837 



DIONYSUS. 



DIONYSUS. 



639 



of those seized lasted thirty days. Henceforth only a simpler and 

 comparatively harmless festival, the Liheralia, was celebrated in Rome 



annually, on the 16th of March. It was on this day that Roman 

 youths were invested with the toga virilis. 



[Pyonisian Procession, from a Vase in the British Museum.] 



DIOXY'SUS (Ainros), and later Bacchos (BOKXS> of the Greeks, 

 Bacchus of the Romans, the god of wine, the representative among the 

 male deities of the productive power of nature. In the common 

 narrative he appears as the son of Zeus and Semela Hera, being 

 jealous of Semele, assumed the form of her old nurse Beroe, and thus 

 persuaded Semele to request Zeus to visit her in his majesty as he was 

 accustomed to visit Hera. Zeus having beforehand promised to grant 

 her prayer, was obliged to comply, and the consequence was, as Hera 

 foresaw, that Semele was destroyed by the lightning of the thunder- 

 god. But before she perished she gave premature birth to Dionysus, 

 who was taken by Zeus and enclosed in his thigh till he arrived at 

 maturity. During his infancy Dionysus was nourished by the nymphs 

 in Naxos, and Hermes and the Muses assisted in his education on 

 Mount Nysa. When he grew towards manhood Hera threw him into 

 a fit of madness, as she had before done to some of the nymphs who 

 had followed him. In this state he wandered long and far over the 

 earth, bestowing rewards on those who treated him kindly, and punish- 

 ing those who refused to welcome him or accept his gifts. In the 

 course of hi wanderings he visited Rhea, who instructed him in the 

 mysteries which afterwards formed so important a part in his worship. 

 He was accompanied wherever he went with a crowd of attendants, 

 consisting of Bacchantes, the Lena:, the Naiades and Nymphs, the 

 Thyades, the Mimallones, the Tityri, Pan, Silenus, the Fauns, and the 

 Satyrs, whose riotous and frenzied proceedings' typified the influence 

 of the fruit of the grape, the culture of which he disseminated through- 

 out the earth. The various adventures of Dionysus whilst on the 

 earth are told by the Greek and Roman writers at great length ; but 

 they are too well known, and would require too much space to re- 

 capitulate here. When he had completed his wanderings, he was 

 received into Olympus, whither he carried also his mother, having 

 brought her out of Hades, and changed her name to Thyone. 



The worship of Dionysus seems to have arisen from that " striving 

 after objectivity" (Wachsmuth, ' Hellen Alterthum,' ii. 2, p. 113) which 

 is the characteristic of a primitive people, and which leads man in his 

 rude state to the worship of the active and productive powers of 

 nature. It does not fall within the nature of this work to discuss the 

 inferences drawn from the old traditions by modern mythologers. 

 These deductions, and especially the description of the mystical cha- 

 racter of Bacchus, as distinguished from his worship as the god of 

 wine, may be seen fully developed by Creuzer (' Symbolik,' theil. iii. 

 pp. 83, 266 ; pp. 319-366), whose theory, however, of the Indian origin 

 of the Bacchic rites, though ingenious, does not appear to be established 

 by sufficient external evidence. The southern coast of Thrace seems to 

 have been the original seat of this religion, and it was thence introduced 

 into Greece shortly after the colonisation by the *Eo)ians of the Asiatic 

 coast of the Hellespont. The admission of the identity of Osiris and 

 Dionysus by Plutarch and other mythological theorists, as well as 

 Herodotus's simple statement of the assertions of the Egyptian priests 

 to that effect, is no proof of the common origin of the worship of 

 this divinity in Egypt and Greece ; but there is no doubt that certain 

 modifications of the Dionysian rites took place after the commencement 

 of the intercourse of the lonians with the Egyptians. These rites, the 

 distinguishing feature of the worship of Dionysus, have been already 

 described. [DIONYSIA.] 



The worship of Bacchus is intimately connected with that of 

 Demeter : under the name of lacchus he was worshipped along with 

 that goddess at Eleusis. [DEMETER ; EI.KI:SIXIA.] Virgil invokes 

 them together (' Gcorgics,' i. 5) as the lights of the universe. According 

 to the Egyptians they were the joint rulers of the world below. 

 (Herod, ii. 123.) Pindar calls Dionysus "the companion of Demeter" 

 (xaAxoicpaTov TrdptXpw Aa/idrtpos), and in a cameo he is represented 

 sitting by the goddess in a chariot drawn by male and female centaurs. 

 (See Buonarotti, ' Osservazioni sopra alcuni Medaglioni Antichi,' p .4 H ; 

 Mariette, ' TraiUS des Pierres Gravies,' t. ii. p. i.) 



Dionysus himself, his adventures, and his associates, were among the 



most favourite subjects of Greek and Gneco-Roman art. Muller has 



tersely and clearly indicated the range and character of the 



Dionyrian life and cycle. " The whole of the wondrous life of Dionysus 



at least, so far as it did not withdraw itself from representation by a 



decidedly mystical tendency admits of being traced in works of art. 

 First, the significant double-birth from Semele's dead body and the 

 thigh of Zeus ; then how Hermes carries the child, carefully wrapped 

 up, to his nurses, the august form of the earth receives it, the nymphs 

 and satyrs cherish it, and his divine and wondrous nature is unfolded 

 amid joyous sports. Then how, surrounded by the noise and tumult 

 of his thiasos, he finds the gracious bride Ariadne (a Cora of the 

 Naxian worship), at the same time, however, without active partici- 

 pation, and, as it were, wrapped in a pleasing dream, and then rides to 

 meet her, or with her, in a bridal chariot (wherein the leading of 

 Ariadne up to Olympus may suggest itself to the mind). The Naxian 

 solemnisation of the nuptials becomes itself a representation of the 

 gayest and happiest life, in all abundance of the gifts of nature. But 

 Dionysus also appears, in a work of the best period of art, in a grace- 



[Thc Bearded Dionysus and a Bacchante, from a bas-relief in the British 

 .Museum.] 



fully tender relation to his mother, who is restored from the nether 

 world. Lastly, we see him in the circle of frenzied Mienads, subduing 

 and punishing Pentheus and Lycurgus, the insulters and foes of his 

 worship, and also the piratical Tyrrhenians, by means of his bold 



[Bust of the Bearded Dionysus, from the British Museum.] 

 satyrs, and in rich relievo representations (in which the victorious 



