Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [100]
This “deal with the devil” was always thought to explain the arrival of spring, which is when Persephone returns to earth. Her subsequent return to the underworld means the end of the growing season and the coming of winter, seen as the time of death. While simple and appealing, this explanation does not accurately fit the Greek growing season, some scholars note.* Instead, they view the tale of Persephone’s abduction as an allegory explaining the fate of Greek girls who were often turned over to much older men in arranged marriages. Demeter’s grief over the loss of Persephone was typical of the experiences of Greek mothers who gave up their daughters in arranged marriages, usually to an older stranger.
Dionysus (Bacchus) One of the most widely celebrated gods of Greece (and, later, of Rome), Dionysus is not only the god of wine and ecstasy, but also the male life-force, a masculine fertility god. Unmentioned by Hesiod and little-mentioned by Homer, Dionysus is another “foreign import” who arrived in Greece much later than the other gods, a transplant from the ancient Near East. (References to him date to about 1250 BCE, and there is no evidence that he was worshipped before the Archaic Age.) But as god of wine and the sexual life-force, he was clearly a hit with the Greeks, and eventually supplanted Hestia (see below) as one of the twelve Olympians. The festivals in his honor—Dionysia in Greece and Bacchanalia in Rome—were probably the original “toga parties.” And followers of Dionysus might have been some of the ancient world’s biggest “party animals.” These festivals became the occasion for wild dancing in the streets and ecstatic behavior by his devoted followers. Later, in Rome, they acquired even greater notoriety, forcing the Roman Senate to ban the feasts and apparently execute some of the “Dionysians” as a threat to civil order (see below, What were the Bacchanalia and the Saturnalia?).
But in Greek myth, Dionysus is depicted as the son of Zeus and a mortal woman Semele, who is burned to a crisp when she asks Zeus to appear to her as he really is. She unfortunately gets what she asks for—she’s zapped by a thunderbolt. The dying Semele’s fetus is saved by the messenger god Hermes, and Zeus sews the unborn child into his right thigh. A few months later, Dionysus is born. Ripped from his mother’s womb and then from Zeus’s leg, Dionysus would be described as “twice born.”
In spite of his “multiple births,” Dionysus is still on the hit list of Zeus’s wife Hera. To save him from Hera’s jealous vengeance, Zeus disguises the infant as a girl and takes him to be raised by his mortal aunt and uncle. Not fooled, Hera makes the child’s mortal guardians go mad. They kill their own children and then commit suicide. But again Dionysus is spared, and Zeus transforms him into a young goat.
The vindictive Hera is not yet done with Zeus’s “love child.” After Dionysus returns to human form, Hera makes him go mad, and Dionysus wanders the Eastern world until he meets a goddess known as Cybele, from Asia Minor, a mother goddess (related to the Mesopotamian Inanna/Ishtar) whose cult followers indulged in ritual orgies and self-castration. Cybele cures Dionysus of his madness and introduces him to all of her secret fertility rites.
One of the most complex gods, Dionysus was sometimes perceived as both man and animal, had male and effeminate qualities, and was seen at times as both young and old. The ancient Greeks associated Dionysus with violent and unpredictable behavior, especially actions caused by drinking too much wine, and many stories about this god of intoxication involve epic sessions of drunken merrymaking. At one of these sessions, Dionysus grants the legendary King Midas his wish that everything he touches turns to gold. In another of those “be careful what you wish for” stories, Midas unfortunately discovers that Dionysus has made his wish literally come true, as his food turns to