（*Dio/nusos or Διώνυσος), the youthful, beautiful, but
effeminate god of wine. He is also called both by Greeksand
Romans Bacchus (Βάκχος), that is, the noisy or riotous god,
which was originally a mere epithet or surname of Dionysus,
but does not occur till after the time of Herodotus.
According to the common tradition, Dionysus was the son of
Zeus and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus of Thebes (Hom.
Hymn. 6.56; Eurip. Bacch. init.; Apollod. 3.4.3); whereas
others describe him as a son of Zeus by Demeter, Io, Dione,
or Arge. (Diod. 3.62, 74; Schol. ad Pind. Pyth. 3.177; Plut.
de Flum. 16.) Diodorus (3.67) further mentions a tradition,
according to which he was a son of Ammon and Amaltheia, and
that Ammon, from fear of Rhea, carried the child to a cave
in the neighbourhood of mount Nysa, in a lonely island
formed by the river Triton. Ammon there entrusted the child
to Nysa, the daughter of Aristaeus, and Athena likewise
undertook to protect the boy. Others again represent him as
a son of Zeus by Persephone or Iris, or describe him simply
as a son of Lethe, or of Indus. (Diod. 4.4; Plut. Sympos.
7.5; Philostr. Vit. Apollon. 2.9.) The same diversity of
opinions prevails in regard to the native place of the god,
which in the common tradition is Thebes, while in others we
find India, Libya, Crete, Dracanum in Samos, Naxos, Elis,
Eleutherae, or Teos, mentioned as his birthplace. (Hom.
Hymn. 25.8; Diod. 3.65, 5.75; Nonnus, Dionys. 9.6; Theocrit.
26.33.) It is owing to this diversity in the traditions that
ancient writers were driven to the supposition that there
were originally several divinities which were afterwards
identified under the one name of Dionysus. Cicero (de Nat.
Deor. iii 23) distinguishes five Dionysi, and Diodorus
(3.63, &c.) three.
The common story, which makes Dionysus a son of Semele by
Zeus, runs as follows: Hera, jealous of Semele, visited her
in the disguise of a friend, or an old woman, and persuaded
her to request Zeus to appear to her in the same glory and
majesty in which he was accustomed to approach his own wife
Hera. When all entreaties to desist from this request were
fruitless, Zeus at length complied, and appeared to her in
thunder and lightning. Semele was terrified and overpowered
by the sight, and being seized by the fire, she gave
premature birth to a child. Zeus, or according to others,
Hermes (Apollon. 4.1137) saved the child from the flames: it
was sewed up in the thigh of Zeus, and thus came to
maturity. Various epithets which are given to the god refer
to that occurrence, such as πυριγενής, μηρορραφής,
μηροτραφής and ianigena. (Strab. xiii. p.628; Diod. 4.5;
Eur. Ba. 295; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 310; Ov. Met. 4.11.) After
the birth of Dionysus, Zeus entrusted him to Hermes, or,
according to others, to Persephone or Rhea (Orph. Hymn.
45.6; Steph. Byz. s. v. Μάσταυρα), who took the child to Ino
and Athamas at Orchomenos, and persuaded them to bring him
up as a girl. Hera was now urged on by her jealousy to throw
Ino and Athamas into a state of madness, and Zeus, in order
to save his child, changed him into a ram, and carried him
to the nymphs of mount Nysa, who brought him up in a cave,
and were afterwards rewarded for it by Zeus, by being placed
as Hyades among the stars. (Hyg. Fab. 182; Theon, ad Arat.
Phaen. 177; comp. HYADES.）
The inhabitants of Brasiae, in Laconia, according to
Pausanias (3.24.3), told a different story about the birth
of Dionysus, When Cadmus heard, they said, that Semele was
mother of a son by Zeus, he put her and her child into a
chest, and threw it into the sea. The chest was carried by
the wind and waves to the coast of Brasiae. Semele was found
dead, and was solemnly buried, but Dionysus was brought up
by Ino, who happened at the time to be at Brasiae. The plain
of Brasiae was, for this reason, afterwards called the
garden of Dionysus.
