapus, Cadmus, Zeus, Hera