— The Dionysos gallery (1)

I want to talk of a strangely specific topic that is however not only surrounding Greek mythology fans but also essential to understanding the character of Dionysos (or Dionysus, as English people call him - I never understood where the “us” comes from). Around this seemingly trivial question there is a whole cultural evolution to talk about. And  this question could be summed up as: why is Dionysos fat? How come we went from an effeminate teen in Ancient times to a balding obese man in modern media? Let’s talk about Dionysos’ appearance.

As many of you know, in modern media, and that for quite some times now, Dionysos is depicted as a fat man. A fat drunk man, often balding or bald. The list of these large Dionysoses could be long, but as an example I’ll give you one iconic case: Disney’s take on Dionysos, which mixes the obese old man and the fat baby, and reflects how this “fat Dionysos” is associated with the joke that the god is just a useless and silly drunk here for background comical effect.

While you see this fat Dionysos in numerous recent-days movies, comic books and children books, it isn’t actually as “new” as we would believe. Before the 20th century it was already there. Most notably in paintings: Bacchus/Dionysos was often depicted as an obese man, either a ridiculous fat drunk or a grotesque ugly one.

This image is so prevalent in modern-day culture, it cannot be ignored. But the questions I want to talk about here are: why does this depiction exist ; and is it a “good” way to depict Dionysos?

Keep reading

We continue our journey down the gallery put together by the Museum of Wine to explore the depictions of Dionysos and his cohorts through the art… Previous item of the gallery was here. Today… Dionysos’ entourage. And we begin with…

The Triumphal Cortege of Dionysos, by Maerten van Heemskerck

A) The Procession of Dionysos

(As usual all text here is loosely translated from the website)

The motif of the Procession of Dionysos, or Cortege of Bacchus, tends to be heavily inspired by Ovid’s description of this triumphal parade within his Metamorphoses - but it is the culmination of Dionysos’ entire earthly life.

To shield baby Dionysos from Hera’s wrath, Zeus took him far away from Greece, into the land of Nisa, where he was entrusted to nymphs that raised him. Once adult, Dionysos discovered the grapevine and how to make wine. But Hera struck him with madness, and he wandered throughout Egypt and Syria, before finally reaching Phrygia where the goddess Cybele welcomed him, healed him, purified him and initiated him to her mystery cult. Now sane, he returned to Thrace where the ruling king, Lycurgus, proved himself hostile to the young man and tried to imprison him. Dionysos escaped Lycurgus by fleeing to the Nereid Thetis who welcomed him under the sea. But Lycurgus captured the Bacchants that were with Dionysos - before the god rescued them and struck Lycurgus with madness, making him cut his own leg and kill his son with an axe as he believed he was cutting Dionysos’ plant, the grapevine. When Lycurgus regained his sanity, the land was cursed with sterility and the oracle announced only the king’s death would return fertility to the soil: he was torn apart by four horses.

Dionysos then left Thrace to go to India. With a magical and supernatural army, he managed to wage war and conquer the land - and this is where the “triumphal procession” motif comes from, as he paraded in a (typically Roman way, since Ovid was the source of descriptions) chariot in a chariot pulled by panthers, decorated with ivy and vine, and followed by Silenos, satyrs, centaurs and Maenads.

Bacchus’ Triumph, by Benvenuto Tisi

Bacchus’ Triumph by Nicolaes Moeyaert

Here, Bacchus’ chariot is a large barrel of wine pulled by two angry panthers. The cohorts of Dionysos are joyful and merry, drinking a lot of wine - but a few details have to be caught. To the right, there is a satyr vomitting. Behind him, there is a knight all in armor, and a sick old man visibly suffering from the gout. The painter was thus trying to warn the audience about the negative consequences of alcohol abuse: near Bacchus’ procession, war and disease lurk.

Bacchus’ Triumph by Nicolas Poussin

This painting depicts Dionysos’ triumphal return after his victories in India. At the bottom right you can see a river-god: he symbolizes the river Indus, and by extension the entire Indian subcontinent. The Oriental nature of the journey is also shown by how a Maenad riding a horse is wearing a leopard’s skin. Silenos has a vine in his hand, and while Bacchus holds a thyrsus, his traditional attribute, all the other symbols are however typical of a Roman general and of the “triumphs” of the military of Ancient Rome - for example the red cloak typical of triumphing Roman generals and Roman emperors.

