Black Goats (Wine of the Gods Book 3)

Dionysus then drove King Lycurgus insane and had him slice his own son into pieces with an axe in the belief that he was a patch of ivy, a plant holy to Dionysus. An oracle then claimed that the land would stay dry and barren as long as Lycurgus was alive. His people had him drawn and quartered. Following the death of the king, Dionysus lifted the curse. This story is told in Homer's epic, Iliad 6.

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In an alternative version, sometimes shown in art, Lycurgus tries to kill Ambrosia, a follower of Dionysus, who was transformed into a vine that twined around the enraged king and restrained him, eventually killing him. Dionysus descended to the underworld Hades to rescue his mother Semele, whom he had not seen since his birth, making the descent by way of a reputedly bottomless pool on the coast of the Argolid near the prehistoric site of Lerna , and bypassing Thanatos , the god of death.

According to Clement of Alexandria , Dionysus was guided by Prosymnus or Polymnus, who requested, as his reward, to be Dionysus' lover. Dionysus returned Semele to Mount Olympus; but Prosymnus died before Dionysus could honor his pledge, so in order to satisfy Prosymnus' shade, Dionysus fashioned a phallus from an olive branch and sat on it at Prosymnus' tomb. It appears to have served to explain the secret objects of the Dionysian Mysteries. Another myth according to Nonnus involves Ampelus , a satyr , who was loved by Dionysus.

As related by Ovid , Ampelus became the constellation Vindemitor , or the "grape-gatherer":. The origin of that constellation also can be briefly told. Upon him the god bestowed a vine that trailed from an elm's leafy boughs, and still the vine takes from the boy its name. While he rashly culled the gaudy grapes upon a branch, he tumbled down; Liber bore the lost youth to the stars.

Another story of Ampelus was related by Nonnus: The Fates granted Ampelus a second life as a vine, from which Dionysus squeezed the first wine. Young Dionysus was also said to have been one of the many famous pupils of the centaur Chiron. According to Ptolemy Chennus in the Library of Photius, "Dionysus was loved by Chiron, from whom he learned chants and dances, the bacchic rites and initiations. When Hephaestus bound Hera to a magical chair, Dionysus got him drunk and brought him back to Olympus after he passed out.

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When Theseus abandoned Ariadne sleeping on Naxos, Dionysus found and married her. She bore him a son named Oenopion, but he committed suicide or was killed by Perseus. In some variants, he had her crown put into the heavens as the constellation Corona; in others, he descended into Hades to restore her to the gods on Olympus. Another different account claims Dionysus ordered Theseus to abandon Ariadne on the island of Naxos for he had seen her as Theseus carried her onto the ship and had decided to marry her. Dionysus, as patron of the Athenian dramatic festival, the Dionysia , wants to bring back to life one of the great tragedians.

After a competition Aeschylus is chosen in preference to Euripides. Psalacantha , a nymph, failed at winning the love of Dionysus as his main love interest at the moment was Ariadne, and ended up being changed into a plant. Callirrhoe was a Calydonian woman who scorned Coresus , a priest of Dionysus, who threatened to afflict all the women of Calydon with insanity see Maenad. The priest was ordered to sacrifice Callirhoe but he killed himself instead.

Callirhoe threw herself into a well which was later named after her. The bull , serpent , tiger , ivy , and wine are characteristic of Dionysian iconography. Dionysus is also strongly associated with satyrs , centaurs , and sileni.

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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. The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus. On numerous vases referred to as Lenaia vases , the god is shown participating in the ritual sacrifice as a masked and clothed pillar sometimes a pole, or tree is used , while his worshipers eat bread and drink wine.

Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries , which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries , and may have influenced Gnosticism. Dionysus was a god of resurrection and he 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. His iconography sometimes include maenads , who wear wreaths of ivy and serpents around their hair or neck. He also notes that the grieving goddess Demeter refused to drink wine, as she states that it would be against themis for her to drink wine, which is the gift of Dionysus, after Persephone's abduction, because of this association; indicating that Hades may in fact have been a "cover name" for the underworld Dionysus.

Evidence for a cult connection is quite extensive, particularly in southern Italy, especially when considering the heavy involvement of death symbolism included in Dionysian worship; [86] [87] statues of Dionysus [88] [89] found in the Ploutonion at Eleusis gives further evidence as the statues found bare a striking resemblance to the statue of Eubouleus, also called Aides Kyanochaites Hades of the flowing dark hair , [90] [91] [92] known as the youthful depiction of the Lord of the Underworld.

