Ripping Off Limbs, Dancing Maenads and Evergreen Ivy - The God Dionysos and His Sacred Band12/29/2011 I grew up in a place where everything was overgrown. The fences around houses stooped under the burden of vegetation. This is the essence of Dionysos and this is what makes him so powerful: he embodies unrestrained nature, growing freely, reaching all places; nature fertile and untamed. The Greeks worshipped Dionysos, among others things, as a tree god (Plutarch Moralia 675). He is also the god of all vegetation, including fruits and flowers, and most importantly, the vine. He is everything that is abundant and overflowing. "The unrestrained joys of nature", however, says Richard Seaford in his book Dionysos (Routledge, 2006), "are an urban vision. For most people in ancient societies life was a struggle to control nature" (p. 15). So Dionysos is an ambivalent deity (one of his cult epithets is dimorphos, 'dual-formed'). He is associated with the seasons, the unruliness and vitality of unchecked growth, the cyclical rebirth of green vegetation, but also with the danger present in all of this. Wine, Dionysos' gift to humankind, is a mixed blessing. It promotes social bonding but can be destructive if drunk undiluted or in excess.
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AuthorHave studied A219 Exploring the Classical World and A275 Reading Classical Greek at the Open University. Currently studying for a Psychology degree. ImagesPlease click on any image to be taken to its source.
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