The Drunken World of Dionysos

Abstract:The Greek god Dionysos is often characterized by modern scholarship in a highly conceptualized way. From the perspective of such studies, Dionysos has become a metaphysical concept, a symbol of the primeval human impulses. For such hermeneutics, Dionysos’ relation to wine has been considered to be secondary and unessential. The present study is a reassessment of the role of wine in some of the main themes of Dionysiac mythology and cult. These include the ivy, the Theban myth of Dionysos’ birth, the Orphic myth of Dionysos, the main festivals dedicated to the god, the Dionysiac madness, the satyrs and the maenads as the main followers of Dionysos, the identification of Bakchos with the Eleusinian Iakchos, rituals such as those of Dionysos liknitēs, the aiōra (swinging), and the flood, the relation of the god to the sea, and the sacred wedding between the Athenian basilinna and Dionysos. I show that not only does wine not represent a secondary or derived aspect of Dionysos, but it can be found at the foundation of all these well-known aspects of Dionysiac cult and myth. Dionysos is essentially what the whole of antiquity recognized and celebrated in him, namely the god of wine. The mythology of Dionysos is the mythology of wine.