Dionysus

Dioniso, Louvre Museum

Dioniso (seated on a throne) with Helios, Aphrodite and other gods. Old Fresco of Pompeii.

The ménades, companions of Dioniso

Dioniso, marble sculpture, 2nd century BC, Louvre Museum

In Greek mythology, Dionysus (in Greek: Διόνυσος, transl.: Dionysos) is one of the considered Olympic gods, god of fertility and wine. Considered the son of Zeus and Semele, the grandson of Harmonia and the great-grandson of Aphrodite, however, other versions state that he was the son of Zeus and Persephone.

Dionysus was the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and gradually became an important figure in Greek mythology. Although the geographical origins of his cult are unknown, almost all tragedies present him as "foreign."

He is the patron god of agriculture and theater. He is also known as the 'Savior' and 'Liberator' (Eleuterio), freeing one from his normal self, through madness, ecstasy or wine. Dionysus's divine mission was to mix the music of the aulós and end the care and concern. As a wine divinity, he was linked to Demeter (bread) as a staple food, also invoked for its pharmacological and psychic properties ("medicine against sorrows") and stimulator of speech, sociability and frankness. Researchers have discussed Dionysus' relationship to the "cult of souls" and his ability to preside over communication between the living and the dead.

The name Dionysos is of uncertain meaning. Its element -nysos may well be of non-Hellenic origin, but dio- has long been related to Zeus (genitive God). For the Greek authors, Nisa was a nymph who raised him, or the mountain where he was cared for by several nymphs (the Nisíades), who fed him and made him immortal by order of Hermes.

According to the Stoic etymology proposed by Cleanthes, in which dianysai translates as "to travel completely", Dionysus is identified with the sun that each day "completely travels around the celestial circle". Centuries later, Macrobio transmits in his Saturnalia various allegories of Dionysus-sun, Dionysus being the "night sun" that runs through the lower hemisphere and Apollo the "day sun" that transits the upper hemisphere; the ages of Dionysus—child, ephebe, bearded—symbolize the solar cycles of growth and decline throughout the year, so the god governs the fertility of the earth and the fruits together with the "lunar" goddesses (Demeter and Persephone). As solar divinity Dionysus embodies the masculine potency of the cosmos, «spirit (pneûma) generator and nourisher» for the Stoics according to Plutarch, and as Roman Liber Pater considered «father of all things" and giver of the "seminal power" associated with procreation. In this last sense, he is associated in general with humid-warm nature and linked to fruit-bearing plants according to Porphyry, identical to Osiris in Plutarch.

Dionysus' entourage was called the uncle and was made up mainly of the maenads, his orgy partners, who dance and play the tympanum.

Another Dionysian myth appears in the creed of Orphism, where the ancient Titans slay the little god Dionysus, son of Zeus and Persephone, after luring him into a trap with glowing toys, and then he is dismembered, baked, and eaten. Then, Zeus punishes and strikes down the Titans with his lightning, but since Dionysus' heart was not devoured, the son of Zeus is resurrected from the heart. From the ashes of the Titans and the earth arise human beings, who have a titanic and a Dionysian component, being born with some of the ancient guilt of the death of the god Dionysus, for which they must purify themselves by avoiding the bloodshed of men and animals. In this way, at the end of existence, his soul is released from the body (almost tomb and prison), to reintegrate into the divine world from which he came.

Later he was known by the Romans as Bacchus and the frenzy he induced, bakcheia.

Worship

Dionysus is a god of mysterious religious rites, like those of Demeter and Persephone in the city of Eleusis, near Athens. Dionysus wears the basjaris or fox skin, symbolizing the vineyard and fauna. His own rites, the Dionysian Mysteries and the Eleusinian Mysteries, were the best known to all. Dionysus is believed by many researchers to be a syncretism of a local Greek nature deity and a more powerful god from Thrace or Phrygia, such as Sabazios.

Herodotus knew that the cult of Dionysus reached the Greeks later than the rest, as he comments:

Thus, the Greek history tells that as soon as Dioniso was born, Zeus took him to Nisa, in Ethiopia, beyond Egypt, and as with Pan, the Greeks do not know what was of him after his birth. It is therefore clear to me that the Greeks learned the names of these two gods later than the names of all others, and place the birth of both at the time they met them.

