Dionysus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Dionysus
(Bacchus) |
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| God of wine, vegetation, fertility, festivity and theatre | |
| Member of the Twelve Olympians | |
Marble bust of youthful Dionysus. Knossos, second century AD. Archaeology museum of Heraklion.
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| Abode | Mount Olympus |
| Animals | Bull, panther, tiger or lion, goat, snake |
| Symbol | Thyrsus, grapevine, ivy, theatrical masks |
| Festivals | Bacchanalia (Roman), Dionysia |
| Personal information | |
| Consort | Ariadne |
| Children | Priapus, Hymen, Thoas, Staphylus, Oenopion, Comus, Phthonus, the Graces, Deianira |
| Parents | |
| Siblings | Aeacus, Angelos, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Eileithyia, Enyo, Eris, Ersa, Hebe, Helen of Troy, Hephaestus, Heracles, Hermes, Minos, Pandia, Persephone, Perseus, Rhadamanthus, Tantalus, the Graces, the Horae, the Litae, the Muses, the Moirai |
| Equivalents | |
| Roman equivalent | Bacchus, Liber |
| Etruscan equivalent | Fufluns |
| Egyptian equivalent | Osiris |
| This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. |
Dionysus ( Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Dionysos) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth. He is also known as Bacchus ( or Ancient Greek: Βάκχος Bacchos) by the Greeks. This name was later adopted by the Romans. It is said that Dionysys had taught mortals how to use oxen to plow the fields, rather than doing so by hand. His worshipers often honored him for this by depicting him with horns.
In Orphic religion, he was a son of Zeus and Persephone or the twice-born son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. The Eleusinian Mysteries identify him with Iacchus, the son or husband of Demeter. Most accounts say he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner.
Festivals of Dionysus included the performance of sacred dramas enacting his myths, the initial driving force behind the development of theatre in Western culture. Dionysus also acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead. He is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god.
Romans identified Bacchus with their own Liber Pater, the "Free Father" of the Liberalia festival, patron of viniculture, wine and male fertility. Festivals of Bacchus were merged with those of Liber and Dionysus.
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Etymology of the name
The dio- prefix in Ancient Greek Διόνυσος (Diónūsos; /di.ó.nyː.sos/) has been associated since antiquity with Zeus (genitive Dios). In Mycenean Greek the form of Zeus is di-wo. The second element -nūsos is of unknown origin. It is perhaps associated with Mount Nysa, the birthplace of the god in Greek mythology, where he was nursed by nymphs (the Nysiads). Kretschmer asserted that νύση (nusē) is a Thracian word and that "Dionysus" means the "son of Zeus". Jane Ellen Harrison believed that the name Dionysus means "young Zeus". Other scholars suggest a Pre-Greek origin of the name, since all attempts to find an Indo-European etymology are doubtful.
Origins
Recent evidence has shown that Dionysus was one of the earliest gods in mainland Greek culture. The earliest written records of Dionysus worship come from Mycenaean Greece dated to around 1300 BC.
The oldest known image of Dionysus, accompanied by his name, is found on a dinos by the Attic potter Sophilos around 570 BC and is located in the British Museum. By the seventh century, iconography found on pottery shows that Dionysus was already worshiped as more than just a god associated with wine. He was associated with weddings, death and sacrifice, and his retinue of satyrs and dancers was already established.
Mythology
Different accounts and traditions existed in the ancient world regarding the parentage, birth, and life of Dionysus on earth. By the first century BC, an attempt was made to harmonize the various accounts of Dionysus' birth into a single narrative involving not only multiple births, but two or three distinct manifestations of the god on earth throughout history in different lifetimes. The historian Diodorus Siculus said that according to "some writers of myths" there were two gods named Dionysus, an older one, who was the son of Zeus and Persephone, but that the "younger one also inherited the deeds of the older, and so the men of later times, being unaware of the truth and being deceived because of the identity of their names thought there had been but one Dionysus." He also said that Dionysus "was thought to have two forms...the ancient one having a long beard, because all men in early times wore long beards, the younger one being youthful [...] and young."
