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Finding Dionysus Susan Guettel Cole Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_021 Final Proof page 325 15.11.2006 3:28pm A Companion to Greek Religion Edited by Daniel Ogden Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd PART VII Mysteries and Magic Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_021 Final Proof page 327 15.11.2006 3:28pm A Companion to Greek Religion Edited by Daniel Ogden Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Finding Dionysus Susan Guettel Cole Paradoxes By the classical period Dionysus was to be found everywhere in the Greek world, but when we look for tangible traces of his presence or activity, he is hard to pin down. He had many small sanctuaries, but rarely a substantial temple. Greek theaters were called tou Dionusou, ‘‘[the place] of Dionysus,’’ and every Greek theater was built in his honor. Nevertheless, a famous Greek proverb could claim that Greek drama had, ‘‘nothing to do with Dionysus’’ (Pickard-Cambridge 1962:124–6). Bulls were slaughtered in sacrifice to the god at his major city festival in Athens, the Dionysia, but the goat, the more common sacrificial victim mandated for him in local regula- tions for sacrifice elsewhere, was not even allowed on the Athenian acropolis (Burkert 1985:229). Dionysus had a fluid identity. Although ranked as a god, he had a mortal mother. He was born twice, once from his dead mother and a second time from his father’s ‘‘male womb’’ (Euripides, Bacchae 95). He was recognized as divine and therefore immortal, but his tomb was shown to visitors in the temple of Apollo at Delphi (FGrH 328 fr. 7; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 365a; Pie´rart 1996). In the archaic period he is depicted as a mature adult, bearded and composed. However, he is also represented as a youth with hair to the shoulders (Euripides, Bacchae 150, 235, 455) and described as ‘‘shaped like a girl’’ (the¯lomorphos: Bacchae 353) or as looking ‘‘like an unmarried girl’’ (Antoninus Liberalis 10.1). Dionysus did not belong to the original group of twelve gods on Olympus, but he is included in the group of twelve as depicted on archaic Attic pottery (Long 1987:4–5). The branch he carries (bak- khos) is a sign of his identity. Called Bakkhos, Bakkhios,orBakkheus himself, he shares his title with his mortal worshipers, Bakkhoi (masculine) or Bakkhai (feminine). As a god he should have fed on nectar and ambrosia and never felt a twinge of indigestion, but Aristophanes could put him on the stage suffering from a bout of diarrhea (Frogs 479–88). Finally, although he himself is not shown in sexual arousal (Jameson Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_021 Final Proof page 328 15.11.2006 3:28pm 328 Susan Guettel Cole 1993:47–50), Dionysus is called enorkhe¯s (with testicles intact), on Lesbos and Samos; naked satyrs in his entourage are highly sexed and often depicted with erections (Lissarague 1990b), and erect phalloi were a ritual item in his dramatic festivals. Dionysus freely crosses gender boundaries, and often appears on vases in the same garments as his female worshipers. In one of his first appearances in Greek tragedy his dress is so much like a woman’s clothing that Lykourgos calls him ‘‘girlie-boy’’ ( gunnis; Aeschylus, Edonians fr. 61 TrGF ). Dionysus regularly wears a kroko¯tos, ‘‘party dress,’’ and mitra, ‘‘headband,’’ clothing normally worn by females (Bremmer 1999:187; Loraux 1990:37–8). On Delos he even inherits a hand-me-down garment from Artemis. When the Chorus of Sophocles’ Oedipus sings about Dionysus’ wardrobe, it chants: I call on the one who wears the golden mitra on his head, the god who gave his name to this land, Bakkhos, with his ruddy face, to whom they cry ‘‘Euoi,’’ the one who wears the same outfit as the maenads . (Oedipus Tyrannus 209–12) Finally, in a society where most rituals were divided by gender and female attendants rarely served male gods, Dionysus is often tended by an official priestess of the city. When his rites are restricted to women, his attendants are usually female, but when associated with the theater, Dionysus is always served by male priests. Early History The name of Dionysus is inscribed on two Mycenaean Linear B tablets found at Pylos and on one from Khania, on Crete (Hallager, Vlasakis, and Hallager 1992), but we have no idea what this god meant to the Mycenaean communities who worshiped him. We do not meet him again until his walk-on part in Homeric epic many centuries later. Here his major myths were so firmly established that a poet could allude briefly to a narrative in the Dionysiac repertory and assume with confidence that audiences would be familiar with its content. Dionysus is already a complicated god in early epic. He is capable of revenge, his divine status is difficult to recognize, and he is associated with an ambiguous gift. When Odysseus notices