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Dionysus. God of wine, life force, instinctive side of personality (partying) Beginnings: Hera wanted him dead, Zeus changed him into a goat and took him to Nysa. Dionysus and his mother. Myth: Zeus fell in love with her, disguised himself as a mortal, impregnated Semele
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God of wine, life force, instinctive side of personality (partying) • Beginnings: Hera wanted him dead, Zeus changed him into a goat and took him to Nysa
Dionysus and his mother • Myth: Zeus fell in love with her, disguised himself as a mortal, impregnated Semele • Hera got jealous and disguised herself as an old woman, Semele revealed her affair • Zeus promised Semele a wish, she wished he would appear to her as he did when making love to Hera • Semele, burned to a crisp when Zeus appeared to her in all his glory
Ino & Athamas • Driven mad by Hera • Ino: Semele’s sister • Athamas: Ino’s husband • Ino ordered by Hermes to turn Dionysus into a girl for safety from Hera • Hera found out anyways
Followers of Dionysus • Bacchantes: also called Thyiades & Maenads • Raging women carried Thryus: staff wound with ivy leaves and crowned with a pine cone • Satyrs: male, half-human, horse tails, goat legs, drunken
Dionysus’ wife • Ariadne • Daughter of King Minos • Theseus abandoned her on an island of Naxos
Myth of Lycurgus • Dared to fight, tried to expel the Bacchanal nurses who followed Dionysus • Crime: went mad, attempted to rape his own mother, pulled off legs of his son • Punishment: Zeus struck him blind and he soon died
Myth of Minyads • Minyads: daughters of King Minya • Refused to join new religion, sat in chambers, talked about people who went to the mountains to rage as Bacchae • Dionysus became a lion, bull, and panther • The room changed in a way that it made the daughters hungry for blood, tore a child into bits & ate him, went to mountains to become Bacchae and turned into bats
Myth of Proetids • Daughters of King Proetus, rejected rights of Dionysus, affected with itching on their heads, leprosy, went insane and wandered to Arcadia • Proetus asked Melampus to cure them, Melampus asked for 1/3 of kindgom, Proetus refused • Daughters ate their infants, disease spread, Proetus asked Melampus again, he asked for 2/3 of kingdom, Proetus agreed
Myth of Dionysus & pirates • Pirates captured Dionysus as a boy, 1 pirate knew he was a god and wanted to let him go, captain didn’t want to • Big storm and wind came, Dionysus turned into a lion, killed the captain, pirates jumped off ship and became dolphins
Elements of Folktale • Two motifs appear in the story of Proetus & Melampus: “a portion of the kindgom as a reward.” Payment to Melampus for curing his daughters and “the short-sighted fool”, the purchase of the same service for twice the price first asked
Madness • Not merely a punishment, god’s gift to those who follow him, offering the loss of the burdensome sense of self • Greeks reason of irrationality: Dionysus was something strange and new, whatever his cult originated reflects the Greek version to the irrational side of human existence, that helped them accept the power of unreason