B) Silenos

Silenos is both the teacher and adoptive father of Dionysos, and as such he follows him everywhere. But Silenos is also the personifiction of Drunkenness, and as such he is at the same level as the other minor deities present in Dionysos’ parade, such as Comos (merriment/festivity) or Coros (Satiety). From Renaissance onward Silenos became a recurring pictural motif. Tradition depicts him as a joyful and pot-bellied old man, as ugly as he is lustful, his drunk state making him grotesque. “Silenus” also became a generic term to designate an old or elderly satyr.

The Misadventures of Silenus, by Piero di Cosimo

In this painting, Silenos actually appears three times. In chronological order, we first see him at the center of the picture. hile still riding his donkey, he tries to get honey from a hive in a hollow tree, only to be attacked by the bees. On the left we can see him being healed with berry juice, while on the right people are trying to put him back onto his feet.

Drunk Silenus, by Jose de Ribera

Here Silenos appears as an obese human. The one that holds his head is his father, the god Pan.

Drunk Silenus, by Pierre Paul Rubens

C) Satyrs

The satyrs are ambiguous creatures, half-goat half-man, who lived in the wilderness. Associated with the Maenads, they formed together the “Dionysian cortege” that paraded with the god. They are also associated with the god Pan. They are frequently hanging out or flirting with nymphs, minor deities renowned for their youth and beauty. Nymphs are female spirits that inhabit most places within the landscapes: they are found within woods and forests, in valleys and meadows, by streams and rivers, in mountains and grottos… They are also typically associated with various major deities - including Dionysos.

Nymph and Satyr, by Christiaen van Couwenbergh

Two Satyrs, by Peter Paul Rubens

Satyr drinking the juice of a pressed grape, by David de Haen

D) Maenads and Bacchants

The Maenads are the female followers of Dionysos, who escort him in all of his adventures, including his journey to India. They are his servants, not his priestesses, but they do have an important role in his religion and in his worship. They participate to all the mysteries and all the festivals in honor of the god. They are dressed with lion skins, their chest bare, and they hold the thyrsus, a lance surrounded by ivy. They personify the orgiastic spirits of nature, and are renowned for their frenetical dances that place them in a mystical ecstasy. Some heroes fell victim to their inhuman strength - the Bacchants (Roman name of the Maenads) were known to act like ferocious and savage beasts.

The Dance of the Bacchants, by Charles Gleyre

Pentheus hunted by the Maenads, Charles Gleyre

The Death of Orpheus, by Emile Lévy

E) Centaurs

The centaurs are creatures appearing as half-men half-horses. They are part of the Dionysian procession, and for the Ancient Greek they symbolized all of the bestial appetites (drunkenness and lechery). Their fight against the Lapiths was an allegory for the fight between civilization and savagery.

The Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs, by Piero di Cosimo

The Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs at the wedding of Hippodomy, by Karel Dujardin

Battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, by Lucas Giordane

These three paintings depict the same legend. Pirithoos married Hippodamia and invited all the Olympian gods to his wedding. However, since there were most guests than the palace could contain, Pirithoos had to place several of them within a cavern nearby - a fresh and shadowy, very pleasant grotto. Within this cavern were Nestor, Caeneus and several Thessalian princes, alongside Pirithoos’ cousin the Centaurs. The Centaurs were not used to drinking wine. Upon sensing its smell, they rejected the fermented milk they had been offered, and swallowed all the wine. But in their ignorance, they took the wine without cutting it with water as it was tradition - as such, they took pure alcohol, and became so drunk that when the bride arrived with her handmaidens to salute them, a centaur named Eurytion broke all the furniture and took her by the hair to drag her away. All the other Centaurs imitated him, snatching away all the women and girls (and young boys) they could find, and trying to rape them all. Pirithoos, with the help of Theseus, went to rescue Hippodamia - he cut off Eurytion’s nose and ears and, with the help of the other Lapiths, he threw the mutilated Centaur outside of the grotto.

A battle ensued that lasted all night, and during which Caeneus the Lapith was killed. This was the start of a very long war that would forever oppose the Centaurs and their neighbors the Lapiths.

F) A last thought

André Lhote’s “Bacchant”

The character of the Bacchant reappeared within the art of the 19th century, all the way to the beginning of the 20th. Originally, the Bacchant attracted the artists in its role of member of the procession of Bacchus, the thiasis - the Bacchant (or Maenad) is primarily the priestess of Bacchus/Dionysos, and has specific attributes: a skin belonging to a wild animal (usually a panther), a cup of wine, a crown of ivy or vine, a thyrsus… But the Bacchant of the 19th century, entirely devoted to the service of the god of wine, becomes a being of flesh. She listens and obeys to her impulses, she shows a savage sensuality, she offers to the artists the possibility to depict an ecstatic, equivocal nudity - not to say licentious. Slowly, painters and sculptors will use the myth as an excuse to depict the eroticism of a body arching and rearing. The bacchant loses her mythological attributes, and becomes simply a naked woman, free from all constraints. However, the idea of drunkenness and sensuality is well-kept.