The statue of Eubouleus is described as being radiant but disclosing a strange inner darkness [93] [94] Ancient portrayals show Dionysus holding in his hand the kantharos, a wine-jar with large handles, and occupying the place where one would expect to see Hades. Archaic artist Xenocles portrayed on one side of a vase, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, each with his emblems of power; with Hades' head turned back to front and, on the other side, Dionysus striding forward to meet his bride Persephone, with the kantharos in his hand, against a background of grapes.

Both Hades and Dionysus were associated with a divine tripartite deity with Zeus. In the Orphic tradition of ancient Greece, Dionysus Zagreus served as its patron god connected to death and immortality, and symbolized the one who guides reincarnation. A mystery cult to Bacchus was brought to Rome from the Greek culture of southern Italy or by way of Greek-influenced Etruria. 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.

The Bacchic rituals contained omophagic practices such as pulling live animals apart and eating the whole of them raw. This practice served not only as a reenactment of the infant death and rebirth of Bacchus, but also as a means by which Bacchic practitioners produced "enthusiasm": In Livy 's account, the Bacchic mysteries were a novelty at Rome; originally restricted to women and held only three times a year, they were corrupted by an Etruscan-Greek version, and thereafter drunken, disinhibited 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 traditional morality mos maiorum ; a secretive, subversive and potentially revolutionary counter-culture. Livy's sources, and his own account of the cult, probably drew heavily on the Roman dramatic genre known as "Satyr plays", based on Greek originals.

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.

Pliny believed this to be the historical prototype for the Roman Triumph. The god, and still more often his followers, were commonly depicted in the painted pottery of Ancient Greece , much of which was vessels for wine. But, apart from some reliefs of maenads , Dionysian subjects rarely appeared in large sculpture before the Hellenistic period, when they became common.

The Furietti Centaurs and Sleeping Hermaphroditus reflect related subjects, which had by this time become drawn into the Dionysian orbit. The Dionysian world by the Hellenistic period is a hedonistic but safe pastoral into which other semi-divine creatures of the countryside such as centaurs , nymphs , and the god Pan and Hermaphrodite have been co-opted. They have in common with satyrs and nymphs that they are creatures of the outdoors and are without true personal identity. Dionysus appealed to the Hellenistic monarchies for a number of reasons, apart from merely being a god of pleasure: He was a human who became divine, he came from, and had conquered, the East, exemplified a lifestyle of display and magnificence with his mortal followers, and was often regarded as an ancestor.

The 4th-century AD 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; this may have been used for celebration of Dionysian mysteries. 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. The mid-Byzantine Veroli Casket shows the tradition lingering in Constantinople around AD, but probably not very well understood.

Bacchic subjects in art resumed in the Italian Renaissance , and soon became almost as popular as in antiquity, but his "strong association with feminine spirituality and power almost disappeared", as did "the idea that the destructive and creative powers of the god were indissolubly linked". The statue aspires to suggest both drunken incapacity and an elevated consciousness, but this was perhaps lost on later viewers, and typically the two aspects were thereafter split, with a clearly drunk Silenus representing the former, and a youthful Bacchus often shown with wings, because he carries the mind to higher places.

Flemish Baroque painting frequently painted the Bacchic followers, as in Van Dyck's Drunken Silenus and many works by Rubens ; Poussin was another regular painter of Bacchic scenes. Because of his association with the vine harvest, Bacchus became the god of autumn, and he and his followers were often shown in sets depicting the seasons. Dionysus has remained an inspiration to artists, philosophers and writers into the modern era. In The Birth of Tragedy , the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that a tension between Apollonian and Dionysian aesthetic principles underlay the development of Greek tragedy ; Dionysus represented what was unrestrained chaotic and irrational, while Apollo represented the rational and ordered.

Nietzsche claimed that the oldest forms of Greek Tragedy were entirely based on suffering of Dionysus. In The Hellenic Religion of the Suffering God , and Dionysus and Early Dionysianism , the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov elaborates the theory of Dionysianism , tracing the origins of literature, and tragedy in particular, to ancient Dionysian mysteries.