The traditions about the education of Dionysus, as well as
about the personages who undertook it, differ as much as
those about his parentage and birthplace. Besides the nymphs
of mount Nysa in Thrace, the muses, Lydae, Bassarae,
Macetae, Mimallones (Eustath. ad Hom. pp. 982, 1816), the
nymph Nysa (Diod. 3.69), and the nymphs Philia, Coronis, and
Cleis, in Naxos, whither the child Dionysus was said to have
been carried by Zeus (Diod. 4.52), are named as the beings
to whom the care of his infancy was entrusted. Mystis,
moreover, is said to have instructed him in the mysteries
(Nonn. Dionys. 13.140), and Hippa, on mount Tmolus, nursed
him (Orph. Hymn. 47.4); Macris, the daughter of Aristaeus,
received him from the hands of Hermes, and fed him with
honey. (Apollon. 4.1131.) On mount Nysa, Bromie and Bacche
too are called his nurses. (Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. 6.15.)
Mount Nysa, from which the god was believed to have derived
his name, was not only in Thrace and Libya, but mountains of
the same name are found in different parts of the ancient
world where he was worshipped, and where he was believed to
have introduced the cultivation of the vine. Hermes,
however, is mixed up with most of the stories about the
infancy of Dionysus, and he was often represented in works
of art, in connexion with the infant god. (Comp. Paus.
3.18.7.)
When Dionysus had grown up, Hera threw him also into a state
of madness, in which he wandered about through many
countries of the earth. A tradition in Hyginus (Poet. Astr.
2.23) makes him go first to the oracle of Dodona, but on his
way thither he came to a lake, which prevented his
proceeding any further. One of two asses he met there
carried him across the water, and the grateful god placed
both animals among the stars, and asses henceforth remained
sacred to Dionysus. According to the common tradition,
Dionysus first wandered through Egypt, where he was
hospitably received by king Proteus. He thence proceeded
through Syria, where he flayed Damascus alive, for opposing
the introduction of the vine, which Dionysus was believed to
have discovered (εύρετὴς ἀμπέλου). He now traversed all
Asia. (Strab. xv. p.687; Eur. Ba. 13.) When he arrived at
the Euphrates, he built a bridge to cross the river, but a
tiger sent to him by Zeus carried him across the river
Tigris. (Paus. 10.29; Plut. de Flum. 24.) The most famous
part of his wanderings in Asia is his expedition to India,
which is said to have lasted three, or, according to some,
even 52 years. (Diod. 3.63, 4.3.) He did not in those
distant regions meet with a kindly reception everywhere, for
Myrrhanus and Deriades, with his three chiefs Blemys,
Orontes, and Oruandes, fought against him. (Steph. Byz. s.
vv. Βλέμυες, Γάζος, Γήρεια, Δάρδαι, Ἔαρες, Ζάβιοι, Μάλλοι,
Πάνδαι, Σίβαι.) But Dionysus and the host of Pans, Satyrs,
and Bacchic women, by whom he was accompanied, conquered his
enemies, taught the Indians the cultivation of the vine and
of various fruits, and the worship of the gods; he also
founded towns among them, gave them laws, and left behind
him pillars and monuments in the happy land which he had
thus conquered and civilized, and the inhabitants worshipped
him as a god. (Comp. Strab. xi. p.505; Arrian, Ind. 5; Diod.
2.38; Philostr. Vit. Apollon. 2.9; Verg. A. 6.805.)
Dionysus also visited Phrygia and the goddess Cybele or
Rhea, who purified him and taught him the mysteries, which
according to Apollodorus (3.5.1.) took place before he went
to India. With the assistance of his companions, he drove
the Amazons from Ephesus to Samos, and there killed a great
number of them on a spot which was, from that occurrence,
called Panaema. (Plut. Quaest. Gr. 56.) According to another
legend, he united with the Amazons to fight against Cronus
and the Titans, who had expelled Ammon from his dominions.
