Dionysus

- For a long time it was dexcribed that Dionysus came from the east, and that he was
‘the stranger’ of the gods
- This was seen by earlier scholars literally, that Dionysus was an ‘imported’ God who
came from the middle East through immigration and trade – it was reassuring to
older more conservative historians that the alchoholic, partying, effeminate
crossdressing god was not a God of the idealized, rational Greeks that European
scholars wanted to be like so badly
- It turned out that Dionysus was not an alien God, and he was in Greece as early as
the bronze age, and was as relevant as any of the other main Gods in the Greek
pantheon
- Dionysus was described as a not very heroic God, when he was insulted it was said
that ‘shivers took his body’.

Hesiod on Dionysus

Athenian festivals for Dionysus

- Lenaea – late January – theatre
- Anthesteria (late feb)
- City Dionysia (march/April) – theatre
- Rural Dionysia (December) – theatre

Dionysus: God of death, the afterlife and resurrection

Theatre: Tragedies

- There’s an idea in Bacchae that the gods cannot really be known – it’s a
characterisation which doesn’t fully represent the same Gods that everyday Greeks
would go and worship
^ the real lash back to the play was from those who thought the promotion of more
unsavoury acts of ritual to Dionysus was unnecessary – such as the act of eating raw meat,
going insane in the woods etc.
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