Many Greeks were certain that the cult of Dionysus had come to Greece from Anatolia, but their notions about whether Nisa was located in Anatolia, in Libya ("far to the west by the great ocean"), Ethiopia (Herodotus), or Arabia (Diodorus Siculus) are variable enough to suggest that a distant magical country, perhaps called Nysa, was intended to explain the illegible name of the god: 'god of Nisa'. Apollodorus seems to follow Pherecides, who tells how the infant Dionysus, god of the vine, was raised by the rain nymphs, the Hyades, in Nisa. However, the name that the Anatolian Hittites gave themselves in their own language (nesili) was Nesi. The Hittite influence on ancient Greek culture is hardly ever appreciated. Later, already at the beginning of the XIX century during German Romanticism, general opinion placed the origin of Dionysus —as well as of the rest of the Greek pantheon—in India: as "lord of nature" he was associated with the Hindu god Shiva, who would have metamorphosed to the West through the Near East, Egypt (associated, as suffering god, to Mithras and Osiris), Thrace and Greece, where the oriental deity would have finally been humanized and reduced to the status of hero through epic myth.

The above contradictions suggest to some that you are dealing not with the historical memory of a foreign cult but with an inherently foreign god. And in fact, the name of Dionysus appears documented prior to 1200 B.C. C. on Mycenaean language tablets as DI-WO-NI-SO-JO, and Károly Kerényi locates him in Minoan Crete, where his Minoan name is unknown but his characteristic presence it is recognizable. Clearly, Dionysus had been with the Greeks and their predecessors for a long time, and yet retained – in part – the memory of his foreign provenance.

The bull, the serpent, the ivy and the wine are the signs of the characteristic Dionysian atmosphere, and Dionysus is closely associated with the satyrs, centaurs and silenes. He is often shown riding a leopard, wearing a feline or deer skin, or riding a chariot drawn by panthers, and can also be recognized by the thyrsus he wears. In addition to the vine and the barren wild alter ego , his poison ivy, both sacred to him, the fig tree was also a symbol of his. The pineapple that crowned his thyrsus related him to Cybele, and the pomegranate to Demeter. In Athens the Dionysias and the Lenaias were celebrated in his honor. The initiates worshiped him in the Dionysian mysteries, which were similar and related to the Orphic mysteries. Orpheus was said to have invented the mysteries of Dionysus.

Late worship in Rome

The cult of Dionysus was influential later in Rome, between the III and II a. C., introduced from Magna Graecia (the Greek peoples of southern Italy), and through Etruria, influenced by Rome.

Its active presence in stories, beliefs and ritual practices lasted until the late Roman period (III and centuries). ="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">IV AD). The Romans worshiped his Roman equivalent, Bacchus, his name derived from bacchanalia. The bacchanalia were parties that were celebrated in secret and with the sole participation of women in the grove of Simila, near the Aventine Hill on March 16 and 17. Subsequently, participation in the rites was extended to men and the celebrations took place five times a month. The notoriety of these parties, where political conspiracies were supposed to be planned, caused in 186 a. a decree of the Senate —the so-called Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Calabria (1640) and currently in Vienna— by which bacchanalia were prohibited throughout Italy, under suspicion that they were carried out to plot crimes. Prohibited to a certain extent, on certain special occasions they had to be approved by the Senate. Despite the severe punishment inflicted on those caught violating this decree, the bacchanalia was not put down, especially in southern Italy, for a long time.

Dionysus is also equated with Liber (mythology) (also Liber Pater). Liber ('the free') was a god of fertility and growth, married to Libera. His festival was the Liberalia, celebrated on March 17, but in some myths it was also celebrated on March 5.