The Bacchant of André Lhote is an exemple of this new Bacchant: she is a naked and fleshy woman with generous curves. In a posture of lascivity and complete abandon, she eats grapes in honor of Bacchus within a rural landscape. She celebrates the sensuality of the pleasures of life. Rodin created on the same motif erotic drawings that he called “Bacchant”. Indeed, to call a naked, sexual model a “Bacchant” was a way to avoid the fury of the numerous “Leagues of Virtue”. This results in the ambiguity of the title, since the modern Bacchant is very different from her Antic sister, even though they are united by the presence of wine and grapes.

If you haven’t checked the first post, this is a vague translation of an article originally written in French by Alain Moreau for the Dictionary of Literary Myths. Its subject is the identity and depiction of Dionysos/Dionysus in Antiquity.

III) The shapeshifting god

A god with such elusive origins, and such an ability to easily cross the limit between life and death, will of course be difficult to depict visually. Ancient sculptors had selected three main appearances for Dionysos: as a child, held within the arms of Hermes or of a satyr ; as a large, imposing bearded man (this was his usual depiction during the Archaic era), or as an effeminate teenager with shoulder-length curly hair and graceful, sensual gestures (this appearance became the dominant one from the 4th century onward). When it comes to prayers and hymns to Dionysos, he receives many names: Bakchos, Bakcheus, Iakchos, Sabazios, Bromios, Zagreus… G. Wentzel collected more than a hundred and thirty name variants for the god.

But how can one describe a god who spends his days transformed or under a disguise? Before the giant Rhetos, he is a lion (Horace, Odes, II, 19) ; when he flees from Typhon he is a male goat (Antoninus Liberalius, Metamorphoses, 28 ; Ovid, Metamorphoses, V) ; at Nysa he is a baby goat (Apollodorus, III) ; before the terrified Tyrrhenian pirates of the Homeric hymn he becomes a lion and a bear ; for Pentheus he was a bull and a ghost ; for the Minyades he was a bull, a panther and a lion (Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses, 10). Dionysos keeps shapeshifting, becoming a ghost, becoming a reflection or creating doubles of himself – and in this sense, the mirror that the Titans offered to the child they were about to kill becomes a very important symbol. In the “Bacchants”, the audience slowly sees Pentheus transformed into a tragic double of Dionysos: both are young, beardless and with beautiful blond hair. However in the beginning of the play, those similarities only highlight the differences. Dionysos is effeminate and his long curls flow over his shoulders, while Pentheus’ hair is braided and wrapped around his head – as Jeanne Roux notes, it was the typical hairdo of aristocrats that regularly practiced sports and wrestling. The virile king of Thebes disdains the foreigner because he has perfume in his hair, Aphrodite’s charm in his eyes, and something feminine in his appearance. But to better destroy Pentheus, Dionysos will turn him into a copy of himself. To spy on the Bacchants, Pentheus will put on a woman’s dress, unbraid his hair, cover himself with a fawn’s skin and hold a thyrsus. (Here the author notes that the translator of the Belles Lettres edition of the play made a mistake by writing that Pentheus put on a “wig” as part of his disguise – no, he actually simply unbraids his hair). With this new appearance, and soon succumbing to the delirium, Pentheus imagines himself cradled within the arms of his mother, just like young Dionysos disguised as a girl was cradled by his foster mother Ino. But by identifying with the god, Pentheus marks his own destruction: the “agreus” of the verse 1192 reminds us of “Zagreus”. Pentheus will live the fate of Dionysos-Zagreus: killed and dismembered, but without the resurrection. Supreme though futile identification: Agave holding the head of her son believes she is brandishing the corpse of a lion… the lion being one of Dionysos’ favorite transformations. When playing double, Dionysos always win.