(Diod. 3.70, &c.) He is even said to have gone to Iberia,
which, on leaving, he entrusted to the government of Pan.
(Plut. de Flum. 16.) On his passage through Thrace he was
ill received by Lycurgus, king of the Edones, and leaped
into the sea to seek refuge with Thetis, whom he afterwards
rewarded for her kind reception with a golden urn, a present
of Hephaestus. (Hom. Il. 6.135, &c., Od. 24.74; Schol. ad
Hom. Il. 13.91. Comp. Diod. 3.65.) All the host of
Bacchantic women and Satyrs, who had accompanied him, were
taken prisoners by Lycurgus, but the women were soon set
free again. The country of the Edones thereupon ceased to
bear fruit, and Lycurgus became mad and killed his own son,
whom he mistook for a vine, or, according to others (Serv.
ad Aen. 3.14) he cut off his own legs in the belief that he
was cutting down some vines. When this was done, his madness
ceased, but the country still remained barren, and Dionysus
declared that it would remain so till Lycurgus died. The
Edones, in despair, took their king and put him in chains,
and Dionysus had him torn to pieces by horses. After then
proceeding through Thrace without meeting with any further
resistance, he returned to Thebes, where he compelled the
women to quit their houses, and to celebrate Bacchic
festivals on mount Cithaeron, or Parnassus. Pentheus, who
then ruled at Thebes, endeavoured to check the riotous
proceedings, and went out to the mountains to seek the
Bacchic women; but his own mother, Agave, in her Bacchic
fury, mistook him for an animal, and tore him to pieces.
(Theocrit. Id. xxvi.; Eur. Ba. 1142; Ov. Met. 3.714, &c.)
After Dionysus had thus proved to the Thebans that he was a
god, he went to Argos. As the people there also refused to
acknowledge him, he made the women mad to such a degree,
that they killed their own babes and devoured their flesh.
(Apollod. 3.5.2.) According to another statement, Dionysus
with a host of women came from the islands of the Aegean to
Argos, but was conquered by Perseus, who slew many of the
women. (Paus. 2.20.3, 22.1.) Afterwards, however, Dionysus
and Perseus became reconciled, and the Argives adopted the
worship of the god, and built temples to him. One of these
was called the temple of Dionysus Cresius, because the god
was believed to have buried on that spot Ariadne, his
beloved, who was a Cretan. (Paus. 2.23.7.) The last feat of
Dionysus was performed on a voyage from Icaria to Naxos. He
hired a ship which belonged to Tyrrhenian pirates; but the
men, instead of landing at Naxos, passed by and steered
towards Asia to sell him there. The god, however, on
perceiving this, changed the mast and oars into serpents,
and himself into a lion; he filled the vessel with ivy and
the sound of flutes, so that the sailors, who were seized
with madness, leaped into the sea, where they were
metamorphosed into dolphins. (Apollod. 3.5.3; Hom. Hymn.
6.44; Ov. Met. 3.582, &c.) In all his wanderings and travels
the god had rewarded those who had received him kindly and
adopted his worship : he gave them vines and wine.
After he had thus gradually established his divine nature
throughout the world, he led his mother out of Hades, called
her Thyone, and rose with her into Olympus. (Apollod. l.c.)
The place, where he had come forth with Semele from Hades,
was shewn by the Troezenians in the temple of Artemis
Soteira (Paus. 2.31.2); the Argives, on the other hand,
said, that he had emerged with his mother from the Alcyonian
lake. (Paus. 2.37.5; Clem. Alex. Adm. ad Gr. p. 22.) There
is also a mystical story, that the body of Dionysus was cut
up and thrown into a cauldron by the Titans, and that he was
restored and cured by Rhea or Demeter. (Paus. 8.37.3; Diod.
3.62; Phurnut. N. D. 28.)
