Dionysus(Bacchus)

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In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (classical and modern Greek: (Dionysos), also called (Bacchos), Latin Dyonisus/Bacchus, Bacchus), is the god of wine-making, orchards, and fruits. , vegetation, fertility, madness, religious ecstasy and theater. His wine, his music, and his ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restrictions of the powerful. His thyrsus, a fennel-stalk scepter, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms it represents. It is believed that those who participate in the mysteries of him become possessed and empowered by the god himself.

His origins are uncertain and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracians, others as Greeks. In Orphism, he was the son of Zeus and Persephone; a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus; or the twice-born son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. The Eleusinian Mysteries identify him with Iacchus, the son or husband of Demeter. Most accounts say that he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad and arrived in Greece as a foreigner. The attribute of him of "foreign" as an arriving foreign god may be inherent and essential to the cults of him, since he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called "the coming god."

Wine was a religious focus in the cult of Dionysus and was the earthly incarnation of him. Wine could alleviate suffering, bring joy, and inspire divine madness. The festivals of Dionysus included the performance of sacred dramas depicting the myths of him, the initial driving force behind the development of theater in Western culture. The cult of Dionysus is also a "cult of souls"; His maenads feed the dead through blood offerings and he acts as a divine communicator between the living and the dead. He is sometimes classified as a dying and resurrecting god.

The Romans identified Bacchus with their own Liber Pater, the "Free Father" of the Liberalia festival, patron of viticulture, wine, and male fertility, and guardian of the traditions, rituals, and freedoms inherent to coming of age and citizenship, but the Roman state treated them as subversive, in part because their free mix of classes and genders transgressed traditional social and moral restrictions. The celebration of bacchanalia was classified as a capital crime, except in attenuated forms and in very small congregations approved and supervised by the State. The festivals of Bacchus merged with those of Liber and Dionysus.