IV) A complex personality

In his childhood, Dionysos is presented as a frail and defenseless being. He flees in terror the hatred of Hera and Lycurgus ; he naively falls into the trap of the Titans. However, once he is an adult, it is him who entraps those that refuse to recognize his divine power, and he takes his revenge with an horrifying cruelty. The Minyades are plunged into a sacred madness and rip to pieces Hippasos, one of their sons, while believing him to be a young fawn. Pentheus falls from the top of a pine-tree and is ripped apart by the Bacchantes, among which are his aunts, and his own mother Agave. As for Lycurgus, poets and mythologists are constant rivals in the game of who will describe the most atrocious torment. In Eschilus’ Lycurgy, Dionysos turns him mad and he kills his son Dryas with an axe, believing him to be a vine. According to Hyginus, Lycurgus also kills his wife and tries to rape his mother, before Dionysos abandons him at the top of a mountain where he is mauled by panthers. According to Homer, Zeus makes the king blind, while in Apollodorus’ tale he is tied up to the mount Pangaion and devoured by horses. And for Diodorus of Sicily, he had his eyes pierced by Dionysos, before a long series of tortures culminating with a crucifixion.

However this bloodthirsty god of tragedies can easily become a god of comical fables, or of fairytales. It is Dionysos that brought back Hephaistos to Olympus so he could deliver Hera from the magical throne he had trapped her in – to do so, Dionysos made the smith-god drunk, placed him on the back of a donkey and dragged him in such a parade to the realm of the gods (this was a frequent motif of Ancient Greek art). The donkey is strongly associated with the parades of Dionysos: either it is the ride of the god himself, either it is the ride of big-bellied Silenus, so heavy the beast clearly has troubles carrying him. The donkey is an ithyphallic animal: sometimes, baskets are depicted hanging from his phallus, or Silenus is depicted trying to rape it. This is all within the context of grotesque pranks and caricatural jokes – a carnival. This carnival-nature of Dionysos explains why he appears, with frequent mentions of his donkeys, within Aristophanes’ comedy “The Frogs”, where he is depicted as a farting and cowardly buffoon.

But the jester can become a lover. Dionysos is the lover of Ariadne. According to the most ancient versions, they were united by a “hieros gamos”, a sacred wedding – Ariadne being an ancient goddess of vegetation. In more recent tales, the hero Theseus becomes the third part of a love triangle – and Dionysos either recomforts Ariadne at Naxos after she was abandoned by Theseus (Catullus wrote a beautiful poem on this subject), either is neglected by Ariadne and out of jealousy uses the arrows of Artemis to kill his unfaithful companion (Odyssey, XI).

But even in his loves, Dionysos stays elusive. A curious tale, most developed by Clement of Alexandria in his Protrepticus (II), transforms the heterosexual lover of Ariadne into the homosexual lover of Prosumnos. And this is the result of a bargain: if Prosumnos gives Dionysos the means to go into the Underworld, the young god promises to become his “eromenos” (teenage lover) – but when Dionysos comes back from the Hades, Prosumnos is dead. So, going to his grave, he cuts a fig-tree branch, sculpts it in the shape of a phallus, and uses it to “fulfill his promise to the dead”. And according to Clement of Alexandria, it is in honor of this legendary episode that in some cities there are parades of phalluses organized in honor of Dionysos.

Naïve child and manipulative adult, a god as cruel as buffoonish, heterosexual and homosexual, Dionysos’ personality is just as multi-faceted and impossible to simplify as his physical appearance.

Next on our travel down the Dionysos museum, we have an entire section dedicated to the Bacchanals in painting - with a few analysis here and there.

Titien’s The Bacchanal of the Andrians

The Museum’s website adds that this depicts the legend of how Dionysos gifted the inhabitants of the island of Andros with a river of wine. It was one of the numerous “miracles” attributed to the god by folk-belief when he became the god of the grapevine. Already in his “Bacchants” Euripides had told how, by touching a stone with his thyrsus he created a stream of fresh water, and where his narthex had touched the ground a stream of wine flowed ; and those that sought milk only had to scratch the ground near the god to see it flow, and from the god’s thyrsus honey dropped…

In Ionia, on the island of Teos, a similar legend existed: it was said, by Diodor of Sicily and Pline the Elder, that at a fixed date in a calendar a stream of wine regularly flowed. At Elis, on the eve of the god’s feast-day, empty jars and jugs were sealed and left alone in Dionysos’ temple: by the morning, when they were opened, they were filled to the brim with wine.

Giovanni Bellini and Titien’s The Feast of the Gods

The museum adds this mention: the painting is a depiction of the legend of Lotis collected by Ovid. One night, as the gods had a feast, the nymph Lotis fell asleep. Priapus got close to her, and with his famous ithyphallic nature, he decided to rape her. But as he was about to touch her body, the donkey of Silenus started making loud noises - waking up everybody, including Lotis. Lotis fled from Priapus’ embrace, and all the gods laughed and mocked the god.