She makes a libation to Liber and Libera , Roman equivalents of Dionysus and Persephone, and is transported back in time to ancient Rome. Walt Disney uses a modernised version of Silenus , Dionysus or Bacchus in the " Pastoral " segment of the animated film Fantasia. In , an adaption of The Bacchae was performed, called Dionysus in ' A film was made of the same performance. The production was notable for involving audience participation, nudity, and theatrical innovations.

The musical keeps the descent of Dionysus into Hades to bring back a playwright, however the playwrights are updated to modern times, and Dionysus is forced to choose between George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare. Though the last known worshippers of Greek gods were converted before AD, there were instances of revived worship of Dionysus afterwards, and finally with the rise of neopaganism , worship of the god has once again been revived. During Easter in in Scotland , the parish priest of Inverkeithing led young women in a dance in honor of Dionysus. He danced and sang at the front, carrying a representation of the phallus on a pole.

He was killed by a Christian mob later that year. In the 18th century, Hellfire Clubs sprung up in Britain and Ireland. Though activities varied between the clubs, some of them were very pagan, and included shrines and sacrifices. Dionysus was one of the most popular deities, alongside deities like Venus and Flora. Today one can still see the statue of Dionysus left behind in the Hellfire Caves. He declared himself High Priest, and added local drunks to the list of membership. He maintained that those who died as members would go to a Bacchanalia for their afterlife.

Modern followers of Dionysus may offer the god wine, grapes, ivy, and various forms of incense. They may also celebrate Roman festivals such as the Liberalia March 17, close to the Spring Equinox or Bacchanalia Various dates , and various Greek festivals such as the Anthesteria , Lenaia, and the Greater and Lesser Dionysias, calculated by lunar calendar. Numerous scholars have compared narratives surrounding the Christian figure of Jesus with those associated with Dionysus.

Some scholars of comparative mythology identify both Dionysus and Jesus with the dying-and-returning god mythological archetype. The two stories take place in very different historical and geographic contexts. Also, the manner of death is different; in the most common myth, Dionysus was torn to pieces and eaten by the titans , but "eventually restored to a new life" from the heart that was left over. 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.

The discrepancies between the two stories, including their resolutions, have led many scholars to regard the Dionysus story as radically different from the one about Jesus, except for the parallel of the arrest, which is a detail that appears in many biographies as well. Other elements, such as the celebration by a ritual meal of bread and wine, also have parallels. Within Orphism, it was believed that consuming the meat and wine was symbolic of the Titans eating the flesh meat and blood wine of Dionysus and that, by participating in the omophagia, Dionysus' followers could achieve communion with the god.

Powell, in particular, argues that precursors to the Catholic notion of transubstantiation can be found in Dionysian religion. Kessler has argued that the Dionysian cult developed into strict monotheism by the 4th century AD; together with Mithraism and other sects, the cult formed an instance of "pagan monotheism" in direct competition with Early Christianity during Late Antiquity.

Such comparisons surface in details of paintings by Poussin. The Dionysus Cup , a 6th-century BC kylix with Dionysus sailing with the pirates he transformed to dolphins.

The Black Goats

Statue of Dionysus in Remich Luxembourg. A Bacchus themed table - the top was made in Florence c. Bacchus - Hendrick Goltzius From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ancient Greek god of winemaking and wine. For other uses, see Bacchus disambiguation. For the genus of beetles, see Bassareus beetle. This article is about the Greco-Roman deity. For other uses of the names "Dionysus" and "Dionysos", see Dionysos disambiguation.

For other uses of the theophoric name "Dionysius", see Dionysius disambiguation. His hair sometimes floats down in locks, and is sometimes neatly wound around the head, and a diadem often adorns his forehead. The youthful or so-called Theban Bacchus, was carried to ideal beauty by Praxiteles. The form of his body is manly and with strong outlines, but still approaches to the female form by its softness and roundness.

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The expression of the countenance is languid, and shews a kind of dreamy longing; the head, with a diadem, or a wreath of vine or ivy, leans somewhat on one side; his attitude is never sublime, but easy, like that of a man who is absorbed in sweet thoughts, or slightly intoxicated. He is often seen leaning on his companions, or riding on a panther, ass, tiger, or lion. The finest statue of this kind is in the villa Ludovisi. Bacchus with horns, either those of a ram or of a bull. This representation occurs chiefly on coins, but never in statues.

