Dionysus and Rome
Dionysus and Rome

Author: Fiachra Mac Góráin

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-12-16

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 3110672316

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While most work on Dionysus is based on Greek sources, this collection of essays examines the god’s Roman and Italian manifestations. Nine contributions address Bacchus’ appearance at the crossroads of Greek and Roman cultures, tracing continuities and differences between literary and archaeological sources for the god. The essays offer coverage of Dionysus in Roman art, Italian epigraphy; Latin poetry including epic, drama and elegy; and prose, including historiography, rhetorical and Christian discourse. The introduction offers an overview of the presence of Dionysus in Italy from the archaic to the imperial periods, identifying the main scholarly trends, with treatment of key Dionysian episodes in Roman history and literature. Individual chapters address the reception of Euripides’ Bacchae across Greek and Roman literature from Athens to Byzantium; Dionysus in Roman art of the archaic and Augustan periods; the god’s relationship with Fufluns and Liber in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE; Dionysian associations; Bacchus in Cicero; Ovid’s Tristia 5.3; Bacchus in the writings of Christian Latin writers. The collection sheds light on a relatively understudied aspect of Dionysus, and will stimulate further research in this area.

Dionysus
Dionysus

Author: Russell Roberts

Publisher: Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc.

Published: 2008-06

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 1612284132

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Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, was a figure of many different personalities. Was he the mellow, smiling youth who gaily spread his gift of wine all over the world . . . or was he the fierce warrior who subjugated entire nations to his unbending will? Even his gift of wine reflected his dual nature. Wine could make people feel happy and good about themselves. Yet it could also turn them into mindless beasts who acted without thought or reason. The only god with a mortal mother, hated by Hera and driven mad by her, Dionysus figures in some of the most well-known tales of all time, such as the story of King Midas. His influence is vast and his importance to modern cultures remains strong, even while some of the other Olympians have faded into the pages of history. Dionysus has survived for thousands of years. He will likely survive for thousands of years to come.

Dionysos
Dionysos

Author: Vikki Bramshaw

Publisher:

Published: 2013-12

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9781905297672

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"There was 'no god more present' than Dionysos: that is, out of all the ancient gods Dionysos was one of the few who people felt that they could reach out and touch" Chapter 4: A God of Many Forms Dionysos: Exciter to Frenzy is a phenomenal scholarly exploration of one of the most complex, liminal and paradoxical gods of the ancient world. In this journey through the realms of Dionysos, the author Vikki Bramshaw guides the reader through the mysterious world of the multifaceted Dionysos, revealing his hidden faces and forms, demonstrating his presence in different cultures, the growth cycles of nature, the establishment of theatre and even the ancient Greek calendar. The roots of the wine god Dionysos, like his vines, spread throughout the ancient world. From the Cretan Zagreus, to the Thracian Sabazios and the Egyptian Iachen, his stories permeated the myths and traditions of both the untamed wilderness and the culture of cities such as Athens. Joined by slaves and rulers, wild flesh-ripping Maenads and vegetarian Orphics, wine-makers and hunters, the thrice-born Dionysos danced his way through the challenges of rebirth and initiation, with the liberating ecstasy of trance and possession. The god Dionysos unites opposites, he is many-formed, dying yet eternal, chthonian and heavenly. His ancient myths, mystical symbols, pagan rites and incarnations represent a uniquely detailed and relevant perspective of the transformation he brings through prophecy and personal liberation which is still relevant today.

Dionysus and Politics
Dionysus and Politics

Author: Filip Doroszewski

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-30

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1000392414

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This volume presents an essential but underestimated role that Dionysus played in Greek and Roman political thought. Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, the volume covers the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman Empire. The reader can observe how ideas and political themes rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted and developed over the course of history. The authors (including four leading experts in the field: Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Jean-Marie Pailler, Richard Seaford andRichard Stoneman) reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different types of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in Greek city-state politics, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, and shows how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion.

The Dionysian Gospel
The Dionysian Gospel

Author: Dennis R. MacDonald

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2017-04-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1506421660

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“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Dennis R. MacDonald offers a provocative explanation of those scandalous words of Christ from the Fourth Gospel—an explanation that he argues would hardly have surprised some of the Gospel’s early readers. John sounds themes that would have instantly been recognized as proper to the Greek god Dionysos (the Roman Bacchus), not least as he was depicted in Euripides’s play The Bacchae. A divine figure, the offspring of a divine father and human mother, takes on flesh to live among mortals, but is rejected by his own. He miraculously provides wine and offers it as a sacred gift to his devotees, women prominent among them, dies a violent death—and returns to life. Yet John takes his drama in a dramatically different direction: while Euripides’s Dionysos exacts vengeance on the Theban throne, the Johannine Christ offers life to his followers. MacDonald employs mimesis criticism to argue that the earliest Evangelist not only imitated Euripides but expected his readers to recognize Jesus as greater than Dionysos.

Dionysus
Dionysus

Author: Walter F. Otto

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1965

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780253208910

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"This study of Dionysus . . . is also a new theogony of Early Greece." —Publishers Weekly "An original analysis . . . of the spiritual significance of the Greek myth and cult of Dionysus." —Theology Digest

The Birth of Tragedy
The Birth of Tragedy

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Publisher: The Floating Press

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1776673174

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This classic work of creative criticism from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argues that ancient Greek drama represents the highest form of art ever produced. In the first section of the book, Nietzsche presents an in-depth analysis of Athenian tragedy and its many merits. In the second section, Nietzsche contrasts the refinement of classical tragedy with what he regards as the cultural wasteland of the nineteenth-century.