This painting was most notably the favorite painting of Fernand Botero.

Dosso Dossi’s Bacchanal with a drunk Silenus and Bacchants frolicking around grapevine

Niccolo Frangipane’s Bacchanal

Nicolas Poussin’s Bacchanal

Nicolas Poussin’s Bacchanal with a guitar player ; also called “Great Bacchanal”

Nicolas Poussin’s Bacchic Scene

Pier Francesco Mola’s Bacchus supervising the Satyrs pressing wine

Gerrit van Bronckhorst’s Bacchanal with Silenus

Jacob van Loo’s Scene with Bacchants

Michaelina Wautier’s Bacchanal

Jacques Jordaens’ Bacchanal

Giulio Carpioni’s Bacchanal

Michel-Ange Houasse’s Bacchanal

Francesco Zuccarelli’s Bacchanal

I finally decided to put together a masterpost gathering my posts about Greek mythology and Greek gods! I probably won’t get everything, because they are scattered throughout years of this blog, but you will have here all of the most recent ones!

Fighting the Misconceptions about Greek Mythology and Gods

The Hades/Zeus case

The Zeus case: Why such a messy love life? Part 1 and part 2 and

TV Tropes’ fanciful interpretation of Greek mythology: weird details and why the gods do not have a psychology and why them having a Classical Mythology page bothers me . Plus one of the problems of TV tropes (and the Internet as a whole) when receiving Greek myths . Plus my original post depicting my problem with TV tropes’ take on Greek myths.

Do not make things bigger than they were

Why are gods depicted old? (I will probably develop this little joke post into a bigger one later)

We always know but one version of a myth

The three interpretations of Greek mythology - by the Greeks themselves

The five things that, for me, make a “bad” Greek mythology interpretation or adaptation

I hijacked a post to talk about Riordan’s take on Greek gods (with some Lore Olympus in it): part 1 - part 2 - part 3

Various mythological details and topics

Zeus had others wives, you know?

My reaction to “Blood of Zeus”

A whole discussion about the fatness of Dionysos in art and media

I can’t praise enough the Greek mythology season of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller

Hephaestus, the straightest of all the gods?

Why not a black-haired Apollo?

A random detail about the Apollo/Helios situation

How many Muses? (This post was supposed to be the intro to a longer series looking at groups of Greek goddesses and deities in mythology such as the Charites or the Erynies, but given its low success the series was “cancelled”)

Names of Greek gods such as “Hephaestus”, “Dionysus” and “Apollo” are considered the proper English names of the deities, and are widely used in the English-speaking cultures.

But they are not the “real” names of the deities. As in these names are Latinized versions of the actual Greek names; Hephaistos, Dionysos, Apollon. 

Being French, the English names of Greek gods heavily confused me because the French language kept the original names. We call the gods Hephaistos, Dionysos and Apollon - so it always confused me (and still does) when all the -os suffixes are suddenly turned into -us in English for no apparent reason. 

There are characters where there is an -us suffix at the end of the Greek name. Perseus for example. But you have character like Antaeus whose original name is “Antaios”.

Mind you, French isn’t a perfect take on the Ancient Greek names either. After all, despite keeping all the original names of the Olympians we completely forgot about Odysseus and instead we use his Latinized name “Ulysse”. 

It is still however very important to recognize the original names of these characters. 

We finally reach the end of this long Dionysos series - and after dissecting the myth of Dionysos, we reach the conclusion of this gallery, kindly offered by the French Museum of Wine (you can find it all here).

First, I will include there the various paintings I did not have enough space to add in previous post, two paintings coupled with an analysis section I will loosely translate.

Le Tintoret’s Ariadne, Venus and Bacchus

The motif of the encounter between Bacchus and Ariadne (who had been abandonned by Theseus on the island of Naxos) and Bacchus’ offer to the woman of her famous gold crown made by Vulcan (according to Ovid’s Fasts), has been a strong recurring motif in paintings, explored by numerous artists.

“Liber” or “Liber Pater” was originally a fertility/fecundity god whose worship took place within the oldest era of Ancient Rome. By the 7th century BCE onward Liber was associated with wine, and as a result the Romans ended up assimilating him with Bacchus/Dionysos. “Liber” as such became a mere Latin translation of the terms “Dionysos” or “Bacchus” - “Pater” meanwhile kept its role of expressing respect and adoration towards a god.