First birth
According to Diodorus, Dionysus was originally the son of Zeus and Persephone (or alternately, Zeus and Demeter) who was killed by the Titans and then reborn.
The myth states that the infant Dionysus was taken to Mount Ida, where he was guarded by the dancing Curetes. Zeus intended Dionysus to be his successor as ruler of the cosmos, but a jealous Hera incited the Titans to kill the child.
Other sources suggest that Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. When the Titans killed Dionysus, tearing him apart, Demeter gathered together his remains, and he was born again.
Second birth
A different birth narrative suggests that (Dionysus) was originally the son of Jove (Zeus) and Proserpine (Persephone). When he was torn apart by the Titans, Jove took the fragments of his heart and put them into a drink which he gave to Semele, the daughter of Harmonia and Cadmus, king and founder of Thebes.
Semele then had a dream, in which Zeus destroyed a fruit tree with a bolt of lightning, but did not harm the fruit. He sent a bird to bring him one of the fruits, and sewed it into his thigh, so that he would be both mother and father to the new Dionysus. She saw the bull-shaped figure of a man emerge from his thigh, and then realized that she herself had been the tree. Her father Cadmus, fearful of the prophetic dream, instructed Semele to make sacrifices to Zeus.
Zeus then came to Semele disguised as a snake and telling her to be happy: "you bring forth a son who shall not die, and you I will call immortal. Happy woman! you have conceived a son who will make mortals forget their troubles, you shall bring forth joy for gods and men." (Dionysiaca 7).
Semele rejoiced in the knowledge that her son would be divine. She dressed herself in garlands of flowers and wreathes of ivy, and would run barefoot to the meadows and forests to frolic whenever she heard music. Hera became envious, and feared that Zeus would replace her with Semele as queen of Olympus.
She went to Semele in the guise of an old woman. She made Semele jealous of the attention Zeus gave to Hera and provoked her to request Zeus to appear before her in his full godhood. Zeus warned her than no other mortals had ever seen him as he held his lightning bolts. Semele reached out to touch them, and was burnt to ash. (Dionysiaca 8). But the infant Dionysus survived, and Zeus rescued him from the flames, sewing him into his thigh, from which Dionysus was later born.
According to the Egyptian tradition, Dionysus is the son of Ammon born from his union with Amaltheia. When Dionysus was born, Ammon feared that his wife, Rhea, would discover the child, so he took the infant Dionysus to Nysa (Dionysus' traditional childhood home). Ammon brought Dionysus into a cave where he was to be cared for by Nysa, a daughter of the hero Aristaeus. Dionysus grew famous due to his skill in the arts, his beauty, and his strength. It was said that he discovered the art of winemaking during his boyhood. His fame brought him to the attention of Rhea, who was furious with Ammon for his deception. She attempted to bring Dionysus under her own power but, unable to do so, she left Ammon and married Cronus.
When Dionysus grew up, he discovered the culture of the vine and the mode of extracting its precious juice, being the first to do so. He then set out travelling teaching the people the cultivation of the vine.
Secondary myths
Midas' golden touch
According to the myth, Dionysus discovered that his old school master and foster father, Silenus, had gone missing. The old man had wandered away and was found by some peasants who carried him to their king Midas. The king recognized Silenus and feasted him for ten days and nights. On the eleventh day, Midas brought Silenus back to Dionysus. Happy to see Silenus back, Dionysus asked the king to choose any reward he would like.
Midas said that he wished that whatever he might touch would turn to gold. Dionysus agreed. Midas hastened to put his new power to the test. He touched and turned to gold an oak twig and a stone, but his joy vanished when he found that his bread, meat, and wine also turned to gold. Later, when his daughter embraced him, she too turned to gold.
The horrified king strove to divest the Midas Touch, and prayed to Dionysus to save him from starvation. The god consented, telling Midas to have a wash in the river Pactolus. After he did so, the river sands turned gold.
Iconography
Symbols
The earliest images of Dionysus show a mature male, bearded and robed. He holds a fennel staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless youth. He typically wears a panther or leopard skin.