Various mythological beings are described as the offspring
of Dionysus; but among the women, both mortal and immortal,
who won his love, none is more famous in ancient history
than Ariadne. [ARIADNE.] The extraordinary mixture of
traditions which we have here had occasion to notice, and
which might still be considerably increased, seems evidently
to be made up out of the traditions of different times and
countries, referring to analogous divinities, and
transferred to the Greek Dionysus. We may, however, remark
at once, that all traditions which have reference to a
mystic worship of Dionysus, are of a comparatively late
origin, that is, they belong to the period subsequent to
that in which the Homeric poems were composed; for in those
poems Dionysus does not appear as one of the great
divinities, and the story of his birth by Zeus and the
Bacchic orgies are not alluded to in any way : Dionysus is
there simply described as the god who teaches man the
preparation of wine, whence he is called the " drunken god "
(μαινόμενος), and the sober king Lycurgus will not, for this
reason, tolerate him in his kingdom. (Hom. Il. 6.132, &c.,
Od. 18.406, comp. 11.325.) As the cultivation of the vine
spread in Greece, the worship of Dionysus likewise spread
further; the mystic worship was developed by the Orphici,
though it probably originated in the transfer of Phrygian
and Lydian modes of worship to that of Dionysus. After the
time of Alexander's expedition to India, the celebration of
the Bacchic festivals assumed more and more their wild and
dissolute character.
As far as the nature and origin of the god Dionysus is
concerned, he appears in all traditions as the
representative of some power of nature, whereas Apollo is
mainly an ethical deity. Dionysus is the productive,
overflowing and intoxicating power of nature, which carries
man away from his usual quiet and sober mode of living. Wine
is the most natural and appropriate symbol of that power,
and it is therefore called "the fruit of Dionysus."
(Διονύσου καρπός; Pind. Fragm. 89, ed. Böckh.) Dionysus is,
therefore, the god of wine, the inventor and teacher of its
cultivation, the giver of joy, and the disperser of grief
and sorrow. (Bacchyl. apud Athen. ii. p. 40; Pind. Fragm. 5;
Eur. Ba. 772.) As the god of wine, he is also both an
inspired and an inspiring god, that is, a god who has the
power of revealing the future to man by oracles. Thus, it is
said, that he had as great a share in the Delphic oracle as
Apollo (Eur. Ba. 300), and he himself had an oracle in
Thrace. (Paus. 9.30.5.) Now, as prophetic power is always
combined with the healing art, Dionysus is, like Apollo,
called ἰατπός, or ϝ̔γιατής (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1624), and
at his oracle of Amphicleia, in Phocis, he cured diseases by
revealing the remedies to the sufferers in their dreams.
(Paus. 10.33.5.) Hence he is invoked as a Δεὸς σωτήρ against
raging diseases. (Soph. Oed. Tyr. 210; Lycoph. 206.) The
notion of his being the cultivator and protector of the vine
was easily extended to that of his being the protector of
trees in general, which is alluded to in various epithets
and surnames given him by the poets of antiquity (Paus.
1.31.2, 7.21.2), and he thus comes into close connexion with
Demeter. (Paus. 7.20.1; Pind. Isthm. 7.3; Theocrit. 20.33;
Diod. 3.64; Ov. Fast. 3.736; Plut. Quaest. Gr. 36.) This
character is still further developed in the notion of his
being the promoter of civilization, a law-giver, and a lover
of peace. (Eur. Ba. 420; Strab. x. p.468; Diod. 4.4.) As the
Greek drama had grown out of the dithyrambic choruses at the
festivals of Dionysus, he was also regarded as the god of
tragic art, and as the protector of theatres. In later
times, he was worshipped also as a Δεὸς χΔόνιος, which may
have arisen from his resemblance to Demeter, or have been
the result of an amalgamation of Phrygian and Lydian forms
of worship with those of the ancient Greeks. (Paus. 8.37.3;
Arnob. ad v. Gent. 5.19.) The orgiastic worship of Dionysus
seems to have been first established in Thrace, and to have
thence spread southward to mounts Helicon and Parnassus, to
Thebes, Naxos, and throughout Greece, Sicily, and Italy,
though some writers derived it from Egypt. (Paus. 1.2.4;
Diod. 1.97.) Respecting his festivals and the mode of their
celebration, and especially the introduction and suppression
of his worship at Rome, see Dict. of Ant. s. vv. Ἀγριώνια,
Ἀνθεστήρια, Ἁλῶα, Αἰώρα, and Dionysia.