Several ancient poets and writers attempted to arrange the mythology of Dionysos into a tidy chronological narrative. However, these were artificial constructs--the stories were, for the most part, a loose collection of highly localised, unrelated cult myths. The mythographer Apollodorus provides us with the neatest of these narratives.

Related myths not mentioned by this author are noted in the link boxes following each sub-section. Aldrich Greek mythographer C2nd A. But Semele was deceived by Hera into asking Zeus to come to her as he came to Hera during their courtship. So Zeus, unable to refuse, arrived in her bridal chamber in a chariot with lightning flashes and thunder, and sent a thunderbolt at her. Semele died of fright, and Zeus grabbed from the fire her six-month aborted baby, which he sewed into his thigh. After Semele's death the remaining daughters of Kadmos Cadmus circulated the story that she had slept with a mortal, thereafter accusing Zeus, and because of this had been killed by a thunderbolt.

At the proper time Zeus loosened the stitches and gave birth to Dionysos, whom he entrusted to Hermes. Hermes took him to Ino and Athamas, and persuaded them to bring him up as a girl. Incensed, Hera inflicted madness on them. As for Zeus, he escaped Hera's anger by changing Dionysos into a baby goat. Hermes took him to the Nymphai of Asian Nysa, whom Zeus in later times places among the stars and named the Hyades. In later antiquity the story was developed into a love match between Dionysos and the youth Ampelos "grape-vine. The Aigyptian king Proteus first welcomed him.

This story was probably invented to explain his connection between Dionysos, the Egyptian Osiris and the Phoenician god of wine. There he was purified by Rhea and taught the mystic rites of initiation, after which he received from her his gear and set out eagerly through Thrake Thrace. This story was no doubt invented to explain his connection between the orgiastic cult of Dionysos in Greece and those of the Phrygian gods Kybele and Sabazios in Anatolia.

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These story were later expanded to include war-campaigns against the Indian and Amazon nations. The story of Dionysos and King Midas of Phrygia also falls within this part of the cycle. This story was connected with the orgiastic Thrakian cult of Sabazios. In Homer, the story is set during Dionysos' childhood, elsewhere he is an adult god travelling from land to land.

Now Pentheus, Ekhion's Echion's son by Aguae Agave and current lord of the land after Kadmos Cadmus , tried to prevent these goings-on. He went up on Kithairon to spy on the Bakkhai, but was torn to pieces by his mother Agaue, for in her madness she thought he was a wild animal.

This story was connected with the establishment of the god's orgies on Mount Kithairon in Boiotia. Pentheus 4 Dionysus Wrath: Daughters of Cadmus 5 Dionysus Favour: Boeotian Bacchantes transformed into leopards. Ikarios Icarius received Dionysos, who gave him a vine-cutting and taught him the art of making wine. Ikarios was eager to share the god's kindness with mankind, so he went to some shepherds, who, when they had tasted the drink and then delightedly and recklessly gulped it down undiluted, thought they had been poisoned and slew Ikarios.

But in the daylight they regained their senses and buried him. As his daughter was looking for him, a dog named Maira Maera , who had been Ikarios' faithful companion, unearthed the corpse; and Erigone, in the act of mourning her father, hanged herself.

But when they had him on board, they sailed past Naxos and headed for Asia where they planned to sell him. He thereupon changed the mast and the oars into snakes, and filled the boat with ivy and the sound of flutes. The men went mad and dove into the sea, where they became dolphins. Apollodorus places the story of Dionysos' Aegean wanderings after Argos section However, in the usual tradition, Dionysos arrives in Argos from the islands with Ariadne and an army of island women. Apollodorus describes the wedding of Dionysos and Ariadne in the Theseus section of his book.

The story, however, belongs here in the chronology of the Dionysos saga. It seems unlikely she was originally connected with Theseus, since her story and children otherwise belong to an earlier generation of myth. Ariadne 2 Dionysus Favour: In other versions of this story, the Argives were punished for the impiety of their king--Proitos, Akrisios or Perseus. In the local Argive legend Perseus warred with Dionysos and his troop of island women and Ariadne was killed in the fighting. The recognition of the divinity of Dionysos is applicable to all the previous stories of his wanderings.

