DIONYSUS: THE GOD OF WINE AND HIS ATTRIBUTES

The God Dionysus is considered a figure of great relevance in Greek and Roman mythology. He is recognized as the deity of wine and the vine harvest, also the inspirer of ritual madness and enchantment. He was also known as the deity of agriculture and theater.

Dionysus God of Wine

Dionysus is universally known as the god of wine, but really who was the god Dionysus? He is also known as the god of fertility in Greek mythology, as well as considered one of the deities of Olympus. Zeus and Semele were his parents, making him the grandson of Harmonia and great-grandson of Aphrodite. In other interpretations it is stated that his parents were Zeus and Persephone.

He is the patron deity of agriculture and theater and is also known as the “Liberator” (Eleutherius), emancipating one from his ordinary self through madness, enchantment or wine. Dionysus’ divine commission was combine the music of the classroom and put an end to the dedication and concern.​

Dionysus provoked ceremonial madness and enchantment and was an important figure in Greek cosmogony. Although the geographical origin of his cult is not known, in almost all plays he is shown as a “stranger.” His arrival to life was peculiar enough since he was born twice.

Studies have debated Dionysus’ link with the “devotion of souls” and his willingness to direct correspondence between the living and the dead.

Another Dionysian fable is exhibited in the belief of Orphism, in which the remote Titans murder the small deity Dionysus, after attracting his attention with luminous toys to a trap to dismember him, cook him and devour him. It is when Zeus punishes and destroys the Titans with his lightning, but when the heart of Dionysus is not swallowed, the son of Zeus is reborn from there.

From the dust of the Titans and the earth, human beings emerge, who have a Titanic and a Dionysian component, emerging with some old guilt for the death of the god Dionysus. Therefore, they must be purified by preventing the spilling of blood of humans and animals. Thus, at the end of life, his spirit is freed from the body (like a tomb and prison), to return to the divine world from which it came.

Dionysus’ entourage was called the thiaso, and was primarily made up of the maenads (his orgy companions). Later he became known to the Romans as Bacchus and the ecstasy he generated, bakcheia.

Meaning of Dionysus

The meaning of the name Dionysos was not known, since its component “-nysos” may be of extra-Hellenic origin, but “dio-” has been ancestrally linked to Zeus. According to Greek authors, Nysa was the name of a nymph who raised her or of a mountain in which he was cared for by various nymphs (the Nysiades), who fed him and, under the instructions of Hermes, immortalized him.

Birth

The birth of Dionisio, in addition to being premature, was not normal at all, which reminds us of the problems of inserting him into the Olympic pantheon. His progenitor was a mortal woman named Semele, a descendant of King Cadmus of Thebes, and her father was Zeus, the superior god. Hera, wife of Zeus, was an envious and vain deity, who she came to know about the affair of her spouse when Semele was pregnant with her.

With the appearance of an old woman (in other references as a nurse), Hera showed herself to Semele, who confessed that Zeus was the true father of the baby that was growing in her. Hera pretended not to believe him, and left the seeds of suspicion in Semele, who, hesitant, requested that Zeus appear in all his glory as evidence of his divinity. Although Zeus implored him not to ask of her, she persevered and he agreed.

It was when Zeus appeared before her with his roars, winds and lightning, that Semele was charred to death. Zeus managed to recover the embryonic Dionysus by planting it in her thigh. After a few months, Dionysus saw the light on Mount Pramnos on the island of Icaria, a place where Zeus went to free him, now enlarged, from his thigh.

In this interpretation, Dionysus was the son of two “mothers” (Semele and Zeus) prior to his birth, from which comes the nickname dimētōr (‘of two mothers’), linked to his duplex birth.

In another interpretation, Dionysus was the offspring of Zeus and Persephone, the ruler of the Underworld. The envious Hera tried again to kill the infant, this time sending the Titans to dismember him after inviting him with toys. Zeus caused the Titans to flee with his lightning bolts, but they had already swallowed everything except the heart, which was saved, as quoted, by Athena, Rhea or Demeter.

Zeus used the heart to regenerate it in Semele’s womb, from which he was again “twice born.” Other opinions suggest that Zeus fed Semele with his heart to fertilize her.

The primary motivation for veneration in mystery religions is rebirth, since his death and resurrection were events of mystical devotion. This story was used in many Greek and Roman rituals. Varieties of this are found in the work of Callimachus and Nonus, who replaced Dionysus with another god called Zagreus, and also in various fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus.

Childhood and Youth

Legend has it that Zeus left Hermes in charge of the infant Dionysus. One interpretation of the story indicates that he gave the child to the monarch Athamas and his wife Ino, Dionysus’s aunt. Hermes asked them to educate the newborn as if she were a girl, to hide him from the anger of the deity Hera.

It is also reported that Dionysus was left in the custody of the rain nymphs of Nyssa, who took care of his growth and that, for this attention, Zeus rewarded them by placing them in the sky with the name of the constellation of the Hyades.