In the earliest times the Graces, or Charites, were the
companions of Dionysus (Pind. O. 13.20; Plut. Quaest. Gr.
36; Apollon. 4.424), and at Olympia he and the Charites had
an altar in common. (Schol. ad Pind. Ol. 5.10 ; Paus. 5.14
in fin.) This circumstance is of great interest, and points
out the great change which took place in the course of time
in the mode of his worship, for afterwards we find him
accompanied in his expeditions and travels by Bacchantic
women. called Lenae, Maenades, Thyiades, Mimallones,
Clodones, Bassarae or Bassarides, all of whom are
represented in works of art as raging with madness or
enthusiasm, in vehement motions, their heads thrown
backwards, with dishevelled hair, and carrying in their
hands thyrsus-staffs (entwined with ivy, and headed with
pine-cones), cymbals, swords, or serpents. Sileni, Pans,
satyrs, centaurs, and other beings of a like kind, are also
the constant companions of the god. (Strab. x. p.468; Diod.
4.4. &c.; Catull. 64. 258 ; Athen. i. p. 33; Paus. 1.2.7.)
The temples and statues of Dionysus were very numerous in
the ancient world. Among the sacrifices which were offered
to him in the earliest times, human sacrifices are also
mentioned. (Paus. 7.21.1; Porphyr. de Abstin. 2.55.)
Subsequently, however, this barbarous custom was softened
down into a symbolic scourging, or animals were substituted
for men, as at Potniae. (Paus. 8.23.1, 9.8.1.) The animal
most commonly sacrificed to Dionysus was a ram. (Verg. G.
2.380, 395; Ov. Fast. 1.357.) Among the things sacred to
him, we may notice the vine, ivy, laurel, and asphodel; the
dolphin, serpent, tiger, lynx, panther, and ass; but he
hated the sight of an owl. (Paus. 8.39.4; Theocrit. 26.4;
Plut. Sympos. 3.5; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 87; Verg. Ecl. 5.30;
Hygin. Poet. Astr. 2.23; Philostr. Imay. 2.17; Vit. Apollon.
3.40.) The earliest images of the god were mere Hermae with
the phallus (Paus. 9.12.3), or his head only was
represented. (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1964.) In later works of
art he appears in four different forms: 1. As an infant
handed over by Hermes to his nurses, or fondled and played
with by satyrs and Bacchae. 2. As a manly god with a beard,
commonly called the Indian Bacchus. He there appears in the
character of a wise and dignified oriental monarch; his
features are expressive of sublime tranquillity and
mildness; his beard is long and soft, and his Lydian robes
(βασσάρα) are long and richly folded. His hair sometimes
floats down in locks, and is sometimes neatly wound around
the head, and a diadem often adorns his forehead. 3. The
youthful or so-called Theban Bacchus, was carried to ideal
beauty by Praxiteles. The form of his body is manly and with
strong outlines, but still approaches to the female form by
its softness and roundness. The expression of the
countenance is languid, and shews a kind of dreamy longing;
the head, with a diadem, or a wreath of vine or ivy, leans
somewhat on one side; his attitude is never sublime, but
easy, like that of a man who is absorbed in sweet thoughts,
or slightly intoxicated. He is often seen leaning on his
companions, or riding on a panther, ass, tiger, or lion. The
finest statue of this kind is in the villa Ludovisi 4.
Bacchus with horns, either those of a ram or of a bull. This
representation occurs chiefly on coins, but never in
statues. (Welcker, Zeitschrift, p. 500, &c.; Hirt, Mythol.
Bilderb. i. p. 76, &c.) - A Dictionary of Greek and Roman
biography and mythology, William Smith, Ed.
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