Dionysus

Dionysus

Son of Zeus and Semele

Born a second time from Zeus’ thigh

With the god who has ivy hair, Dionysos who roars out loud, The splendid son of Zeus whom glorious Semele bore, I begin to sing. He was reared by nymphs show tresses are fair: From the lord his father they took to their bosom and fostered with care this child in the hollows of Nysa. He grew through his father’s will – being reckoned amongst the immortals – within a fragrant cave. When the goddesses finished his rearing, this god much honoured in hymns through the wooded glens went wandering, covered with ivy and bay. Behind him followed the nymphs, in front he was leading the way, And, stretched out far beyond telling, the forest rang with his roar. And so to you farewell, Dionysus rich in grapes.

Homeric Hymn 26

Misguided men, what mighty god is this you seize and bind? Our ship cannot even bear him, built well though she be. For Zeus is here, or Apollo, God of the Silver Bow, or Poseidon: these are no looks of mortal men, but of gods who dwell in Olympian homes. No come, let’s set him ashore on the land’s black soil at once.

Homeric Hymn 7

• Soon before them miraculous works appeared. Wine at first began along the swift, black ship to gurgle, sweet to the taste and fragrant-the scent that rose up was divine- and all the sailors were seized with awe at the sight. But at once on either side along the topmost edge of the sail a vine was stretched out, and grapes were hanging down In clusters; dark-green ivy twined about the mast, bursting with bloom; uon it delightful berries stirred, and all the tholes were wearing garlands. The men, when they saw, then indeed kept bidding the helmsman to steer the ship toward shore; but the god within their ship became at the prow a fearsome lion, roaring loud, and amidships made a bear with shaggy-maned neck, revealing his portents to view. It reared up fiercely, the lion upon the upper deck, shooting a fearsome glare; the men fled back to the stern, and on every side of the helmsman who had a prudent heart they stood in terror. The god with a sudden rush forward seized the captain; the men, as they tried to escape from an evil doom, all together plunged, when they saw, in the brilliant sea, and in to Dolphins turned. But holding the helmsman back in pity, he made him in all ways blessed, and spoke these words: “Take courage, noble father, you who have pleased my heart. “I am Dionysos who roars out loud, and was given birth by Semele, Kadmos’ child, who was joined in love with Zeus”.

Homeric Hymn 7

Maenads

Female celebrants of Dionysus

DionysusConnection to Drama

The City Dionysia in Athens

Tragedy

Comedy

Satyr Plays

www.perseus.tufts.edu

I am Dionysus, son of Zeus. My mother was Semele, Cadmus’ daughter. From her womb the fire of a lightning-flash delivered me. I have come here to Thebes and her two rivers, Dirce and Ismenus, veiling my godhead in a mortal shape. I see here near the palace my mother’s monument, that records her death by lightning…..the reason why I have chosen Theebs as the first place to raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond in fawnskin habits, and put my thyrsus in their hands-the weapon wreathed with ivy-shoots – my reason is this: my mother’s sisters said – what they should have been the last to say – that I , Dionysus, was not Zeus’ son; that Semele, being with child-they-said, by some mortal, obeyed her father’s prompting, and ascribed to Zeus the loss of her virginity; and they loudly claimed that this lie was the sin for which Zeus took her life.

Euripides’ Bacchae

‘Mother’ he cried, touching her cheek, ‘It is I, your own son Penthus whom you bore to Echion. Mother, have mercy; I have sinned, but I am still your own son. Do not take my life!’ Agave was foaming at the mouth; her rolling eyes were wild; she was not in her right mind, but possessed by Bacchus, and she paid no heed to him. She grasped his left arm between wrist and elbow, set her foot against his ribs, and tore his arm off by the shoulder. It was not strength of hers that did it, but the god filled her, and made it easy. On the other side Ino was at him, tearing at his flesh; and now Autonoe joined them, and the whole maniacal horde. A single and continuous yell arose – Pentheus shrieking as long as life was left in him, the women howling in triumph. One of them carried off an arm, another a foot, the boot still laced on it. The ribs were stripped, clawed clean; and the women’s hands, thick red with blood, were tossing, catching, like a plaything, Pentheus’ flesh.

We shall later discuss the art of mimesis in hexameters, as well as

comedy. But let us now discuss tragedy, taking up the definition of its

essence which emerges from what has already been said. Tragedy, then,

is mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete, and of magnitude;

in language embellished by distinct forms in its sections; employing the

mode of enactment, not narrative; and through pity and fear

accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions.

Aristotle, Poetics 6

'The mimetic poet sets up in each individual soul a vicious constitution by fashioning phantoms far removed from reality, and by currying favour with the senseless element that cannot distinguish the greater from the less, but calls the same things now one, now the other....but we have not yet brought our chief accusation against it. Its power to corrupt, with rare exceptions, even the better sort, is surely the chief cause for alarm.... I think you know that the very best of us, when we hear Homer or some other of the makers of tragedy imitating one of the heroes who is in grief, and is delivering a long tirade in his lamentations or chanting and beating his breast, feel pleasure, and abandon ourselves and accompany the representation with sympathy and eagerness, and we praise as an excellent poet the one who most strongly affects us in this way..... but when in our own lives some affliction comes to us, you are also aware that we plume ourselves upon the opposite, on our ability to remain calm and endure, in the belief that this is the conduct of a man, and what we were praising in the theatre that of a woman.’

Plato, Republic

‘Behold I [Dionysus] am here, a more faithful object of your love. Away with fear! You [Ariadne] shall be the Cretan wife of Bacchus. Take the heavens as my gift; you shall be observed in the heavens as a constellation. Often as the Cretan Crown will guid lost sailors.” So he spoke and jumped down from the chariot, lest she be alarmed by the tigers, and took her up in his arms, for she could not resist; all things are

easy for a god. Ovid, Ars Amatoria