|
The earliest discussions of mythological parallels between Dionysus and the figure of the Christ in Christian theology can be traced to Friedrich Hölderlin, whose identification of Dionysus with Christ is most explicit in Brod und Wein (1800–1801) and Der Einzige (1801–1803).[55] Theories regarding such parallels were popular in the 19th century but were later on mostly rejected by contemporary scholarship. A few modern scholars such as Martin Hengel, Barry Powell, Robert M. Price, and Peter Wick, among others, argue that Dionysian religion and Christianity have notable parallels. They point to the symbolism of wine and the importance it held in the mythology surrounding both Dionysus and Jesus Christ;[56][57] though, Wick argues that the use of wine symbolism in the Gospel of John, including the story of the Marriage at Cana at which Jesus turns water into wine, was intended to show Jesus as superior to Dionysus.[58] A few scholars of comparative mythology identify both Dionysus and Jesus with the dying-and-returning god mythological archetype.[9] However this identification is often seen as superficial as most dying-and-returning god deities had a cyclical nature, as they died and were reborn each year, representing the cycle of nature, while the resurrection of Christ was a single event placed in a specific historical and geographical context. On the other hand, Dionysus life-death-rebirth cycle was strongly tied to the grape harvest. Moreover it has been noted that the details of Dionysus death and rebirth are starkingly different both in content and symbolism from Jesus, with Dionysus being (in the most common myth) torn to pieces and eaten by the titans and "eventually restored to a new life" from the heart that was left over.[59][60] Other elements, such as the celebration by a ritual meal of bread and wine, also have parallels.[61] Powell, in particular, argues precursors to the Catholic notion of transubstantiation can be found in Dionysian religion.[61] However such claims are strongly disputed as the rituals of Dyonisus did not involve the transformation of the substance of bread and wine in the god himself. Rather the myth stated that Dionysius became the wine of libation, which was not drunk or consumed in anyway, hence having a very different symbolism. Another parallel can be seen in The Bacchae where Dionysus appears before King Pentheus on charges of claiming divinity which is compared to the New Testament scene of Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate.[58][61][62] However several scholar dispute this parallel, since while Jesus during the trial before Pilate did not affirm openly he was a god nor asked for any honor, Dionysus was arrested by Pentheus after making the women of Thebes mad and complaining about the fact that the city of Thebes, and its king, have refused to honor him. Moreoever, the confrontation of Dionysus and Pentheus also ends with Pentheus dying torn into pieces by the mad women, including his mother. The details of the story, including its resolution make Dionysus story radically different than the one from Jesus, except for the parallel of the arrest, which is a detail that appears in many biographies as well.[63] Most modern biblical scholars and historians, both conservative and liberal, today reject most of the parallelomania between the cult of Dionysus and Christ, asserting that the similarities are superficial at best, most often vaguely general and universal parallels find in many stories both historical and mythical, and that the symbolism represented by the similar themes are radically different.[64][65][66][67] Symbolism Satyr giving a grapevine to Bacchus as a child; cameo glass, first half of the 1st century AD; from Italy The bull, serpent, ivy, and wine are characteristic of Dionysian atmosphere. Dionysus is also strongly associated with satyrs, centaurs, and sileni. He is often shown riding a leopard, wearing a leopard skin, or in a chariot drawn by panthers, and may also be recognized by the thyrsus he carries. Besides the grapevine and its wild barren alter-ego, the toxic ivy plant, both sacred to him, the fig was also his symbol. The pinecone that tipped his thyrsus linked him to Cybele. Dionysus had two extreme natures to his personality. For instance, he could shift from bringing bliss and relaxation, which then often transitioned into bitterness and fury. Dionysus personified the nature of wine. When used reasonably it can be pleasant, however, if misused it can provoke negative effects.[68] The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus. Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced Gnosticism[citation needed]. Orpheus was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus.[69] Dionysus was another god of resurrection who was strongly linked to the bull. In a cult hymn from Olympia, at a festival for Hera, Dionysus is invited to come as a bull; "with bull-foot raging." Walter Burkert relates, "Quite frequently [Dionysus] is portrayed with bull horns, and in Kyzikos he has a tauromorphic image," and refers also to an archaic myth in which Dionysus is slaughtered as a bull calf and impiously eaten by the Titans.