Dionysus. God of wine, life force, instinctive side of personality (partying) Beginnings: Hera wanted him dead, Zeus changed him into a goat and took.

Dionysus

• God of wine, life force, instinctive side of personality (partying)

• Beginnings: Hera wanted him dead, Zeus changed him into a goat and took him to Nysa

Dionysus and his mother• Myth: Zeus fell in love with her,

disguised himself as a mortal, impregnated Semele

• Hera got jealous and disguised herself as an old woman, Semele revealed her affair

• Zeus promised Semele a wish, she wished he would appear to her as he did when making love to Hera

• Semele, burned to a crisp when Zeus appeared to her in all his glory

Ino & Athamas

• Driven mad by Hera• Ino: Semele’s sister• Athamas: Ino’s husband• Ino ordered by Hermes to turn

Dionysus into a girl for safety from Hera

• Hera found out anyways

Followers of Dionysus

• Bacchantes: also called Thyiades & Maenads

• Raging women carried Thryus: staff wound with ivy leaves and crowned with a pine cone

• Satyrs: male, half-human, horse tails, goat legs, drunken

Dionysus’ wife

• Ariadne• Daughter of King Minos• Theseus abandoned her on an

island of Naxos

Myth of Lycurgus

• Dared to fight, tried to expel the Bacchanal nurses who followed Dionysus

• Crime: went mad, attempted to rape his own mother, pulled off legs of his son

• Punishment: Zeus struck him blind and he soon died

Myth of Minyads

• Minyads: daughters of King Minya• Refused to join new religion, sat in

chambers, talked about people who went to the mountains to rage as Bacchae

• Dionysus became a lion, bull, and panther• The room changed in a way that it made the

daughters hungry for blood, tore a child into bits & ate him, went to mountains to become Bacchae and turned into bats

Myth of Proetids

• Daughters of King Proetus, rejected rights of Dionysus, affected with itching on their heads, leprosy, went insane and wandered to Arcadia

• Proetus asked Melampus to cure them, Melampus asked for 1/3 of kindgom, Proetus refused

• Daughters ate their infants, disease spread, Proetus asked Melampus again, he asked for 2/3 of kingdom, Proetus agreed

Myth of Dionysus & pirates

• Pirates captured Dionysus as a boy, 1 pirate knew he was a god and wanted to let him go, captain didn’t want to

• Big storm and wind came, Dionysus turned into a lion, killed the captain, pirates jumped off ship and became dolphins

Elements of Folktale

• Two motifs appear in the story of Proetus & Melampus: “a portion of the kindgom as a reward.” Payment to Melampus for curing his daughters and “the short-sighted fool”, the purchase of the same service for twice the price first asked

Madness

• Not merely a punishment, god’s gift to those who follow him, offering the loss of the burdensome sense of self

• Greeks reason of irrationality: Dionysus was something strange and new, whatever his cult originated reflects the Greek version to the irrational side of human existence, that helped them accept the power of unreason