Dionysos by Seaford Richard

Author:Seaford, Richard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2006-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

EARLY EVIDENCE

This is not to say that Dionysos’ association with death in myth is always directly connected with mystery-cult. The earliest surviving Dionysiac myth is in Homer: Ariadne is killed by Artemis ‘on the testimony of Dionysos’ (Odyssey 11.325). The story of Ariadne being united with Dionysos (and immortalised) after being abandoned by Theseus is well known (e.g. Figure 7). But there seems to have been a rare version of the myth in which Ariadne left Dionysos for Theseus: perhaps the participation of Dionysos in her death derives (as punishment) from this version. But it may in fact (also?) derive – albeit indirectly – from mystery-cult, expressing a deep structure in which Dionysos imposes death as a preliminary to immortality.

Of the four brief mentions of Dionysos in Homer, there are in fact two in which he is associated with death. The other is Odyssey 24.74: it was Dionysos who gave to Thetis the golden amphora (amphiphoreus, generally used to contain wine) that subsequently contained – in wine and oil – the bones of her son Achilles mixed with those of Patroklos.

The passage of this same golden amphora from gift of Dionysos to funerary container was described by the sixth century BC poet Stesichorus (234 PMG), and it has even been speculatively identified with the amphora carried by Dionysos as a wedding gift for Achilles’ parents on the François Vase (Chapter 2): if so, this would prefigure the frequent interpenetration of death ritual and wedding in the Dionysiac genre of Athenian tragedy. The ashes of the dead were often placed in vessels, and these vessels might often be of the kind to contain wine. This is not the only association of wine with death ritual, for it might be used also in libations or to wash the body.

In one lost play (Sisyphos) by Aeschylus the ruler of the underworld, Plouton, was called Zagreus, in another (Aigyptioi) Zagreus was the son of Hades, and in later texts Zagreus was frequently identified with Dionysos. More explicit is the statement of Aeschylus’ contemporary Herakleitos that

were it not for Dionysos that they were making the procession and singing the song to the genitals [i.e. the phallic hymn], they would be acting most shamefully. But Hades is the same as Dionysos, for whom they rave and perform the Lenaia (B15 D–K).

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