His procession (thiasus) is made up of wild female followers (maenads) and bearded satyrs who dance or play music. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers.
The cult of Dionysus was closely associated the bull and with trees, specifically the fig tree. The snake was the symbol of Dionysus in ancient Greece, and of Bacchus in Greece and Rome.
In classical art
Dionysus, and still more often his followers, were commonly depicted in the painted pottery of Ancient Greece, much of which made to hold wine. But, apart from some reliefs of maenads, Dionysian subjects rarely appeared in large sculpture before the Hellenistic period, when they became common.
Well-known Hellenistic sculptures of Dionysian subjects, surviving in Roman copies, include the Barberini Faun, the Belvedere Torso, the Resting Satyr. The Furietti Centaurs and Sleeping Hermaphroditus reflect related subjects, which had by this time become drawn into the Dionysian orbit. The marble Dancer of Pergamon is an original, as is the bronze Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo, a recent recovery from the sea.
The fourth-century AD Lycurgus Cup in the British Museum is a spectacular cage cup which changes colour when light comes through the glass; it shows the bound King Lycurgus being taunted by the god and attacked by a satyr; this may have been used for celebration of Dionysian mysteries.
Post-classical culture
Bacchic subjects in art resumed in the Italian Renaissance, and soon became almost as popular as in antiquity. Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne (1522–23) and The Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523–26), both painted for the same room, offer an influential heroic pastoral, while Diego Velázquez in The Triumph of Bacchus (or Los borrachos – "the drinkers", c. 1629) and Jusepe de Ribera in his Drunken Silenus choose a genre realism. Flemish Baroque painting frequently painted the Bacchic followers, as in Van Dyck's Drunken Silenus and many works by Rubens; Poussin was another regular painter of Bacchic scenes.
A common theme in art beginning in the sixteenth century was the depiction of Bacchus and Ceres caring for a representation of love – often Venus, Cupid, or Amore. This tradition derived from a quotation by the Roman comedian Terence (c. 195/185 – c. 159 BC) which became a popular proverb in the Early Modern period: Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus ("without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes"). Its simplest level of meaning is that love needs food and wine to thrive. Artwork based on this saying was popular during the period 1550–1630, especially in Northern Mannerism in Prague and the Low Countries, as well as by Rubens. Because of his association with the vine harvest, Bacchus became the god of autumn, and he and his followers were often shown in sets depicting the seasons.
Worship and festivals in Greece
Dionysus worship became firmly established by the seventh century BC. He may have been worshiped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Mycenaean Greeks; and traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete.
Dionysia
The Dionysia, Haloa, Ascolia and Lenaia festivals were dedicated to Dionysus. The Rural Dionysia (or Lesser Dionysia) was one of the oldest festivals dedicated to Dionysus, begun in Attica, and probably celebrated the cultivation of vines. It was held during the winter month of Poseideon (the time surrounding the winter solstice, modern December or January). The Rural Dionysia centered on a procession, during which participants carried long loaves of bread, jars of water and wine as well as other offerings, and young girls carried baskets. The procession was followed by drama performances and competitions.
The City Dionysia (or Greater Dionysia) took place in urban centers such as Athens and Eleusis. Held three months after the Rural Dionysia, the Greater festival fell near the spring equinox in March or April. The procession of the City Dionysia was similar to that of the rural celebrations, but more elaborate.
Bacchic Mysteries
The central religious cult of Dionysus is known as the Bacchic or Dionysian Mysteries. The exact origin of this religion is unknown. The Bacchic mysteries served an important role in creating ritual traditions for transitions in people's lives. This was often symbolized by a meeting with the gods who rule over death and change, such as Hades and Persephone, but also with Dionysus' mother Semele, who probably served a role related to initiation into the mysteries.
The religion of Dionysus often included rituals involving the sacrifice of goats or bulls. Some participants and dancers wore wooden masks associated with the god.
As early as the fifth century BC, Dionysus became identified with Iacchus, a minor deity from the tradition of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This association may have arisen because of the homophony of the names Iacchus and Bacchus.
