Dionysus is usually depicted as a bearded, dark-haired young man, but he can also be shown without a beard.
Symbol the attribute
Grapes, glasses and wineskins; the staff formed a pineapple into a stick called a tirosus .
Strengths
Dionysus is the creator of wine. It also shakes things up when it gets boring.
Weaknesses
God of intoxication and drunkenness, he claims that he frequently persecutes.
Fathers
Son of Zeus and Semele, who recklessly asked to see his lover Zeus in his real form; appeared in thunder and lightning and Semele was consumed; Zeus saved his son from the ashes of his body.
Wife
The best known is Ariadne, the Cretan princess / priestess who helped Theseus defeat the Minotaur only to be abandoned by him on the shores of Naxos, one of the islands favored by Dionysus. Fortunately, Dionysus liked to walk on the beach and quickly found and comforted the abandoned princess with an offer of marriage.
Kids
Several of Ariadne’s children, including Oenopion and Staphylos, both associated with grapes and winemaking.
Some important temple sites
Dionysus was worshiped in Naxos and generally wherever grapes were grown and wine was produced. In modern times, the so-called “Dirty Monday” rites in Tyrnavos, in the region of Thessaly, Greece, are believed to preserve traditions dating back to when it was openly worshiped.
The theater dedicated to Dionysus on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece has recently been restored and performances are now taking place after a hiatus of 2,500 years.
Basic history
Aside from the story of his birth, Dionysus is relatively free from mythological mystery, yet he was widely referred to in later Greek belief. He was not considered one of the Olympians, and since Homer omits him, it is suspected that his worship came late to the Greeks, possibly from Anatolia. It was later “adopted” by the Romans under the name Bacchus, god of the grape, but the Greek worship of Dionysus was more ecstatic and may have preserved some early shamanic practices related to intoxication provided by wine.
Some see in him the survival of the young and vigorous Zeus “born in Crete.”
Interesting fact
Otherwise, the proper and repressed Greek matrons dedicated to Dionysus would turn into wild maenads for a night and run up the slopes of the mountains, looking for prey to catch and tear with their bare hands.
Alternative Spelling
Dionysos, Dionisis