Ariadne in the underworld, he says that it was the testimony of Dionysus that led Artemis to kill her (Odyssey 11.321–325). We can assume that Dionysus was aggressive here, but the rest of the story is no longer available to us. In the Iliad Dionysus reacts to danger with fear (Iliad 6.128–42). When Lykourgos attacks him and his followers, Dionysus trembles in terror and leaps into the sea, where he is drawn to Thetis for comfort. Dionysus is linked with Thetis again in the last book of the Odyssey. When Agamemnon arrives in the underworld, he tells the dead Achilles how the Greeks at Troy placed his ashes in a golden amphora for burial, reminding him that the amphora, made by Hephaestus, had been a gift to his mother from Dionysus (Odyssey 24.73–5). Official Dionysiac cult grew with the developing polis, and Dionysiac rituals were well integrated into local festival calendars of Greek cities at an early date (Samuel 1972:285, 283, 297). The month names Anthesterion, named for the Anthesteria, Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_021 Final Proof page 329 15.11.2006 3:28pm Finding Dionysus 329 and Lenaion, for the Lenaia, were common throughout the cities of the Cyclades, Ionia, and the Ionian colonies. Agrionos, named for the Agrionia (‘‘wild-like’’ rituals), was common in Doric areas, in Boeotia, and in Thessaly. Thuios (named for the Thuia, ‘‘raving women’’ rituals) was common in the Peloponnese and Thes- saly. Dionysus moved north with Greek colonization. He was taken to Thasos from Paros, to Abdera from Teos, and to Olbia from Miletos. At both Teos and Abdera the Dionysiac rituals called Anthesteria constituted one of the three major festivals of the polis. At Olbia an inscription with a complete calendar of the months repro- duces the Milesian calendar and confirms that both cities originally celebrated the same festivals. Herodotus makes it clear that the Bacchic rites practiced at Olbia were Greek rites imported from Miletos and despised by the local indigenous population (4.78). His information about solemn Bacchic rites, teletai, is confirmed by several recent finds at Olbia, among them a bronze mirror of the sixth century BC inscribed with a Dionysiac theophoric name together with the Bacchic ritual cry used by females, euai (Dubois 1996:143–6 no. 92). The evidence for Dionysus in Ionia is especially rich. In later periods Dionysiac inscriptions tend to be thickly clustered in the Greek cities along the Ionian coast and to thin out considerably as one proceeds inland. In the coastal cities inscriptions testify to public organization of his priesthoods as part of the city administration and public organization of his festivals as part of the regular festival calendar. Inland, where the institutions of the polis developed later, Dionysus is not always a polis divinity and rarely appears in public documents. His impact in inland areas is limited to private dedications, sepulchral texts, and the records generated by private organizations. Experiencing Dionysus In Euripides’ Bacchae the women of Thebes, compelled to dance in the mountains for Dionysus, are called mainades, ‘‘mad women.’’ E.R. Dodds interpreted this noun as a ritual title and the plot of the play as a historical account of a religious movement (Dodds 1960:xv, xx–xxii). He described oreibasia as a series of rites where women roamed the mountains and actually tore apart wild animals (sparagmos). Dodds presents sparagmos as preparation for a sacrifice where the worshiper ate the flesh of the sacrificial victim raw, ¯omophagia. His interpretation, delivered with fervor in the introduction to his deservedly admired commentary on Euripides’ play, still convinces some, but it is not clear that ‘‘maenad’’ was a ritual title or that spontaneous attacks of frenzy incited females to mass exodus to the mountains for dancing and the rending of wild animals (Henrichs 1978). Rather, the myths of resistance describing excessive frenzy inflicted by a punitive Dionysus show the dangers of refusing to honor the god and therefore explain the local rituals designed to meet his approval. It is important to notice that there are two different groups of ‘‘maenads’’ in Euripides’ play, the women who accompany the god from Asia, successfully per- forming his solemn rituals, teletai, and the women of Thebes, harshly punished for refusing to recognize him as a god. Euripides also distinguishes two kinds of mania, ‘‘madness.’’ The first is the positive ritual experience of identification with the god as described by the Chorus of Lydian Bakkhai when it enters the orchestra. The second is Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_021 Final Proof page 330 15.11.2006 3:28pm 330 Susan Guettel Cole the transgressive and frenzied behavior inflicted by the god on the three daughters of Kadmos and their cohorts, the corrupt and polluted Bakkhai.
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