Epithets

• Acratoforo, epithet with which he was appointed as a wine giver without mixing, and under which he was worshipped in Figaleya (Arcadia).
• Acroreitesunder whom he was worshiped in Sition.
• Adoneo (Adoneus, ‘governant’), Latin epithet he received as Baco.
• Bromio (‘atronador’ or ‘the one that beats’).
• Dendrites (Δενδρεετις) Dendrítês, ‘the tree’), as a powerful god of fertility.
• Dimorpho (Δμορφoς), by the fact that it could be shown as beautiful or as terrible according to the circumstances.
• Ditirambo (‘the double door’) is sometimes used to refer to him in the solemn songs sung at the festivals, and refers to his premature birth.
• Egobolo (‘Goat-killer’), the name under which he was worshipped in Potnias (Beocia).
• Eleuterio (Ελευθερευς, ‘the liberator’), also applied to Eros.
• EnzyAs a god of the wine press.
• Enorches (‘with balls’ or perhaps ‘in the testicles’, in allusion to Zeus sewing the Dioniso infant in his thigh), another form related to fertility in Samos and Lesbos.
• Esimnetes (‘governant’ or ‘sir’), the name under which he was worshipped in Aroe and Patras (Acaya).
• Evioan epithet that is used prominently in the work of Euripides, The baccathes.
• Faleno (Ωλην, ‘del falo’), the guarantor of fertility.
• Floios (Poundλος, ‘corteza’), as a spirit of it.
• Hierofante, priest of worship.
• Hyêsas a divinity associated with rains and human procreation.
• Licnite (‘the bezel’) made him a god of fertility related to mysterical religions. The bezel was an instrument similar to a shovel used to beat, that is to separate the straw from the grain.
• Lie (‘he who unleashes’), as a god of relaxation and the release of worries.
• Omadio (.μάδιος, ‘who eats raw meat’), Baco's name in Quíos.
• Sukites (συκτης), protector of fig trees.
• Yaco (Heαχκος) relates him to the eleusian mysteries, where he was known as the son of Zeus and Deméter. The name may proceed from ιακχος (iakchos), an hymn sung in honor of Dioniso.
• Zagreoas a child-god torn and devoured by the titans, according to a myth of possibly orific origin.

In the Greek pantheon, Dionysus and Zeus absorb the role of Sabatius, a Thracian/Phrygian deity to whom broken pottery was sacrificed (probably to prevent another from breaking in the fire). In the Roman pantheon, Sabatius became an alternate name for Bacchus.

Mythology

Birth

Dionysiac procession in a marble sarcophagus, possibly indicative that the deceased was initiated in the mysteries.

Baco de Aldaya, 2nd century Hispanic-Roman sculpture (M.A.N.)

Dionysus had an unusual and premature birth that evokes the difficulty of fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a mortal woman named Semele, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes, and his father Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus's wife, Hera, a jealous and vain goddess, discovered the affair of her husband when Semele was pregnant with her. With the appearance of an old woman (in other versions of a nurse), Hera appeared to Semele, who confided to her that Zeus was the true father of her child that she was carrying in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe it, and sowed the seeds of doubt in the mind of Semele, who, curious, asked Zeus to reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his divinity. Although Zeus begged her not to ask him that, she insisted and he ended up agreeing from her. Then Zeus appeared before her with her thunder, winds and lightning, and Semele was burned to death. Zeus managed to rescue the embryonic Dionysus by planting it on his thigh. A few months later, Dionysus was born on Mount Pramnos on the island of Icaria, where Zeus went to free him already grown from his thigh. In this version, Dionysus had two "mothers" (Sémele and Zeus) before he was born, from which comes the epithet dimētōr ('of two mothers'), related to his double birth.

In another version (strongly linked to Orphism), Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, queen of the Underworld. The jealous Hera tried again to kill the boy, this time sending the Titans to dismember him after tricking him with toys. Zeus made the Titans flee with his lightning, but they had already eaten everything except the heart, which was saved, according to sources, by Athena, Rhea or Demeter. Zeus used the heart to recreate it in the womb of Semele, from where he again was 'twice-born'. Other versions state that Zeus fed Semele's heart to impregnate her.

Rebirth is the main reason for worship in the mystery religions, as his death and resurrection were events of mystical reverence. This account was used in many Greek and Roman cults. Variants of it are found in the work of Nono, and also in several fragmentary Orphic poems, which mention Dionysus born of Persephone under the name Zagreo.

Childhood and youth

Dioniso Theatre, Athens

Myth tells that Zeus took the infant Dionysus and put him in charge of Hermes. One version of the story is that he gave the child to King Athamas and his wife Ino, Dionysus's aunt. Hermes asked the couple to raise the newborn as a girl, to hide him from the wrath of the goddess Hera. Another version is that Dionysus was placed under the guardianship of the rain nymphs of Nyssa, who raised him and who For these cares, they were rewarded by Zeus, who placed them in the firmament as the constellation of the Hyades. Other versions put him under the care and upbringing of the Titaness Rhea or Persephone.

When Dionysus grew up, he discovered the culture of wine and how to extract its precious juice, but Hera drove him mad and made him wander to various parts of the earth. In Phrygia, Cybele, better known to the Greeks as Rhea, cured him and taught him his religious rites, and so Dionysus began his tour of Asia Minor, during which he would teach people how to grow the vine. He returned triumphant and undertook to introduce his cult into Greece, but was opposed by some princes and regents who feared the disorders that cult would bring about (see the sections on Pentheus and Lycurgus).

