Dionysus, the god of wine, was the son of Zeus and Persephone, the goddess of the underworld and Zeus’ lover.
The goddess Hera, Zeus’ wife, became jealous at her husband’s infidelity with Persephone and sent the Titans to kill Dionysus, but Zeus found out and saved Dionysus’s heart just in time. In order to rebuild the rest of his body, he was placed in the womb of Semele, who bore him until his birth.
Among his skills was to know about and teach how to make wine, this precious liquid that frees us from sorrow, encourages conversation and sociability, and transforms the spirit and mood of people. Dionysus was a very amiable god in general, but he had the ability to cause madness in those who underestimated him.
What’s more, this god is linked to the theatre and happiness, yet at the same time he’s ambiguous, because just as wine can make us happy, it can also make us feel sad.
On his journeys Dionysus travelled in a chariot pulled by tigers or panthers and accompanied by an entourage of satyrs and maenads.
The satyrs were naughty, cheerful creatures who liked a party, whose leader was Silenus, a loyal companion to Dionysus and well-known for his alcoholic excesses, as in his drunken state he had the ability to prophesise.
The maenads were women who danced in a trance, reaching exctasy, jumping and running in the Dionysian rituals. In this state they felt divinely possessed. They played a musical instrument, the tympanum, a small drum that was carried in the hand, and the aulos, a double-reeded flute.
The ceremony that Dionysus’ followers performed followed the natural seasonal cycle, with ritual processions where the women had a leading role recalling his death in winter and his rebirth in spring.
The Dionysian rituals resembled the carnival in a way, when for a few days the social order was parodied in an attempt to forget worries and anxieties, with people dressing up as animals or as the opposite sex with masks that hid their identity.
In Rome Dionysus was known as the god Bacchus and his followers the Bacchantes, which is where the term bacchanal comes from.
The opposite of Dionysiacal is Apollonian, Apollo being a daytime god representing social stability, and he plays the lyre, a serene and static instrument.
