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Facts about Dionysus

Dionysus

The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus.

Dionysus

Another version is that Dionysus was taken to the rain-nymphs of Nysa, who nourished him in his infancy and childhood.

Dionysus

The fact that, in both cases, the life of Dionysus begins with a death and rebirth speaks to the importance of such themes within the worship of the god (especially through the Mystery Religions).

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When Theseus abandoned Ariadne sleeping on Naxos, some sources suggest that Dionysus found and married her.

Dionysus

A jealous Hera again attempted to kill the child, this time by sending Titans to rip Dionysus to pieces after luring the baby away from his parents with toys and sweets.

Dionysus

When King Lycurgus of Thrace heard that Dionysus was in his kingdom, he feared the destructive power of his cult, and decided to imprison all the Maenads (the female followers of Dionysus).

Dionysus

Dionysus turned into a fierce lion and unleashed a bear onboard, killing those he came into contact with.

Dionysus

The bull, the serpent, ivy and wine were the characteristic signs of Dionysus.

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The divine mission of Dionysus was to bring an end to care and worry.

Dionysus

Fortunately, the Fates granted Ampelos a second life as a vine, from which Dionysus squeezed the first wine.

Dionysus

The variety of mythic and cultic attributes of Dionysus suggest to some that the mythographers were dealing with a god whose foreignness was inherent to his character.

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Clearly, Dionysus had been with the Greeks and their predecessors a long time, and yet always retained the feel of something alien.

Dionysus

Along with Athena (who emerged fully formed from her father's skull), Dionysus holds a place of honor for possessing two of the more peculiar origin stories in the mythic corpus of the ancient Greeks.

Dionysus

Prosymnus died before Dionysus could honor his pledge, so in order to satisfy the shade of his erastes, the god fashioned a phallus from an olive branch and sat on it at Prosymnus' tomb.

Dionysus

In another version of the story, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, the queen of the underworld.

Dionysus

Euripides wrote a tale concerning the destructive nature of Dionysus in his play entitled The Bacchae.

Dionysus

Within the bulk of Greek mythology, Dionysus was described as the son of Zeus and Semele, though some other versions of the story suggested that he is the son of Zeus and Persephone.

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Unwilling to allow all memory of this affair to perish, Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus from the charred remains of his mother and sewed him into his thigh (or testicles).

Dionysus

Dionysus or Dionysos (from the Ancient Greek ???????? or ????????, associated with the Italic Liber), was the ancient Greek god of wine who represented the power of intoxication and ecstasy (literally "being outside the self").

Dionysus

Dionysus was also strongly associated with the satyrs, centaurs and sileni.

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Next, Dionysus drove King Lycurgus insane, after which point he sliced his own son into pieces with an axe, thinking he was a patch of ivy, a plant holy to Dionysus.

Dionysus

Simultaneously, Pentheus was slowly driven mad by the compelling Dionysus, and lured to the woods of Mount Cithaeron to experience the revels of the wine god firsthand.

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