As a young man, Dionysus was exceptionally attractive. Once, sitting by the seashore, he was seen by some sailors, who believed that he was a prince. They tried to kidnap him and take him away to be sold into slavery or held for ransom. They tried to tie him up with ropes, but none could hold him. Dionysus turned into a fierce lion and imitated the sound of many flutes, and killed all who came in contact with him. Those who jumped overboard were transformed into dolphins. The only survivor was Acetes the helmsman, who, having recognized the god, had tried to stop the other sailors from the start. In a similar version, Dionysus wanted to sail from Icaria to the island of Naxos, so he chartered a pirate ship. tyrrenian But when the god was on board, they sailed not for Naxos but for Asia Minor, intending to sell him into slavery. Knowing this, Dionysus transformed the mast and oars into snakes, and filled the ship with ivy and the sound of flutes, so that the sailors went mad and jumped into the sea, where they were transformed into dolphins.

Other stories

Midas

See also the section titled "The Myth" from the article dedicated to King Midas.

Once, Dionysus found that his former teacher and adoptive father, Silenus, had disappeared. The old man had been drinking, had gone off drunk and met some peasants, who had brought him before the king, Midas (alternatively, Silenus had wandered into the king's rose garden).

Midas recognized Silenus, treated him hospitably, and politely entertained him for ten days and nights, while Silenus entertained the king and his friends with stories and songs. On the eleventh day, Midas took Silenus back to Dionysus. He offered Midas to choose the reward he wanted, and the king asked that everything he touched turn to gold. Dionysus agreed, though he regretted that he had not made a better choice. Midas rejoiced in his new power, which he hastened to put to the test: he touched and turned to gold an oak branch and a stone. Delighted, as soon as he got home he ordered the servants to set a feast on the table. Then he found his bread, his meat, his daughter and his wine turned to gold.

In anger, Midas strove to shake off his power, hating the gift he had coveted. He prayed to Dionysus, begging to be spared from his hunger. Dionysus heard him and consented, telling Midas to bathe in the Pactolus river. Midas did so, and when he touched the waters power passed to them, and the sands of the river turned to gold.

Penteo

Dioniso and Acmé. Mosaic in Cyprus

Euripides wrote a narrative about the destructive nature of Dionysus in his play The Bacchae. Since Euripides wrote this work at the court of King Archelaus of Macedonia, some researchers believe that the cult of Dionysus was seen as evil in this city but benign in Athens. In the play, Dionysus returns to his birthplace, Thebes, ruled by his cousin Pentheus. Dionysus wanted to take revenge on the women of Thebes, his aunts Agave, Ino and Autonoe and his cousin, King Pentheus, for denying his divinity and therefore not allowing his worship. Pentheus was slowly driven mad by the convincing Dionysus, and lured to the woods of Mount Cithaeron to see the Maenads, the worshipers of Dionysus who often experienced Dionysian ecstasy. When the women saw Pentheus, they tore him to pieces as they had done earlier in the play with a herd of cattle. Brutally, his head was severed by Ágave.

Licurgus

When King Lycurgus of Thrace heard that Dionysus was in his kingdom, he sent all his followers to prison. The demigod fled and took refuge with Thetis, He then sent a drought that caused the people to riot. Then he drove Lycurgus crazy, and he dismembered his own son with an ax, thinking it was an ivy shoot, a plant sacred to Dionysus. An oracle then stated that the land would remain dry and wasteland as long as Licurgus was still alive, so his people killed him and dismembered him. With Lycurgus dead, Dionysus lifted the curse.

Prosimnos

A well-known story is that of his descent into Hades or the underworld to rescue his mother Semele, whom he would later place in the starry firmament. Dionysus made the descent from a well that was said to be bottomless, located on the coast of the Argolis, near the prehistoric site of Lerna. He was guided by the fighter Prosimnos or Polimnos, who asked as a reward to be his lover. When Prosimnos died before he could agree to his request, Dionysus, in gratitude to the shadow of the one who had helped him, took an olive branch, shaped it into a phallus and stuck it in the grave.

This story is told in its entirety only in Christian sources (whose intent was to discredit pagan mythology). It seems to have served as an explanation of the secret objects that were revealed in the Dionysian cults and mysteries.