Images for kids
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Dionysus extending a drinking cup (kantharos) (late sixth century BC)
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Dionysus triumph, a mosaic from the House of Poseidon, Zeugma Mosaic Museum
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A Roman fresco depicting Bacchus with red hair, Boscoreale, c. 30 BC
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The Conquest of India by Dionysus at the archaeological museum of Sétif, ca. 200–300 CE
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Roman marble relief (first century AD) from Naukratis showing the Greek god Dionysus, snake-bodied and wearing an Egyptian crown.
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Bust of Dionysus in the temple of Liber Pater in the forum, first century AD
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Sacrifice to Bacchus. Oil on canvas by Massimo Stanzione, c. 1634
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Painted wood panel depicting Serapis, who was considered the same god as Osiris, Hades, and Dionysus in Late Antiquity. Second century AD.
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Pinax of Persephone and Hades on the throne, from the holy shrine of Persephone at Locri.
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Bronze hand used in the worship of Sabazios (British Museum). Roman first–second century AD. Hands decorated with religious symbols were designed to stand in sanctuaries or, like this one, were attached to poles for processional use.
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Birth of Dionysus, on a small sarcophagus that may have been made for a child (Walters Art Museum)
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The education of Dionysus. Fresco, now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome, c. 20 AD
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Marble bust of youthful Dionysus. Knossos, second century AD. Archaeology museum of Heraklion.
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Wall protome of a bearded Dionysus. Boeotia, early fourth century BC.
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Badakshan patera, "Triumph of Bacchus" (first–fourth century). British Museum.
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Lycurgus trapped by the vine, on the Lycurgus Cup
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North African Roman mosaic: Panther-Dionysus scatters the pirates, who are changed to dolphins, except for Acoetes, the helmsman; second century AD (Bardo National Museum)
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Ancient Roman relief in the Museo Archeologico (Naples) depicting Dionysus holding a thyrsus and receiving a libation, wearing an ivy wreath, and attended by a panther
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Hanging with Dionysian Figures from Antinoöpolis, fifth–seventh century (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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Bacchus - Simeon Solomon (1867)
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Triumph of Dionysus
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The Dionysus Cup, a sixth-century BC kylix with Dionysus sailing with the pirates he transformed to dolphins
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Dionysus holding an egg and a cock, terracotta from Tanagra, Greece, c. 350 BC
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Statue of Dionysus (Sardanapalus) (Museo Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme, Rome)
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Bronze head of Dionysus (50 BC – 50 AD) in the British Museum
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Statue of Dionysus in Remich Luxembourg
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A Bacchus themed table - the top was made in Florence (c. 1736) and the gilded wood base in Britain or Ireland (circa 1736–1740).
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Head of a Dionysian statue, 310-290 BC, Palatine Museum
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Dionysian amphora
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Dionysian jug
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Terracotta vase in the shape of Dionysus' head (circa 410 BC) – on display in the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens, housed in the Stoa of Attalus
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Amphora with cult mask of Dionysus, by the Antimenes Painter, around 520 BC, Altes Museum
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Cult mask of Dionysus from Boeotia, fourth century BC
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Marble statuette of Dionysos, early third century B.C, Metropolitan Museum
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The Infant Bacchus, painting (c. 1505–1510) by Giovanni Bellini
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Badakshan patera, "Triumph of Bacchus" (first–fourth century). British Museum.
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Lycurgus trapped by the vine, on the Lycurgus Cup
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A Hellenistic Greek mosaic depicting the god Dionysos as a winged daimon riding on a tiger, from the House of Dionysos at Delos (which was once controlled by Athens) in the South Aegean region of Greece, late second century BC, Archaeological Museum of Delos
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North African Roman mosaic: Panther-Dionysus scatters the pirates, who are changed to dolphins, except for Acoetes, the helmsman; second century AD (Bardo National Museum)
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Hanging with Dionysian Figures from Antinoöpolis, fifth–seventh century (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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Bacchus - Simeon Solomon (1867)
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See also
In Spanish: Dioniso para niños