[9] In the Classical period of Greece, the bull and other animals identified with deities were separated from them as their agalma, a kind of heraldic show-piece that concretely signified their numinous presence.[9] Bacchus and the Bacchanalia Main article: Bacchanalia Bacchus by Caravaggio Bronze head of Dionysus, 50 BC -50 AD, in the British Museum[70] A mystery cult to Bacchus was brought to Rome from the Greek culture of southern Italy or by way of Greek-influenced Etruria. It was established c.200 BC in the Aventine grove of Stimula by a priestess from Campania, near the temple where Liber Pater ("The Free Father") had a State-sanctioned, popular cult. Liber was a native Roman god of wine, fertility, and prophecy, patron of Rome's plebeians (citizen-commoners) and a close equivalent to Bacchus-Dionysus Eleutherios. In Livy's account, the new Bacchic mysteries were originally restricted to women and held only three times a year; but were corrupted by the Etruscan-Greek version, and thereafter drunken men and women of all ages and social classes cavorted in a sexual free-for-all five times a month. Livy relates their various outrages against Rome's civil and religious laws and morality; a secretive, subversive and potentially revolutionary counter-culture. The cult was suppressed by the State with great ferocity; of the 7,000 arrested, most were executed. Modern scholarship treats much of Livy's account with skepticism; more certainly, a Senatorial edict, the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus was distributed throughout Roman and allied Italy. It banned the former Bacchic cult organisations. Each meeting must seek prior senatorial approval through a praetor. No more than three women and two men were allowed at any one meeting, Those who defied the edict risked the death penalty. Bacchus was conscripted into the official Roman pantheon as an aspect of Liber, and his festival was inserted into the Liberalia. In Roman culture, Liber, Bacchus and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable equivalents. Bacchus was euhemerised as a wandering hero, conqueror and founder of cities. He was a patron deity and founding hero at Leptis Magna, birthplace of the emperor Septimius Severus, who promoted his cult. In some Roman sources, the ritual procession of Bacchus in a tiger-drawn chariot, surrounded by maenads, satyrs and drunks, commemorates the god's triumphant return from the conquest of India, the historical prototype for the Roman Triumph. Bacchus was attended by men and women accomplished in the arts of rural industry; wherever he came he taught husbandry and vine cultivation; being received everywhere with festivity and welcome. Lycurgus king of Thrace and Pentheus king of Thebes opposed importing the sciences of the east. To punish them Bacchus caused lycurgus to be torn to pieces by wild horses and spread delusion among the family of Pentheus so they thought him a wild boar and inflicted a thousand wounds.[71] In art Main article: Bacchic art "Bacchus" by Michelangelo (1497) Classical The god appeared on many kraters and other wine vessels from classical Greece. His iconography became more complex in the Hellenistic period, between severe archaising or Neo Attic types such as the Dionysus Sardanapalus and types showing him as an indolent and androgynous young man and often shown nude (see the Dionysus and Eros, Naples Archeological Museum). The 4th-century Lycurgus Cup in the British Museum is a spectacular cage cup which changes colour when light comes through the glass; it shows the bound King Lycurgus being taunted by the god and attacked by a satyr. Elizabeth Kessler has theorized that a mosaic appearing on the triclinium floor of the House of Aion in Nea Paphos, Cyprus, details a monotheistic worship of Dionysus.[72] In the mosaic, other gods appear but may only be lesser representations of the centrally imposed Dionysus. Modern views Dionysus has remained an inspiration to artists, philosophers and writers into the modern era. In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche contrasted Dionysus with the god Apollo as a symbol of the fundamental, unrestrained aesthetic principle of force, music, and intoxication versus the principle of form, beauty, and sight represented by the latter. Nietzsche also claimed that the oldest forms of Greek Tragedy were entirely based on suffering of Dionysus. Nietzsche continued to contemplate the character of Dionysus, which he revisited in the final pages of his 1886 work Beyond Good and Evil. This reconceived Nietzschean Dionysus was invoked as an embodiment of the central will to power concept in Nietzsche's later works The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist and Ecce Homo. Károly Kerényi, a scholar in classical philology and one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology characterized Dionysus as representative of the psychological life force (Zoê).[73] Other scholars proposing psychological interpretations have placed Dionysus' emotionality in the foreground by focusing on the joy, terror or hysteria associated with the god.