Amp It Up

According to Nono de Panópolis, there was talk of Ámpelo, a satyr who died in an accident while riding a bull driven mad by the bite of Ate's horsefly. The Fates granted Ámpelo a second life as a vine, and Dionysus pressed the first wine from it.

Lesser Known Myths

Dioniso and AriadnaSebastiano Ricci.

When Hephaestus imprisoned Hera on a throne of magical gold, Dionysus got him drunk and took him back to Olympus, where he finally agreed to release Hera.

When Hestia, goddess of the hearth, decided to leave the Council of Twelve and attend to the fire in family homes, Zeus chose Dionysus to take his place on Olympus as immortal god of wine, revelry and parties.

In his comedy The Frogs, Aristophanes invents a third descent of Dionysus into Hades. Dionysus, patron of the Athenian dramatic festival, the Dionysia, wanted to bring one of the great playwrights back to life. After a contest, between Aeschylus and Euripides, he chooses the former.

When Theseus left Ariadne sleeping on Naxos, Dionysus found her and married her. They had a son named Oenopion, who either committed suicide or was killed by Perseus. In some versions, her crown was placed in the sky as the constellation Corona borealis, in others, Dionysus descended to Hades to retrieve it and return it to the gods of Olympus.

Callirroe was a Kalydonian woman who spurned a priest of Dionysus who threatened to drive every woman in the land mad. The priest was commanded to sacrifice Callirroe, but instead of obeying, he committed suicide. Callírroe threw herself into a well (or cut her throat by a fountain) that would later be named after her.

Consorts and offspring

In late Greco-Egyptian mythology

According to Herodotus, Valerio Mersalla Corvino and Plutarch, in his treatise on Isis and Osiris, Dionysus was Osiris himself. He was also associated with Serapis.

In art

Mosaic found in Paphos. Cyprus. Dionysus baby in Hermes' arms, received by nectar and ambrosia. Below, Zeus and other deities.

Naturally, the god appeared on many kraters and wine vessels in Ancient Greece. His iconography became more complex in the Hellenistic period, with severely archaic or Neo-Attic types such as Dionysus Sardanapalus and types showing him as an indolent youth.

At the theater

Dionysus, as the god of otherness and transfiguration, was associated with theater and tragic fiction. Tragedy, as a «total social fact» in the Athenian polis of the V century a. C., was a means of self-reflection on the ambiguity of the human condition; Through the use of fiction, social and existential problems are put on the table through typically Dionysian instruments: illusionism, mimesis, masks, altered mental states, etc. The individual, thanks to the intercession of Dionysus, dissolves his identity and merges into the transfigured reality: he becomes a "tragic man." Said influence of the god is characterized in the tragedy of Euripides The Bacchae.

In music

• BacoJules Massenet's opera.
• The Cult of DionysusThe Orion Experience 2006 song.
• DionysusBTS song.

In literature

Dionysus stars in the Dionysiacs, an epic composed by the poet Nono of Panópolis (V century) AD), which narrates the life of the god and his expedition to India.

Dionysian influence on Christianity

Modern researcher Barry Powell believes that Christian notions of eating and drinking the "flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus. In another parallel, Powell argues, Dionysus was also peculiar among the Greek gods, as a commonly perceived deity within his followers.

Wine was important to Dionysus, who was envisioned as its creator; the creation of wine from water also appears at the Wedding at Cana. In the 20th century, Bultmann and others compared the two themes and concluded that the Dionysian theophany influenced Christian literature. In Elis, during the Aunts, the festival of Dionysus, the priests placed three jars in a sealed room and the next day they appeared miraculously full of wine, according to Pliny the Elder and Pausanias.

According to a tradition reported from the IV century B.C. C., Dionysus -like Christ- had suffered a violent death and, later, was reborn. Justin Martyr, in his First Apology, tried to rationalize this coincidence by interpreting the Greek myth as a copy of the passion and resurrection of Jesus.

Modern interpretations

Dionysus Sculpture celebrating the 100th anniversary of Qingdao Beer (Shandong Province, China).

Dionysus has remained an inspiration to contemporary artists, philosophers, and writers. Inspired by James Frazer, some researchers have labeled Dionysus a life, death, and resurrection deity. The mythographer Károly Kerényi devoted much energy to Dionysus in his long career, summarizing his thoughts in Dionysus: Indestructible Root of Life.

