Dionysos, Bacchus
Dionysos is the ancient Greek god of wine, debauchery and theatre. He is the son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal woman. He was worshipped across the Mediterranian and beyond.…
From: Unknown To: 1838 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Dionysos
No deity of Grecian mythology has given occasion to greater mysticism than Dionysos, the god of wine. Creuzer, for example, the prince of mystics, deduces his worship from India, and makes him identical with the Seeva of that country. According to him, the Vishnu-religion had, at a period far beyond that of history, spread itself over the West, and in Greece was known as that of Apollo, the god of the sun and light. The wild religion of Seeva, which had overcome the milder one of Vishnu on their natal soil, followed it in its progress to the West, proceeded as the religion of Dionysos through Egypt and anterior Asia, mingling itself with the systems of these countries, and entered Greece, where, after a long struggle with the Apollo-system, the two religions finally coalesced, the Dionysiac casting away some of its wildest and most extravagant practices.
This hypothesis rests on no stable evidence; and it has been, as appears to us, fully refuted and exposed by the sober and sagacious Voss, who, rejecting all air-built theory, bases his system on fact and testimony alone. We shall here attempt, chiefly under his guidance, to illustrate the changes which it is probable the mythology of this god gradually underwent after the time of Homer.
It has been very justly observed by Lobeck, that almost all the passages in Homer in which there is any mention of or allusion to this god have been suspected by the ancient critics, either on account of some circumstances in themselves, or because they occur in places justly liable to suspicion. The first of these passages is that in the sixth book of the Ilias, where Diomedes and Glaucos encounter in the field of battle.
Here the former hero, who had just wounded no less than two deities, asks the latter if he is a god, adding,
"I would not fight with the celestial gods; for the stout Lycurgos, son of Dryas, who contended with the celestial gods, was not long lived, who once chased the nurses of raging Dionysos through the holy Nyseion, but they all flung their sacred utensils to the ground, when beaten by the ox-goad of the man-slaying Lycurgos; and Dionysos in affright plunged into the waves of the sea, and Thetis received him in her bosom terrified,—for great fear possessed him from the shouting of the man. The gods, who live at ease, then hated him, and the son of Kronos made him blind; nor was he long-lived, since he was odious to all the immortal gods."
Language more unsuitable surely could not be put into the mouth of Diomedes; and we may observe that there is a kind of instinct of propriety, as we may term it, which always guides those poets who sing from inspiration and not from art, leading them to ascribe to the personages whom they introduce no ideas and no language but what accurately correspond to their situation and character. This consideration alone, Avhen well weighed, may suffice to render the above passage extremely suspicious.
The passage in the fourteenth book, in which Zeus so indecorously recounts his various amours to Hera, is liable to the same objection, and was rejected by Aristarchus and several of the best critics of antiquity. In this the god says that Semele bore him Dionysos, a joy to mortals. The place in which Andromache is compared to a Maenas, besides that it occurs in one of the latter books, is regarded as an interpolation.
These are the only passages in the Ilias in which there is any allusion to Dionysos. In the Odyssey it is said that Artemis slew Ariadne in the isle of Dia, 'on the testimony of Dionysos'; but the circumstance of the o in the second syllable of his name being short in this place satisfied the grammarian Herodian, and ought to satisfy any one, that the line in question is spurious. In the last book of this poem Thetis is said to have brought an urn, the gift of Dionysos, to receive the ashes of Achilleus; but the spuriousness of that part of the poem is well known. It was further observed by the ancient critics, that Maron, who gave the wine to Odysseus, was the priest of Apollo, not of Dionysos.
Hesiod says that Cadmeian Semele bore to Zeus 'the joyfull Dionysos, a mortal an immortal, but now they both are gods.' Again, ‘gold-tressed Dionysos made blond Ariadne the daughter of Minos his blooming spouse, and Kronion made her ageless and immortal.'
Far perhaps inferior in point of antiquity to Hesiod is the Homeridian hymn to Dionysos, which contains the following adventure of the god—a tale which Ovid has narrated some differently.