[74][75][76][77][78] The Russian poet and philosopher Vyacheslav Ivanov elaborated the theory of Dionysianism, which traces the roots of literary art in general and the art of tragedy in particular to ancient Dionysian mysteries. His views were expressed in the treatises The Hellenic Religion of the Suffering God (1904), and Dionysus and Early Dionysianism (1921). Inspired by James Frazer, some have labeled Dionysus a life-death-rebirth deity. The mythographer Karl Kerenyi devoted much energy to Dionysus over his long career; he summed up his thoughts in Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Bollingen, Princeton, 1976). Bacchus and the Choir of Nymphs (1888) by John Reinhard Weguelin Dionysus is the main character of Aristophanes' play The Frogs, later updated to a modern version by Burt Shevelove (libretto) and Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) ("The time is the present. The place is ancient Greece. ... "). In the play, Dionysus and his slave Xanthius venture to Hades to bring a famed writer back from the dead, with the hopes that the writer's presence in the world will fix all nature of earthly problems. In Aristophanes' play, Euripides competes against Aeschylus to be recovered from the underworld; In Sondheim and Shevelove's, George Bernard Shaw faces William Shakespeare. Dionysus is one of the central myths explored in the 2011 Weaponized anthology The Immanence of Myth.[79] Walt Disney has depicted the character on a number of occasions. The first such portrayal of Silenus or Dionysus as the Roman Bacchus, was in the "Pastoral" segment of Walt Disney's third classic Fantasia. In keeping with the more fun-loving Roman god, he is portrayed as an overweight, happily drunk man wearing a tunic and cloak, grape leaves on his head, carrying a goblet of wine, and riding a drunken donkey named Jacchus ("jackass"). He is friends with the fauns and centaurs, and is shown celebrating a harvest festival. He was depicted as an overweight drunkard as opposed to his youthful descriptions in myths. He has bright pink skin and rosy red cheeks hinting at his drunkenness. He always carries either a bottle or glass of wine in his hand, and like in the myths, wears a wreath of grape leaves upon his head. Bacchus by Paulus Bor . In music Dionysius (together with Demeter) was used as an archetype for the character Tori by contemporary artist Tori Amos in her 2007 album American Doll Posse, and the Canadian rock band Rush refer to a confrontation and hatred between Dionysus and Apollo in the Cygnus X-1 duology. Versions of Dionysius has also appeared in modern fiction. The Romanised equivalent of Dionysus was referenced in the 1852 plantation literature novel Aunt Phillis's Cabin, which featured a character named Uncle Bacchus, who was so-named due to his excessive alcoholism. Comics writers Eddie Campbell and Grant Morrison have both utilised the character. Morrison claims that the myth of Dionysus provides the inspiration for his violent and explicit graphic novel Kill Your Boyfriend,[citation needed] whilst Campbell used the character in his Deadface series to explore both the conventions of super-hero comic books and artistic endeavour.[citation needed] Dionysus along with Lilith are central characters in James Curcio's 2011 novel Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End. A version of Bacchus appears in C. S. Lewis' Prince Caspian, part of The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis depicts him as dangerous-looking, androgynous young boy who helps Aslan awaken the spirits of the Narnian trees and rivers. He does not appear in the 2008 film version. Rick Riordan's series of books Percy Jackson & The Olympians presents Dionysus as an uncaring, childish and spoiled god who, as a punishment for chasing a nymph, has to work in Camp Half-Blood and stay off alcohol (The film adaptation Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters expands on this in that Dionysus can pour himself wine, but it automatically turns into water in his glass). A Bacchus themed table. The top was made in Florence (c.1736) and the gilded wood base in Britain or Ireland, c.1736-1740. In Fred Saberhagen's 2001 novel, God of the Golden Fleece, a young man in a post-apocalyptic world picks up an ancient piece of technology shaped in the likeness of the Dionysus. Here, Dionysus is depicted as a relatively weak god, albeit a subversive one whose powers are able to undermine the authority of tyrants. In 2009 the poet Stephen Howarth and veteran theatre producer Andrew Hobbs collaborated on a play entitled Bacchus in Rehab with Dionysus as the central character. The authors describe the piece as "combining highbrow concept and lowbrow humour."[80] The second season of the TV series True Blood involves a plot line wherein a maenad, Maryann, causes mayhem in the Louisiana town of Bon Temps in attempt to summon Dionysus. Dionysus, going by his Roman name "Bacchus," is a character in the 2011 video game Rock of Ages. Bacchus is a playable character in the multiplayer online battle arena Smite. He is a melee tank and is nicknamed "God of Wine".[81] |
About us|Jobs|Help|Disclaimer|Advertising services|Contact us|Sign in|Website map|Search|
GMT+8, 2015-9-11 20:49 , Processed in 0.163329 second(s), 16 queries .