This myth had a place in Argive cult, where Dionysos is said to have descended to Haides through the Alkyonean Lake. His quest to the underworld perhaps also included the recovery of his wife Ariadne, who had been slain by Perseus in the Argive war, in addition to recovering his mother Semele. Death and reincarnation was an important part of the Dionysian cult. The story of the binding of Hera, in which Dionysos led Hephaistos back to Olympos to release the goddess and was offered a seat amongst the twelve Olympians, is curiously absent from Apollodorus.

The myth was extremely popular in Athenian vase painting. The Theban legends of Dionysos were the subject of no less than five of the lost plays of Aeschylus: In addition, at least four others described the god's Thracian encounters: Edonoi , Lykourgos , Neaniskoi and the Bassarae. Seneca's Hymn to Dionysos in the play Oedipus summarizes the god's story from birth to heavenly ascension.

See Seneca Pseudo-Hymn to Dionysus. The late Roman-era Greek poet Nonnus wrote an epic poem describing the birth and adventures of Dionysos, centred on his War against the Indians. His account of the wanderings of Dionysos varies from that of Apollodorus, with its focus on stories of the East. I will provide an overview of this contents of this epic at a later stage which due to its size is not possible to quote here in depth. The first fourteen books of the epic can be found here. Homeric Hymn 1 to Dionysus 17 ff trans. Evelyn-White Greek epic C7th to 4th B. Be favourable, O Insewn eiraphiot , Inspirer of frenzied women gynaimanes!

And so, farewell, Dionysos Insewn eiraphiota with your mother Semele whom men call Thyone.

Homeric Hymn 7 to Dionysus: Hail, child of fair-faced Semele! He who forgets you can in no wise order sweet song. Homeric Hymn 26 to Dionysus: The rich-haired Nymphai Nymphs received him in their bosoms from the lord his father and fostered and nurtured him carefully in the dells of Nysa, where by the will of his father he grew up in a sweet-smelling cave, being reckoned among the immortals. But when the goddesses had brought him up, a god oft hymned, then began he to wander continually through the woody coombes, thickly wreathed with ivy and laurel.

And the Nymphai followed in his train with him for their leader; and the boundless forest was filled with their outcry. And so hail to you, Dionysos god of abundant clusters polystaphylos! Grant that we may come again rejoicing to this season, and from that season onwards for many a year. Orphic Hymn 45 to Dionysus trans. Taylor Greek hymns C3rd B.

Bassaros God, of universal might, whom swords and blood and sacred rage delight: Orphic Hymn 30 to Dionysus: Rural, ineffable, two-formed, obscure, two-horned, with ivy crowned, and Euion pure: Eubouleos Eubuleus , whom the leaves of vines adorn, of Zeus and Persephoneia occultly born in beds ineffable; all-blessed power, whom with triennial offerings men adore. Immortal Daimon, hear my suppliant voice, give me in blameless plenty to rejoice; and listen gracious to my mystic prayer surrounded with thy choir of nurses fair.

Orphic Hymn 46 to Licnitus: Come, blessed God, regard thy suppliant's voice, propitious come, and in these rites rejoice. Orphic Hymn 47 to Pericionius: Come, mighty Bakkhos, to these rites inclined, and bless thy suppliants with rejoicing mind. Orphic Hymn 50 to Lysius Lenaeus: Fertile and nourishing, whose liberal care augments the fruit that banishes despair. Sounding, magnanimous, Lenaios power, of various-formed, medicinal, holy flower: Fair-haired Euion, Bromios, joyful God, Lysios, insanely raging with the leafy rod.

To these our rites, benignant power, incline, when favouring men, or when on Gods you shine; be present to thy mystics' suppliant prayer, rejoicing come, and fruits abundant bear. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. They were the last magic users in the world. Seventeen witches and eight badly inbred mages. Nine wizards, eight of them transformed into large black goats.

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Perhaps the gods should not have drunk so much while considering how to remedy the situation. Kindle Edition , pages. Wine of the Gods 3. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Black Goats , please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jan 18, Scott Sammons rated it it was ok.

Far too Rape themed for my tastes. I enjoy fantasy of all sorts, I even enjoyed the soft porn in the old Gore stories in my randy youth. What I find most undesirable in "The Black Goats" Is the pernicious use of violent rape as a sought after means of gaining power by the "witches" and the repeated use of sodomy as punishment. This story is so very different from the first book "Outcasts" as to render it altogether unnecessary. Read the first two and stop. The mental pollution is just too costly Far too Rape themed for my tastes.

The mental pollution is just too costly for the nominal entertainment the story offers.