"I am
Dionysus, the son of
Zeus... my mother was Semele, daughter of Cadmus, midwived by lightning's blast".
With these words
Dionysus, one of the most complex deities of the Greek Olympus, introduces himself to
men in Euripides'
Bacchae. This tragedy espouses the most accepted version of the mith, according to which he was born from the love of
Zeus and Semele, daughter of the
King of Thebes.
Deceived by her divine lover, who
had assumed a Human appearence to seduce her, the woman was incinerated by the revealing of
his true semblance after following jealous Hera's treacherous advice to ask him to unveil
his real nature to her. But the child that Semele carried in her womb lived on, because
Zeus sowed the fetus in
his thigh and brought the pregnancy to term.
This prodigious mythical event is bringer of a message of
hope and rebirth for the worshippers of the God, thus
his cult was linked to funerary practices.
Through this second birth, which grants him immortality, the god who "is born twice" or "of the double door", epithets by which he is known in the ancient world, becomes a granter of salvation to those who embrace
his cult and partecipate in its rites. The rites of
Dionysus were mistery and initiatory rites. They were often celebrated at night in the
woods, in touch with luxuriant and wild nature. Through its cyclical death and rebirth, nature was one of the tangible manifestations of this complex and changing god, who was gentle and benevolent, a consoler of human affliction, but could also be cruel and violent against those who resisted him.
The popularity of the cult of
Dionysus is reflected in a great number of vase paintings and coin
types. In keeping with the deity's mutable character,
his outward appearance also underwent a metamorphosis over time. The solemn bearded figure of the archaic period, clad in a
chiton and cloak, and usually depicted in a static attitude or advancing majestically astride a
mule, gives way, in more recent
types, to a beardless, almost androgynous young
man. This more humanized iconography, with its erotic and symposial connotations, allowed ancient viewers who believed in
Dionysus and
his promise of eternal beatitude to identify with
his image.
