Dionysus

1 Pages 357 Words

Son of Zeus and Semele, also known in both Greek and Latin as Bacchus. According to Ovid, when his mother was killed
Zeus snatched her unborn child and sewed him into his own thigh. The Homeric Hymn to Dionysos (1) gives variant versions of
his birth. He is unusual in that he has a mortal mother, the story of Semele places his birth much later than those of the other
gods. Several stories tell of the fate of mortals who refused to recognised or accept Dionysos, as in Euripides' Bacchae.
Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3.5 and Homer, Iliad, 6 tell the story of Lykourgos, a Thracian king who tried to expel Dionysos
and was driven mad. Homeric Hymn to Dionysos, 7 tells of the fate of mortals who failed to recognise him. He was captured
by pirates but made a vine grow on the ship and transformed himself into a lion. The pirates ended up as dolphins. As these
stories suggest, Dionysos is often depicted as travelling throughout Greece, often arriving from the east. As knowledge of the
world to the east expanded with Alexander's campaigns as far as India, so did the regions from which Dionysos was thought to
arrive in Greece. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods he was depicted as arriving in triumph from India, accompanied by
exotic animals.

Dionysos is the god of wine and song and is usually depicted in art and literature accompanied by maenads, satyrs and silens.
The maenads often carry parts of animals they have torn apart in their frenzy. This is how he is described by Catullus and Ovid
when he arrives on the island of Naxos to rescue Ariadne.

At Athens tragedy was performed at the festival of Dionysos (Dionysia). The Anthesteria was a festival which commemorated
the death of Ikarios the first man to introduce wine to Attica. His countrymen killed him when they felt the effects of the drink
and thought he had poisoned them. Ikarios' daughter, Erigone, hanged herself (Apollodoros, 3.14.7).

Dionysos was also associated wit...