Dionysus (or Bacchus), god of wine,
grape harvest and fermentation, god of flush and drunkenness, is
seen as a later deity on Mount Olympus. He is said to have driven
out either Hermes or Hestia to take his place among the Twelve
Olympian Deities. While the other deities use their myths and
ceremonies to urge their believers to law-abidingness, Dionysus
walked his own uninhibited but dangerous way.
Dionysus was the only Olympian who was told to have mortal parent.
According to some myths Zeus was his father and the Theban
princess Semele his mother. Semele was the daughter of Cadmus and
Harmonia, and thus she fell even more into disgrace with Hera,
because Zeus had loved her aunt, Europa. When Zeus fell in love
with Semele and made her pregnant, Hera's jealousy did not know
any limits, as did her hatred. Her revenge was as terrible as it
was crafty: disguised as Semele's previous lover, she went to
Semele and made her command to Zeus to prove that he was indeed a
god, by appearing to her in all his majesty. Semele first let
Zeus promise to do whatever she would ask, and then demanded him
to show her his true form. No mortal being could possibly bear
this sight, and a god could not break his promise. So Zeus
appeared before Semele in all his majesty, and immediately she
burnt to ashes. But her unborn child was saved: Zeus is said to
have kept the foetus in his thigh until it could be born.
This story about the birth of Dionysus differs enormously with
another version, where Zeus battles, together with the other
Olympian deities, against the Titans. According to this story
Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, and a jealous Hera
demanded the Titans to attack the boy. They slashed him into
pieces, but he recovered with the help of Zeus.
This motive of reincarnation also returns in another story, where
Dionysus goes to the Underworld to bring his mother Semele back
to life. Dionysus' having powers in the Underworld has always
appealed to mortals, so they told his followers they could look
forward to a life full of drink and pleasure.
Concerning Dionysus' education most myths seem to agree with each
other: nymphs should have raised Dionysus and his divine powers
grew when he became older. A nice story tells of the young
Dionysus being kidnapped by pirates while he was sleeping, and
they wanted to sell him as a slave. When he woke up he angrily
stopped the boat he was kidnapped with, by surrounding the
rigging with vine leaves. Next he transformed the whole crew into
dolphins, and still they swim after and next to ships, hoping to
get their human forms back.
In all stories about Dionysus one aspect always returns: his
mysterious journey from the east. Because of those stories,
scientists assume that he came to Greece from Thracia, or from
Phrygia in Asia Minor, where his cult always had many followers.
Leading an army of men, women, children, satyrs and maenads, he
is said to have conquered all people on his journey only with
peaceful means. The tribes his army passed were eager to get to
know them, especially their delights of wine and fermentation. He
also educated those people about agriculture and apiculture.
In art Dionysus is most of all a young, effeminate man. He has
his youth and long hair in common with Apollo, but instead of
Apollo's golden locks, Dionysus has always dark hair and he is
also a little fleshier. His depictions are less stately; most of
all he is depicted nude, carried on the shoulders of his
companions. Sometimes he is also depicted as a rather fat boy,
with a bunch of grapes in his hand and a trumpet near his mouth.
Next to a god of drunkenness and pleasure, Dionysus was also an
honourable fertility god, essential in the cycle of plant growth,
in agriculture and arboriculture. Among his retinue were many
spirits of land and forest. Pan, for example, was his servant and
companion; Silenus, a wise demigod of the grasslands, was his
teacher and dedicated counsellor; and in his 'army' marching west
there were many spirits of nature from the most ancient classical
mythologies.
Dionysus was known as a generous, good-natured deity, who
rewarded services royally. He was also merciful. He married
Ariadne, after he had brought her back to life (she had herself
killed when her first husband Theseus left her on the island of
Naxos). They had many children and in all stories Dionysus seems
to be faithful, unlike other deities. On the other hand Dionysus
would also punish terribly those who had offended him, or those
who did not recognize his divinity. When king Lycurgus of Thracia
banned the cult of Dionysus, forbade his citizens to build
vineyards and tried to remove the deity and his followers from
his kingdom, Dionysus drove him to madness. In his madness,
Lycurgus killed his son Dryas and then chopped off his own legs
because he took them for vine branches. At last Lycurgus was
tortured to death by his people because an oracle had told them
they would not drink wine as long as he
was alive.
The story of Pentheus, told in Euripides' "Bacchantes",
may be even more cruel, also because he was Dionysus' nephew.
Pentheus, king of Thebe, declared the new, orgy-like rites of
Dionysus scandalous, despite the many female followers among his
own citizens. He forbade the rites, and when Dionysus came to
Thebe to extend his cult, Pentheus tried to capture him. But not
one prison, built by human hands, was strong enough, and Dionysus
escaped and took his local followers with him to celebrate his
liberation. Pentheus angrily commanded his soldiers to execute
all followers, but they refused. Dionysus, angry about his
nephew's lack of respect, made him unbearably curious for the
secret rites. The king watched from behind a tree how the women
danced in ecstasy, but when they noticed him, they all ran up to
him and tore him apart with their bare hands.
The idea that Dionysus had the power to bring mortals into
ecstasy, was often rather terrifying when magistrates tried to
maintain the public order. In Greek literature there have been
many complaints about the pernicious influence of Dionysus'
orgies on public morality. In the second century BC the
Bacchanals in Rome took such enormous proportions, the Senate had
to declare a prohibition on these rites. The cult of Dionysus
seemed however indestructible; approximately one century after
this prohibition, many mysterious and secret cults flourished
again in public. Until Christianity as state religion stopped
these rites definitively.