In his book The Birth of Tragedy in the Spirit of Music, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche contrasted Dionysus with Apollo as a symbol of the fundamental and uncontrolled aesthetic principle of force, music and the intoxication against the principle of sight, form and beauty represented by the second.

Vyacheslav Ivanov elaborated the theory of Dionysism, which traces the roots of literary art in general and the art of tragedy in particular to the ancient Dionysian mysteries. His opinions were expressed in the treatises Hellenistic religion and the suffering god (1904) and Dionysus and ancient Dionysism (1921).

Kessler believes that a mosaic present on the floor of the triclinium of the House of Aion in Nea Pafos (Cyprus) reflects a type of monotheistic cult of Dionysus, but Hermes appears as the main or tutelary deities of the city. and Zeus. The adoption of tutelary deities as patron saints of the city, was a very frequent habit in the cities of Greece, such as Ares in Sparta and Athena in Athens. Some modern interpretations are bold; the essayist Walter F. Otto describes Dionysus as "masculine-feminine", which does not agree with the classical accounts or with his descent.

Currently the figure of Dionysus continues to be the favorite among the Greek divinities to represent difference or otherness, an iconography used by various alternative and countercultural movements since the middle of the century XX. For example, in his 1991 film The Doors Oliver Stone posits that Jim Morrison, in the popular culture of the 1960s, became a kind of incarnation of Dionysus. The poem "Liberalia", by the Costa Rican writer Juan Alberto Corrales, refers to the mystery rituals of Dionysus.

Among the contemporary alternative interpretations of Dionysus, authors such as Maria Daraki stand out, in whose Dyonisos (1985) she presents the god as a representative of a primitive “circular logic” that links the human being with the cosmos and endows him with a "vitalist" ethic; Ultimately, the Dionysian ritual unleashes the female sexuality repressed by traditional marriage, and Dionysus becomes the liberator of the Greek woman. Clara Acker's Dionysos en transe: la voix des femmes (2002) maximizes this feminist vision of the Dionysian as “metaphysics of motherhood”, integrated into a series of feminine values developed as a revolutionary sociopolitical movement in archaic-classical Greece and that would reach the present time. This vision of Dionysus as a subversive vehicle is also found in Pouvoir et societé ("Power and Society", 1999) by José Antonio Dabdab Trabulsi who, also starting from a primitive Dionysism, interprets said religious movement as a class struggle between the aristoi (aristocracy) and the demos (common people) within the nascent polis (city-states); According to this author, the Dionysian religion would conceal an ideology through which the oppressed would try to assert their rights and release, in turn, their social malaise through ecstatic rites.

Images

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  Dioniso marble bust, Drama Archaeological Museum, Drama Archaeological Museum.

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  Marble sarcophagus on the theme of Dioniso's triumph in India. Above scenes of his birth, with faces in the corners, frown and a smile. The details refer to the mysterious cult of Dioniso Savazio. Great attention to detail. Walters Museum, Baltimore, United States.

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  Dionysus with Pan. A satire cuts the grapes from the vine. The god has a rhyme, Pan a trumpet and Satiro a sickle. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Workshop of Asia Minor, marble of the city of Dokimio there. 170-180 AD

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  Borracho Dioniso and Sátiro. Rome, 2nd c. AD, copy of the original hellenistic. The legs of the forms are complete.

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  Titian: Dioniso finds Ariadna in Naxos and falls in love with her. Left at the bottom The Teseo ship left, leaving it. Dioniso will offer you a wedding crown, which will become the constellation of Corona Borealis (view in the sky).

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  Satiro gives a grape to Dioniso. Comet of the 1st century AD of Italy.

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  King Lycurgo of Tracia banished Dioniso and imprisoned the nymph Ambrosia, the adoptive mother of the god. Then he became a vineyard that wrapped Licurgo and killed him. The Roman cup of the fourth century d. C. Century is made of dichroic glass: it is green, but when the light passes inside it becomes red, British Museum.

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  Guido Reni: Baco drinks wine, sixteenth century.

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  Dioniso and Ariadna in a car drawing four panthers. It is located on the entrance of Opera Semper, Dresden.

Worship

Dionysus endures as cult mode, being present in the names of alcoholic beverage producers, as well as stores and wine and beer festivals. Some contemporary music ensembles also use his name, such as Dionysos.

Religiously, it is present in Hellenism, which worships the ancient Greek divinities.