Dionysos once let himself be seen as a handsome youth on the shore of a desert island. Some Tyrsenian pirates were sailing by, who when they espied him jumped on shore and made him captive, thinking him to be of royal birth. They bound him with cords; but these instantly fell off him, and the god sat smiling in silence. The pilot perceiving these apparent signs of divinity, called to the crew that he was a god, and exhorted them to set him on shore, lest he should cause a tempest to come on. But the captain rebuked him sharply, desired him to mind his own business, and declared that they would take their captive to Egypt or elsewhere and sell him for a slave. They then set sail, the wind blew fresh, and they were proceeding merrily along; when, behold! streams of fragrant wine began to flow along the ship; vines with clustering grapes spread over the sail; and ivy, laden with berries, ran up the mast and sides of the vessel. His shipmates in affright now called aloud to the pilot to make for the land; but the god assuming the form of a grim lion seized the captain, and the terrified crew to escape him leaped into the sea and became dolphins. The pilot alone remained on board; the god then declared to him who he was, and took him under his protection.
Another of these hymns relates, that the Nymphs received Dionysos from his father, and reared him in a fragrant cavern of the valleys of Nysa. He was counted among the Immortals; and when he grew up, he went through the woody vales crowned with bay and ivy: the Nymphs followed him, and the wood was filled with their joyous clamour.
In these poems the mention of the ivy, and the epithet noisy, testify, as we shall see, their late age. Pindar also calls Dionysos Ivy-bearing and noisy. Herodotus and the tragedians describe what we consider to be the mixed religion of Dionysos.
The idea of mere mortals, or the offspring of gods and mortals, being raised to divine rank and power, does not occur in the Ilias. Ganymedes and Tithonos, who were mortal by both father and mother, were carried off, the former by the gods to be the cup-bearer of Zeus, the latter by Eos; and it is to be presumed, though Homer does not expressly say so, that they were endowed with immortality. But all the halfcaste, as we may call them, Heracles, Achilleus, Sarpedon, Æneias, have no advantage over their fellow-mortals, except greater strength and more frequent aid from the gods.
But in the Odyssey we find the system of deification commenced. The sea-goddess Ino-Leucothea, who gives Odysseus her veil to save him from being drowned, was, we are told, a daughter of Cadmos (a name which does not occur in the Ilias), 'who had before been a speaking mortal, but was now allotted the honour of the gods in the depths of the sea.’
And again; Odysseus beholds in the realms of Hades the image of Heracles, pursuing his usual occupations when on earth; but himself we are told ‘enjoys banquets among the immortal gods, and possesses fair-ankled Hebe,’ It is not however said that he had obtained the power of a god.
Supposing therefore Dionysos to have been, as his name might appear to indicate, one of the original Grecian deities, (and it is difficult to think that the vine and its produce, with which the ‘sons of the Achæans' were so familiar, could have been without a presiding god,)he may have been regarded as a son of Zeus by a goddess named Semele, who in after-times, in pursuance of a practice hereafter to be explained, may have been degraded to the rank of a heroine, and Dionysos have consequently become the son of Zeus by a mortal mother.
The vintage is in wine-countries at the present day, like haymaking and harvest-home in England, a time of merry-making and festivity; and the festival of the deity presiding over it may have been a very joyous one, and celebrated with abundance of noise and mirth. Such, we say, may have been (for we venture not to assert it)the original Dionysiac religion of Greece; and when we recollect the very incidental manner in which Demeter, undoubtedly one of the most ancient deities, is noticed in the Ilias, it should not excite any great surprise to find the poet totally omitting all mention of the wine-god.
To pass from conjecture to certainty, it appears quite clear that the part of Thrace lying along the northern coast of the Ægaean was in the earliest times a chief seat of the Dionysiac religion, where the worship of the god of wine was celebrated with great noise and tumult by the people of that country; and, supposing the passage in the sixth book of the Ilias to be genuine, some account of it had possibly reached the ears of Homer.
The Thracian worship of Dionysos, it is not improbable, was not introduced into Greece till after the time when the Æolians colonised the coast of Asia about the Hellespont. Here they became acquainted with the enthusiastic orgies of the Great Mother, and of the god Sabazios; who, as it would appear, was similar to Dionysos, and an object of veneration both to Phrygians and Thracians, and who was worshiped under the form of an ox, as being the patron of agriculture.
As polytheism is not jealous, and readily permits the introduction of new deities into the system, particularly if their attributes or festivals have a resemblance to any of the old ones, the worship of this new god was adopted by the Grecian colonists, and diffused over the isles and continent of Greece: not, however, without considerable opposition from the sober common-sense of several individuals of eminence, as appears by the mythic tales of Labdacos, Pentheus and Perseus, which are apparently real occurrences thrown back into the mythic age. The original Grecian festivals, though of a joyous cheerful character, were so widely different from the raving orgies and wild licentiousness of this Dionysiac religion, that it is quite evident the latter could not have been known in Greece during the Achaean period.
