The Godfather Dances

In The Heat of The Moment

Cruising (1980) - Pacino dances

In ancient Greek religion and myth, 

Dionysus (/daɪ.əˈnaɪsəs/; Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Dionysos) 

is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre.

He was also known as Bacchus (/ˈbækəs/ or /ˈbɑːkəs/; Ancient Greek: Βάκχος Bacchos) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Romans) for a frenzy he is said to induce called baccheia.[4] As Dionysus Eleutherius ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful.[5] 

His thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, 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 he represents.

Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself.[7]

His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek.[8][9][10] In Orphism, he was variously a 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 he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner. His attribute of "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults, as he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called "the god that comes".[11]

Wine was a religious focus in the cult of Dionysus and was his earthly incarnation.[12] Wine could ease suffering, bring joy, and inspire divine madness.[13] Festivals of Dionysus included the performance of sacred dramas enacting his myths, the initial driving force behind the development of theatre in Western culture.[14] The cult of Dionysus is also a "cult of the souls"; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.[15] He is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god.[16]

Romans identified Bacchus with their own Liber Pater, the "Free Father" of the Liberalia festival, patron of viniculture, wine and male fertility, and guardian of the traditions, rituals and freedoms attached to coming of age and citizenship, but the Roman state treated independent, popular festivals of Bacchus (Bacchanalia) as subversive, partly because their free mixing of classes and genders transgressed traditional social and moral constraints. Celebration of the Bacchanalia was made a capital offence, except in the toned-down forms and greatly diminished congregations approved and supervised by the State. Festivals of Bacchus were merged with those of Liber and Dionysus.

Name

Etymology

Dionysus extending a drinking cup (kantharos) (late sixth century BC)

The dio- prefix in Ancient Greek Διόνυσος (Diónūsos; [di.ó.nyː.sos]) has been associated since antiquity with Zeus (genitive Dios), and the variants of the name seem to point to an original *Dios-nysos.[17] The earliest attestation is the Mycenaean Greek dative form 𐀇𐀺𐀝𐀰 (di-wo-nu-so),[18][17] featured on two tablets that had been found at Mycenaean Pylos and dated to the twelfth or thirteenth century BC. At that time, there could be no certainty on whether this was indeed a theonym,[19][20] but the 1989–90 Greek-Swedish Excavations at Kastelli Hill, Chania, unearthed, inter alia, four artefacts bearing Linear B inscriptions; among them, the inscription on item KH Gq 5 is thought to confirm Dionysus's early worship.[21] In Mycenaean Greek the form of Zeus is di-wo.[22] The second element -nūsos is of unknown origin.[17] It is perhaps associated with Mount Nysa, the birthplace of the god in Greek mythology, where he was nursed by nymphs (the Nysiads),[23] although Pherecydes of Syros had postulated nũsa as an archaic word for "tree" by the sixth century BC.[24][25] On a vase of Sophilos the Nysiads are named νύσαι (nusae).[26] Kretschmer asserted that νύση (nusē) is a Thracian word that has the same meaning as νύμφη (nýmphē), a word similar with νυός (nuos) (daughter in law, or bride, I-E *snusós, Sanskr. snusā).[27] He suggested that the male form is νῦσος (nūsos) and this would make Dionysus the "son of Zeus".[26] Jane Ellen Harrison believed that the name Dionysus means "young Zeus".[28] Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name, since all attempts to find an Indo-European etymology are doubtful.[18][17]

Meaning and variants

This article contains Linear B that may not render correctly in your browser. Without proper rendering support, you may see empty boxes instead of Unicode.

Later variants include Dionūsos and Diōnūsos in Boeotia; Dien(n)ūsos in Thessaly; Deonūsos and Deunūsos in Ionia; and Dinnūsos in Aeolia, besides other variants. A Dio- prefix is found in other names, such as that of the Dioscures, and may derive from Dios, the genitive of the name of Zeus.

Nonnus, in his Dionysiaca, writes that the name Dionysus means "Zeus-limp" and that Hermes named the new born Dionysus this, "because Zeus while he carried his burden lifted one foot with a limp from the weight of his thigh, and nysos in Syracusan language means limping".[30] In his note to these lines, W. H. D. Rouse writes "It need hardly be said that these etymologies are wrong".[30] The Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedia based on classical sources, states that Dionysus was so named "from accomplishing [διανύειν] for each of those who live the wild life. Or from providing [διανοεῖν] everything for those who live the wild life."[31]