Jan van Bijlert’s The Feast of the Gods

This 1630 painting currently kept at the Magnin Museum (Dijon) asks a quite troubling question: is this pagan scene… secretly a Christian Last Supper?

We are on Olympus. The gods are gathered for a feast. On the left we see Minerva, Diana, Mars and Venus, with Cupid by their side and Flora behind them. At the center of the table, a crowned Apollo appears holding his lyre. To the right we can recognize Hercules thanks to his mace, and Neptune with his trident. Unfortunately several of the Olympians are missing due to the painting having been cut off: for example there is a peacock, but no side of Juno. The motif of the “feast of the gods” was very popular in Holland, ever since an engraving by Goltzius “The Wedding of Psyche and Love” (see below).

However, van Bijlert’s painting can be read very differently. In the Netherlands, due to the appearance and domination of Protestantism, all pictures had been banished from the temples, putting an end to the religious painting. As such, it seems that this painting hides within it a Christian scene of the Last Supper. Apollo at the center has the same halo as the Christ usualy has, and the characters surrounding him are twelve in total like the Apostles. Now, while it is a very interesting theory, we should stay careful. As we said before, it seems the reason some of the gods are missing is because the painting was cut (a practice very common at the time) - again, there’s this peacock that implies Juno used to be included. Second element: yes the Christ has a golden halo in painting to symbolize his role as the Lord of the Heavens, but long before that, the idea of a halo of light did belong to Apollo. The Greeks saw him as the “solar god” by excellence, since he was the power that ruled and organized all things, and the one that regulated spirits and intelligences (in fact, he was complementary of Dionysos since Apollo tamed, controlled and shaped the vital force and bursts of life embodied by Dionysos).

Bijlert lived in Rome in the beginning of the 1620s and we know that, just like many of his fellow painters, he was deeply impressed by the art of Caravaggio. However, the Italian painter’s fame was dwindling by then - and by the 1630s his art had lost any influence over European paintings. In this decade, Bijlert focused his works on the new international trend, the classicism. Here the composition of the panting and the diurnal luminosity are purely classicist. However, the dancing satyr and the leaning Bacchus on the foreground belong to the “naturalism” of Caravaggio: ocre-colored flesh, close-ups on bodies in non-conventional positions…

(Here is Goltzius’ engraving)

Second part of this post, extending from the analysis above: Christianized Dionysos! Because yes, you might be surprised to learn that the motif of Dionysos/Bacchus in classical painting was heavily Christianized or syncretized with Christian figures…

Leonardo da Vinci’s Saint John the Baptist

This Saint John the Baptiste has what has been called a “pagan beauty”, and this painting with a Tuscany imagery “renews the syncretism of the patron of Florence” - perhaps due to the passion for Antiquity the town had when the painting was created. Indeed, while saint John here holds a cross symbolizing the Passion of the Christ, he is dressed in a panther’s skin, reminding of the cloak of Bacchus…

Leonardo da Vinci’s atelier: Saint John the Baptist-Bacchus

Once again this painting shows the syncretism between the figure of saint John and the character of Dionysos. The painting was first recorded, in the royal archives, as “Saint John in the desert”. However, at the end of the 17th century, perhaps due to a restoration of the painting, the name was changed to “Bacchus in a landscape”. Here we have Christian symbols: a finger raised to the sky, a stag resting on the ground… But we also have Bacchic attribute: a thyrsus, grapes, a panther’s skin, and a crown of what might be ivy or vine-leaves.

Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist

Here again we have the attributes of Bacchus: the vine, of which Bacchus was the god, and a ram, an animal traditionally sacrificed for the deity. Historians of painting are agreeing that the reason the Caravaggio associated John the Baptiste with Bacchus was because it allowed him to depict the saint naked, and eroticized, very probably to reflect his own homosexuality.

Caravaggio’s “Sick young Bacchus/ The ill little Bachus”

This panting of Caravaggio has been interpreted as a self-portrait in a Bacchus-Christ fusion that is very sexual. Here, Caravaggio offers himself to the libertine cardinals of Rome, in an erotic “communion” (remember, “eucharis”, means “the good flesh”). The action of carrying to his lips golden grapes gorged with juice is very sensual. Crowned with ivy, dressed in an ancient toga (which reveals a muscular shoulder), he is holding green grapes to his chest, as if he was about to press them. It has been thought that there the Greek wine of Dionysos is a mask or assimilation for the wine of the Christian mass - the invitation is for always a greater feast and bigger celebration, the wine of the Christ “subliming” the wine of Bacchus, ultimately becoming the wine an “universal mass” beyond any religion or era.

Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s “Self portrait as a crowned Bacchus”

This painting depicts Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo in his outfit of president (called an “abbot”) of the Acacademia della Val di Blenio (Ticino) - Lomazzo had just been named to this function, as the inscription at the bottom of the picture reminds the viewer. The Academy gathered all the best artists of Milan - painters, sculptors, musicians… And it was placed under the protection and patronage of Bacchus, the god that relieves from sorrows and worries, the god that inspires joy, the god that stimulates the mind and the creation, the god that frees from bondage. As such, it explains why this self-portrait has Lomazzo as Bacchus. It was an answer to the many disasters of the era, as well as to the new austerity imposed by the figures of the Counter-Reform - such as Charles Borromée, who was the archbishop of Milan and a cardinal within the Catholic church.

The Bacchic references are numerous here. The hat is wrapped in a garland of laurel and vine, with a medallion depicting vine too. There is a thyrsus surrounded in ivy. And finally there is a goat-skin, reminding of how when he was a child Bacchus was turned into a “kid” (baby goat) to avoid Juno’s wrath. The compass however within the man’s hand is not a symbol of Bacchus. Held like a paint-brush, it is meant to symbolize how Lomazzo “leads” and “drives” his own career like a captain would pilot his ship.

What’s better to complete this Christmas season, alongside some Arthuriana and some ghost stories, than some Greek mythology?

There is a great book in France that serves as a key research reference, and that is called the Dictionary of Literary Myths, composed under the direction of Pierre Brunel. Within this bookthere are several articles covering the complexity and evolution of the Greek gods, both within their own mythology and within European literature as a whole (with a strong focus on French literature, of course, being a French book). Given I do not know if the book was ever translated or not, I thought I’d share some of the text within it. And to begin, I will focus on one of the several articles dedicated to Dionysos – the god you English speakers known as “Dionysus” (even though the whole -us thing stays completely weird for me who grew up with all the Greek names ending in -os). This first article, written by Alain Moreau, is titled “The Antique Dionysos: The Elusive One”, and as the title says, it is a study of the figure of Dionysos within Antiquity.

I will offer here a vaguely-faithful translation of the text – and given it is a longarticle, I will break it down over several parts.

THE ANTIQUE DIONYSOS: THE ELUSIVE ONE

Of all the gods of Olympus, Dionysos is the one whose character is the hardest to define. Despite his many historical uses and the numerous interpretations of mythologists, we cannot fully understand the god. His origins, his childhood, his physical appearance, his behavior, his role in the city, his symbolism… It is all rich, all complex, all fleeting. Dionysos is the god of metamorphosis: the elusive one.

I) The origins: Old god, new god

The impossibility to confine Dionysos within a specific setting already manifests in the beginning of this investigation: the research of the god’s origins is puzzling. There is no doubt that Dionysos is a very ancient god. He was called “Dendrites”, “god of the tree” – and he was even depicted with branches growing out of his chest – which links him to the oldest deities of vegetation and fecundity, the ancient mother-goddesses. For example, the Greek Demeter: Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter says “Everything that huts Demeter also hurts Dionysos”, and Pindar names him “the consort of Demeter” in his Isthmics. Dionysos is also linked to Cybele, and though her to the Syrian goddess Kubaba – the Dionysos-Cybele link is made clear in Euripides’ Bacchants. There is also the Phrygian mother-goddess Zemelo, whose name sounds strangely like Dionysos’ mother’s, Semele. And all these deities were worshiped in Asia Minor, in Thrace, in Crete, and in the Aegean world. In Athens, very ancient festivals partially celebrate him; Anthesteria, Apaturia, Oschophoria… It explains why Tiresias, in the Bacchants, speaks of “traditions that come from our fathers, and whose age is as old as time itself”. All points out to the Dionysian cult having pre-Hellenic roots. During the Mycenaean era in the middle of the second millennium BCE, his presence was attested by two tablets found at Pylos written in linear B. The name of Dionysos is found in its genitive form: “diwonusoyo”. Bacchants gives us another clue about the ancient nature of the god: beyond the tragedy-of-impiety that is the death-punishment of Pentheus, one can sense a second level of comprehension, maybe hidden to the play’s creator, but that mythologists and ethnologists all perceived. That is to say, a ritual of human sacrifice – the tragedy takes its root in a primitive rite.