There can be no doubt of the Dionysiac religion, with its nocturnal orgies and indecent extravagance, having been very prevalent among the Greeks at the time when the Ionians were permitted to settle in Egypt. It is in no small degree surprising with what facility the Grecian and Egyptian systems coalesced, with what open-mouthed credulity the Grecian settlers and travellers swallowed all the fictions of the cunning priesthood of that country, and with what barefaced assurance the latter palmed on their unsuspecting auditors the most incredible lies. In reading the Euterpe of Herodotus, one might fancy one's self beholding Captain Wilford listening with devout belief to his artful Pundit d; so little suspicion does the Father of History betray of his having been played upon by the grave linen-clad personages who did him the honour to initiate him in their mysteries.
The theory boldly advanced by the Egyptian priesthood was, that all the religion of Greece had been imported into that country by colonies of Egyptians—a people, by the way, without ships, or materials for building them, who had no ports, and who held the sea in abhorrence a—who civilised the mast-eating savages that roamed its uncultivated wilds, and instructed them in the nature and worship of the gods.
The deities of Greece were therefore to find their prototypes in Egypt; and Dionysos was honoured by being identified with Osiris, the great god of the land of Nile. Herodotus informs us how Melampus, who introduced his worship into Greece, had learned it from Cadmos the Phoenician, who had derived his knowledge of course from Egypt. As the realm of Osiris did not abound in vines, the ivy with its clustering berries which grew there was appropriated to the god; and it now became one of the favourite plants of Dionysos, as appears by the Homeridian hymn above-cited.
The Egyptians had fabled that their god Osiris had made a progress through the world, to instruct mankind in agriculture and planting . The Greeks caught up the idea, and represented the son of Semele—for the popular faith did not give up the old legend of his Theban birth—as roaming through the greater part of the earth. In the Bacchae of Euripides the god describes himself as having gone through Lydia, Phrygia, Persia, Bactria, Media, Arabia, and the coast of Asia, inhabited by mingled Greeks and barbarians, throughout all which he had established his dances and his religious rites.
When Alexander and his army had penetrated to the modern Caubul, they found ivy and wild vines on the sides of Mount Meros and on the banks of the Hydaspes; they also met processions, accompanied by the sound of drums and party-coloured dresses, like those worn in the Bacchic orgies of Greece and Lesser Asia. The flatterers of the conqueror thence took occasion to fable that Dionysos had, like Heracles and their own great king, marched as a conqueror throughout the East; had planted there the ivy and the vine; had built the city Nysa; and named the mountain Meros, from the circumstance of his birth from the thigh of Zeus. At length, during the time of the Graeco-Bactric kingdom, some Greek writers, on whom it is not impossible the Bramins imposed, as they have since done on the English, gave out that Dionysos was a native Indian, who, having taught the art of wine-making in that country, made a conquering expedition through the world, to instruct mankind in the culture of the vine and other useful arts. And thus the knowledge of the vine came to Greece, from a land which does not produce that plant.
This last is the absurd hypothesis which we have seen renewed in our own days, and supported by all the efforts of ingenious etymology.
The story of the Grecian Dionysos is as follows. Zeus, enamoured of the beauty of Semele the daughter of Cadmos, visited her in secret. Hera's jealousy took alarm, and under the form of an old woman she came to Semele, and, by exciting doubts of the real character of her lover, induced her when next he came to exact a promise that he would visit her as he was wont to visit Hera. An unwary promise was thus drawn from the god before he knew what he was required to perform; and he therefore entered the bower of Semele in his chariot, the lightning and thunder flaming, flashing and roaring around him. Overcome with terror, Semele, who was now six months gone with child, expired in the flames, and Zeus took the babe, which was prematurely expelled from her womb, and sewed it up in his thigh. In due time it came to the birth, and Zeus then naming it Dionysos gave it to Hermes to convey to Ino, the sister of Semele, with directions to rear it as a girl.
Hera, whose revenge was not yet satiated, caused Athamas, the husband of Ino, to go mad; and Zeus, to save Dionysos from the machinations of Hera, changed him into a kid, under which form Hermes conveyed him to the nymphs of Nysa, who were afterwards made the Hyades, and by whom he was reared. When he grew up he discovered the culture of the vine, and the mode of extracting its precious liquor; but Hera struck him with madness, and he roamed through great part of Asia. In Phrygia Rhea cured him, and taught him her religious rites, which he now resolved to introduce into Hellas. When passing through Thrace he was so furiously assailed by Lycurgos, a prince of the country, that he was obliged to take refuge with Thetis in the sea; but he avenged himself by driving Lycurgos mad, who killed his own son Dryas with a blow of an axe, taking him for a vine-branch; and his subjects afterwards bound him and left him on Mount Pangseon, where he was destroyed by wild horses, for such was the will of Dionysos.
