Dionysos d'Ici et Dionysos d'Ailleurs

This time, it is through the pictures of the symposion that Dionysos lets himself revealed. We are aware of the imagery of the symposion through frequently encountering it ever since its early pictures with their black figures. Yet it is in no way rigidly fixed. Just as Dionysos is the many-faced god, the symposion which he offers to men likewise assumes various forms. Witness the fact beside immutable elements, Attic and Italic scenes from the V. and IV. centuries present a new symposiac imagery. The simposion then assumes a dionysiac colouring which transforms its significance and places it in a different sphere. We are no longer viewing a mere secular meeting but we are at the very heart of a Dionysiac banquet, the one which Dionysos promises to his devotees and which consists in everlasting rejoicings.