Greeks called him a late arrival among the
Olympian gods
but his name appears on Linear B tablets
from Bronze Age Greece, c. 1200 B.C., once in connection with
the ideogram for wine!
Phrygia (Asia Minor)--explains the alien
wildness of his worship
traced to Thrace in far northern Greece,
where people and language related to Phrygia
name in Phrygian is
Diounsis
mythical origin: son of Zeus and mortal
woman Semele, daughter of Kadmos
n.b. Kadmos is also a near eastern
alien
Zeus visited Semele as a thunderbolt,
with predictable results
Zeus saved Dionysos' fetus and sewed him
into his own thigh until birth
Character
stands for ecstasy, wildness, abandonment
of normal restraints
E.R. Dodds, Introduction to Euripides'
Bacchae:
"His domain is, in Plutarch's words, the
whole of [liquid nature]&emdash;not only the liquid
fire in the grape, but the sap thrusting in a young tree, the
blood pounding in the veins of a young animal, all the
mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the
life of nature....It was the Alexandrines, and above all the
Romans&emdash;with their tidy functionalism and their cheerful
obtuseness in all matters of the spirit&emdash;who
departmentalized Dionysos as 'jolly Bacchus' the wine-god with
his riotous crew of nymphs and satyrs."
patron god of drama, wine
has both a sweet and a savage side
worshippers drink milk and honey, but
also tear apart animals and eat raw flesh, which contains the
god's essence
in the myth of Zagreus (= Dionysos),
Dionysos dies and is reborn
n.b. striking parallels with
Christianity: rebirth, communion (eating the god's flesh
symbolically to become one with him)
patron god of drama, wine
has both a sweet and a savage side
worshippers drink milk and honey, but
also tear apart animals and eat raw flesh, which contains the
god's essence
in the myth of Zagreus (= Dionysos),
Dionysos dies and is reborn
Appearance
in 6th cy. B.C. vase painting he's an
older, bearded figure
gradually depicted younger and younger; in
the Bacchae (406 B.C.) he's an effeminate youth, as he is in Roman
sculpture
Delphi
Dionysos presides there during the three
months of winter, when Apollo goees to visit the
Hyperboreans
this emphasizes the need for balance:
nothing in excess, not even moderation!