When Dionysos reached his native city, the women readily received the new rites, and ran wildly through the woods of Cithaeron. Pentheus, the ruler of Thebes, however, set himself against them; but Dionysos caused him to be torn to pieces by his mother and his aunts. The daughters of Minyas, Leucippe, Aristippe and Alcathoe, also despised his rites, and continued plying their looms, while the other women ran through the mountains. He came as a maiden, and remonstrated, but in vain; he then assumed the form of various wild beasts; serpents filled their baskets; vines and ivy twined round their looms, while wine and milk distilled from the roof; but their obstinacy was unsubdued. He finally drove them mad; they tore to pieces the son of Leucippe, and then went roaming through the mountains, till Hermes touched them with his wand, and turned them into a bat, an owl, and a crow.
Dionysos next proceeded to Attica, where he taught a man named Icarios the culture of the vine. Icarios having made wine, gave of it to some shepherds, who thinking themselves poisoned killed him. When they came to their senses they buried him; and his daughter Erigone, being shown the spot by his faithful dog Moera, hung herself through grief.
At Argos the rites of Dionysos were received, as at Thebes, by the women, and opposed by Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae; Zeus however reduced his two sons to amity, and Dionysos thence passed over to Naxos, where he met Ariadne. It was on his way thither that his adventure with the Tyrrhenians occurred. Dionysos afterwards descended to Erebos, whence he fetched his mother, whom he now named Thyone, and ascended with her to the abode of the gods.
Like every other portion of the Grecian mythology, the history of the vine-god was pragmatised when infidelity became prevalent. That most tasteless of historians Diodorus gives us, probably from the cyclograph Dionysius, the following narrative.
Ammon, a monarch of Libya, was married to Rhea, a daughter of Uranos; but meeting near the Ceraunian mountains a beautiful maiden named Amaltheia, he became enamoured of her. He made her mistress of the adjacent fruitful country, which from its resembling a bull's horn in form was named the Western Horn, and then Amaltheia’s Horn, which last name was afterwards given to places similar to it in fertility. Amaltheia here bore him a son, whom, fearing the jealousy of Rhea, he conveyed to a town named Nysa, situated not far from the Horn, in an island formed by the river Triton. He committed the care of him to Nysa, one of the daughters of Aristaeos; while Athena, who had lately sprung from the earth on the banks of the Triton, was appointed to keep guard against the assaults of Rhea. This delicious isle, which was precipitous on all sides, with a single entrance through a narrow glen thickly shaded by trees, is described in a similar manner with Panchaia, and other happy retreats of the same nature. It therefore had verdant meads, abundant springs, trees of every kind, flowers of all hues, and evermore resounded with the melody of birds. After he grew up, Dionysos became a mighty conqueror and a benefactor of mankind, by whom he was finally deified.
Though the adventures of Dionysos were occasionally the theme of poets, especially of the dramatists, they do not appear to have been narrated in continuity, like those of Heracles, until long after the decline of Grecian poetry. It was in the fifth century of the Christian era, that Nonnus, a native of Panopolis in Egypt, made the history of Dionysos the subject of a poem, containing forty-eight books, the wildest and strangest that can well be conceived, more resembling the Ramayuna of India than anything to be found in ancient or modern occidental literature. Its chief subject is the war of Dionysos against Deriades king of the Indians, the details of which are probably the inventions of the poet; in other parts he seems to have adhered with tolerable fidelity to his authorities, and the 'Dionysiacs’ may be regarded as a vast repertory of Bacchic fable, perhaps deserving of more attention than has hitherto been bestowed on it.
The worship of this god prevailed in almost all parts of Greece. Men and women joined in his festivals, dressed in Asiatic robes and bonnets; their heads wreathed with vineand ivy-leaves, with fawn-skins flung over their shoulders, and thyrses or blunt spears twined with vine-leaves in their hands, they ran bellowing through the country ‘Io!_ Bacche_!_ Euoi_!_ Iacche_!’ etc., swinging their thyrses, beating on drums, and sounding various instruments. Indecent emblems were carried in processions, at which modest virgins assisted; and altogether few ceremonies more immoral or indecent are celebrated in India at the present day, than polished Athens performed in the PhrygioGrecian Dionysia, though ancient and modern mystics endeavour to extract profound and solemn mysteries from them.