And yet, the historian Herodotus claims in his Histories that the name of Dionysos is the last one that the inhabitants of Greece learned when discovering their gods, while Pentheus and Tiresias in Bacchants both call Dionysos a “new god”. A new god, because he is foreign, supposedly coming from Thrace or Asia Minor. Ancient Greeks analyzed his name as coming from a fabulous land, whose exact location kept changing from person to person, but that was always outside of the Greek world: Caucasus, Ethiopia, India, Arabia, Egypt, Libya… Numerous myths tell of the strong difficulties that the cult of Dionysos had to face when implanting itself in Greece – especially in Boeotia, the land of Dionysos’ mother, Semele (who herself was the daughter of Cadmos, the founder of Thebes). Mythologists themselves were fooled and, up until a recent date, most of them believed that Dionysos was a latecomer to the pantheon, an imported god.

Where does this contradiction comes from? It is probably because of how unique the worship of Dionysos was: religious possession, orgiastic rituals, running races throughout the mountains… It always made him an eccentric, isolated god, a god of the people rather than a god of the aristocracy (he plays almost no role within the works of Homer), and as such a much less prestigious deity than the other Olympians. But Dionysos had his revenge: starting from the 8th century BCE onward, it seems that the god “woke up” and was brought back under the spotlight, thanks to women, who spread his cult. Various religious movements coming from Phrygia, Lydia, Thrace and the Greek islands also helped this renewal by revitalizing the old forms of the cult and accentuating its orgiastic aspect. The rise of Oriental cults in Athens at the end of the 5th century made everything go even faster. All these outside additions explain why the Greeks themselves felt that Dionysos was a foreigner and a “new” god. All in all, this look at the god’s origins accentuates one of his most fundamental characteristics: the impossibility to clearly define his personality.

II) A very complicated childhood: births and rebirths

The childhoods of Dionysos all bear the same strangeness. He is a god that is constantly born and that constantly dies, before escaping those that hunt him down, and finally imposing himself definitively. Let’s take a look.

1) Semele, beloved by Zeus, follows the wicked advice of the jealous Hera, and asks the king of the gods to appear before her in his full, shining glory. Zeus, who had made the solemn promise to grant any wish Semele would make, has no other choice but to obey. He appears to her wrapped and surrounded by thunder and lightning, and the poor Semele dies because of it. She was in her sixth month of pregnancy – and Zeus saved Dionysos from death, by ripping the fetus away from his mother’s belly, and placing it in his own thigh. There, Dionysos finished his growth during three more months, before finally being “born” out of Zeus’ leg. This is why one of the etymologies of “Dionysos” means “the god born twice”. In France, it also led to the common expression “se croire sorti de la cuisse du Jupiter” ; “to believe one’s got out of Jupiter’s thigh”.

2) The god Hermes, by order of Zeus, gives the child to king Athamas and queen Ino, rulers of Orchomenos. They raise the little Dionysos by forcing him to wear feminine clothes, in hope that Hera will not recognize him disguised as a girl. Unfortunately Zeus’ wife is not fooled, and she turns Dionysos’ foster parents insane. Zeus then transports his child towards Nysa, and entrusts him to the nymphs of the region. This time, it is said that he was turned into a kid (as in a baby goat). In the Homeric version of the story (found in Iliad, VI), Nysa is replaced by “the divine Nyseion”, a Thracian mountain where rules king Lycurgus. Lycurgus ended up hunting down the nurses of the child and wounding them – the terrified Dionysos jumped into the sea to flee the attack, and ended up protected by the goddess Thetis. [Note: Jeanmaire offered an alternative reading of the Homeric tale, proposing that maybe the Nyseion was actually the name of the “country of the Nysai”, aka the land of the Nymphs, which would make it an Ancient Greece version of Elfland or Fairyland]

3) Finally, there is the Cretan legend of Dionysos-Zagreus. While the legend was only recorded by very late text, in truth it seems to be a very ancient story: the name Zagreus first appears in the 6th century BCE in the Alcmeonis, and then came back in the first half of the 5th century within Aeschylus’ Sisyphus the Runaway. In the Zagreus story, Dionysos is given a new group of nursing parents: the Kouretes. As they dance with their weapons around the child and do not pay attention, the Titans discreetly reach Dionysos-Zageus and lure him away using toys (a ball, a spinning top, a mirror, a fleece, jackstones, apples, a bullroarer…). Once they had him, the Titans killed him, dismembered him and cooked the pieces of his body within a cauldron before roasting them and eating them. Zeus struck the Titans with his lightning, but hopefully could resurrect the young god, using his still-beating heart that had been saved by Athena from the Titans’ gruesome feast.

Next time: The Shapeshifting God, and A Complex Personality