As Dionysus grew up, the culture of wine and the way to squeeze its precious juice was revealed to him, but Hera managed to drive him crazy and made him wander through various regions of the earth. In Phrygia, Cybele, recognized by those of Greece as Rhea, healed him and instructed him in his pious rituals, and thus Dionysius began his journey through Asia Minor, through which he would show the people the cultivation of the vine. .

Triumphant return to begin the incorporation of his ceremonial in Greece, but he was opposed by certain princes and regents who were frightened by the tumults that this ritual caused.

In his youth, Dionysus was extraordinarily charming. On one occasion, while he was sitting on the seashore, some sailors who observed him thought he was a prince, and tried to kidnap him and take him away to sell him as a slave or for ransom. They tried to tie it with ropes, but they couldn’t secure it with any.

Then Dionysus transformed into a ferocious lion and simulated the sound of numerous flutes, and was able to kill all those who approached him. Those who were able to jump overboard were turned into dolphins. The lone survivor was Acetes, the helmsman, who, after recognizing the demigod, tried to stop the other sailors from the very beginning.

In a similar version, Dionysius wanted to sail from Ikaria to the island of Naxos, so he rented a Tyrrhenian pirate ship. But when the god boarded, they did not go to Naxos but to Asia Minor, with the idea of ​​selling him as a slave. When Dionysus found out, he turned the mast and oars into snakes, and had the ship filled with ivy and the whistling of flutes, to drive the sailors crazy, causing them to fall into the sea, where they were turned into dolphins.

Attributes of the God Dionysus

The initial images of the god Dionysus arising from Greek mythology show a mature man, with a beard and a tunic, holding a fennel rod, crowned by a pine cone known as a thyrsus (scepter). Although later images show him as a semi-naked or naked androgynous young man, sensual and hairless, where even literature has described him as feminine or effeminate.

In other versions, the God Dionysus is presented as a fun and graceful young man, dressed in goat or panther skin, with a crown of ivy and vine, raising a glass of wine, also bunches of grapes, branches and ivy. As a badge of divinity he held the thyrsus covered with vine or ivy leaves..

He traveled in a chariot drawn by leopards, escorted by a procession made up of a succession of eccentric and strange characters such as: Satyrs or Silenos, half human, half goat, with a very leafy tail and a virile organ always erect, Maenads or Bacchantes, drunken women who danced frantically and Fauns, equal to the Sileni; and Centaurs, half human, half horse.

All of these characters practiced frenetic dances to the sound of music and in the company of wine. Among its animals are the panther, the goat, the donkey, the leopard, the bull, the dolphin, the snake and the pig.

Consorts and Offspring

The following is a list of the consorts who accompanied Dionysus in his long and bizarre existence, as well as the respective offspring he produced with each of them.

Aphrodite

Altea

Ariadne

Oenopion Toante Staphylo Pepareto

Circe

Nix

unknown mother

Aura

Epithets

Chromatophorus, nickname by which he was recognized as the one who gives wine without combining, and by which he was venerated in Figaleia (Arcadia).
Acroreitesfor whom he was venerated in Sicyon.
Adoneo (Adoneus, “regent”), Latin nickname he received as Bacchus.
Bromium (“loud” or “he who roars”).
Dendrites (Δενδρίτης Dendrítês, “he of the grove”), as a powerful god of fertility.
Dimorphic (Δίμορφoς), due to the fact that it could be exhibited as beautiful or horrible depending on the circumstances.
Dithyramb (“he of the doubled door”) is sometimes used to refer to him in the solemn melodies performed at the festivities, and his anticipated birth is referred to there.
egobolus (“goat annihilator”), the name under which he was venerated in Potnias (Boeotia).
Eleutherius (Ελευθερευς, ‘the liberator’), also assigned to Eros.
Eneoas deity of the wine press.
Enorches (“with balls'” or perhaps “in the testicles”, in reference to Zeus sewing the child Dionysus into his thigh) another way related to fertility in Samos and Lesbos.
Esimnetes (“regent” or “lord”), the name under which he was venerated in Aroe and Patras (Achaia).
Evioa nickname used sufficiently in Euripides’ play, The Bacchae.
Phalene (Φαλλην, ‘of the phallus’), guarantor of fertility.
Floios (Φλοῖος, ‘bark’), as its soul.
Hierophantceremonial priest.
Lychnite (‘he of the pitchfork’) made him a deity of fertility linked to mysterious beliefs. The fork was a tool similar to a shovel that was used to winnow, that is, to separate the chaff from the grain.
Lieo (“he who liberates”), as a deity of relaxation and liberation from anxiety.
Omadio (Ὠμάδιος, ‘who feeds on raw meat’), nickname of Bacchus on Chios.
Sukites (Συκίτης), who protects the…