The women, who bore a chief part in these frantic revels, were called Mænades, Bacchæ, Thyiades, Evades, names of which the origin is apparent.
Dionysos was represented in a variety of modes and characters by the ancient artists. The Theban Dionysos appears with the delicate lineaments of a maiden, rather than those of a young man; his whole air and gait are effeminate; his long flowing hair is, like that of Apollo, collected behind his head, wreathed with ivy or a fillet; he is either naked, or wrapped in a large cloak, and the nebris is sometimes flung over his shoulders; he carries a crook or a thyrse, and a panther generally lies at his feet. In some monuments Dionysos appears bearded, in others horned (the Bacchos-Sabazios), whence in the mysteries he was identified with Osiris, and regarded as the Sun. He is sometimes alone, at other times in company with Ariadne or the youth Ampelos.
His triumph over the Indians is represented in great pomp. The captives are chained and placed on wagons or elephants, and among them is carried a large crater full of wine; Dionysos is in a chariot drawn by elephants or panthers, leaning on Ampelos, preceded by Pan, and followed by Silenos, the Satyrs, and the Mænades, on foot or on horseback, who make the air resound with their cries and the clash of their instruments. The Indian Bacchos is always bearded.
It is with reason that Sophocles styles Dionysos many named, for in the Orphic hymns alone we meet upwards of forty of his appellations. Some of the principal of them are, Bacchos and Bromios, from the noise with which his festivals were celebrated; Bassareus, from the fox-skin dresses named bassaræ worn by the Thracians; Dithyrambos, from the odes of that name, or from his double birth; Eleleus and Euios, from the shouting; Lyceos, as loosing from care; Lenceos, from the wine-press.
Dionysos was also called, 1. Muse-leader; 2. Bull-headed; 3. Fire-born; 4. Dance-rouser; 5.Mountain-rover; 6. Sleep-giver, etc.
It seems probable that in the original conception of Dionysos he was not merely the wine-god, for such restricted notions are contrary to the genius of the ancient Grecian religion, in which each people assigned its peculiar deities a very extensive sphere of action, as gods of the sun, the moon, the heaven, the earth, and other parts of nature. Dionysos was therefore, it is likely, regarded as a deity presiding over growth and increase in general; and as Hermes, who seems to have been originally of coextensive power with him, was gradually restricted and made a god of cattle alone, so Dionysos may have been limited to the care of plants, particularly the vine.
Water and heat being the great causes of growth, we find this deity closely connected with both these elements. Thus the infant Dionysos is committed to the water-goddess Ino, and to the Hyades and to Silenos. His temples at Athens and Sparta were in places named marshes, and he was styled Of-the-Marsh, and Marsh-sprung. In some places he was called the Rainer; his festival, the Anthesteria, was celebrated in the spring, the season of showers, and it was so named from the flowers and blossoms, of which he was the author; whence he was named the Flowery…
In favour of this god's, presiding over cattle is alleged the well-known circumstance of the goat being the victim offered to him; his being in his infancy conveyed to Nysa in the form of a kid, and his being worshiped under that name. He also wore the goatskin dress of the goatherds; and in Attica and Hermione he was named ??????????, a name which in the former place was connected with the fabulous origin of the festival of the Apaturia. Welcker is of opinion that Dionysos was originally the object of worship to the lower classes, the goatherds, and such like (in Attica the tribe of the Ægicoreis); and that as they gradually rose in consideration, their god was associated with those of the nobles; and that thence he always appeared of an inferior rank to those with whom he was joined. This critic accounts on the same principle for the very slight mention of Dionysos in the Homeric poems, namely, that he was of too low a rank to be an actor of importance in those aristocratic verses, which only told of kings and nobles, and the gods whom they adored.
The name Dionysos is one of the most difficult to explain in Grecian mythology. After Voss's able exposure we may venture to reject the notion of its being the same with Devanishi, a title of the Hindu god Seeva, and view in Dionysos a Grecian god with a Grecian name. The most probable (though by no means quite satisfactory)interpretation of it is God-of-Nysa, which last place occurs frequently in his legend. Like Triton, however, it has been multiplied, for we find a Nysa on Helicon in Bœotia, in Thrace, in Naxos, at the foot of Mount Tmolos in Lydia, in Arabia, in India, in Africa, and elsewhere; besides that indefinite one whence Persephone was carried away by Hades. It therefore is a matter of uncertainty which was the original Nysa.
Keightley, Thomas. The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy. Whittaker, 1838.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
