Dionysos and His Female Companions

Dionysos was Zeus's youngest immortal son. In a group of the tales concerning him, he was born (as also was Herakles, the son of Alkmene), of a mortal mother. In other stories Dionysos was held to be a son of Persephone, and received the surname of Chthonios, "the subterranean".

One of the names given to the child's father is that of Hades. When Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seed she left her husband only reluctantly or, according to another tale, she never left him at all. She was honored and sacrosanct queen of the Realm of the Dead, and did not allow herself to be carried off by Theseus and Peirithoos. Furthermore, the royal couple of the Underworld proved themselves worthy of the dead (or so at least, the uninitiated were told) by remaining childless, like death itself. The very name of Hades conveys only a negative impression, according with men's colorless picture of the Underworld. This represents, however, only one aspect of what was, in fact, a great god. But we know that Persephone's husband was also called Zeus Katachthonios, "subterranean Zeus", and that it was Zeus who seduced his daughter. As Katachthonios, Zeus was the father of the subterranean Dionysos, and in the same quality he was also called Zagreus, "the great hunter". This was also one of he names of his son. For us Dionysus had many & various forms. Even he did not actually appear as a mask - carried by men or hung up to be worshipped - he had a peculiar, fascinating mask-face. Ancient portrayals show him holding in his hand the kantharos, a wine-jar with large handles, and occupying the place where one would expect to see Hades. On a vase by the archaic master Xenokles we see, on one side, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, each with his emblems of power, the last has his head turned back to front and, on the other side, the subterranean Dionysos welcoming Persephone, who is obviously being sent to him by Hermes and her mother. Dionysos is striding forward to meet his bride: a bearded, dark bridegroom, with the kantharos in his hand, against a background of grapes. Or is this the scene of parting? If so, one sees that the goddess will return to this spouse.

In most tales, however, Dionysos appears as a tender boy, the son of his mother. She, indeed, immediately disappears and is soon replaced by loving nurses. We can recognize the two aspects that Zeus also displayed: the aspect, on the one hand, of the father and husband, and the aspect, on the other hand, of the son of the divine child. Throughout mythology other beings besides Zeus and Dionysos had this double aspect. But no other god so much appeared to be a second Zeus as Dionysos did: a Zeus of women, admittedly, whereas the Olympian was much more a Zeus of men. The more characteristic animals of these two gods - in the forms of their worship, that is to say, and in certain stories of them, in which even today they are scarcely distinguishable were the serpent and the bull, both of which appeared in the Mediterranean earlier than the horse.

Dionysos Demeter & Persephone


The tale that Zeus mated with Persephone's mother, and later with Persephone herself, his own daughter in the form of a serpent, has been preserved only in an Orphic story, and only in a few fragments. The place of these marriages, and the births that resulted from them, was a cave. The goddess by whom Zeus begat Persphone was originally his mother Rhea: Demeter appears as a third party interposed between the mother and daughter, both of whom appeared earlier in Greece than she did. She is described as Rhea's alter ego, yet she is also identified with Persephone: Zeus begat Dionysos, so it is expressly stated, by Demeter or by Persephone.

Here, first, is a late poetical version of the tale: Demeter came from Crete to Sicily, where, near the spring of Kyane, she discovered a cave. There she hid her daughter Persephone and set as guardians over her two serpents that at other times were harnessed to her chariot. In the cave the maiden worked in wool (the customary occupation for maidens), under the protection of Pallas Athene, in her sacred citadel at Athens. Persephone began weaving a great web, a robe for her father or her mother, which was a picture of the whole world. While she was engaged in this work Zeus came to her in the shape of a serpent, and he begat by his daughter that god who, in the Orphic stories, was to be his successor, the fifth ruler of the world. This was also revealed to us in a hymn of the followers of Orpheus in which they told stories of Zeus's marriage with Persephone. According to them, this was not a case of a seduction carried out against the mother's will: it all happened (even Zeus's metamorphosis into a serpent), as Demeter had intended, and at her instigation. This shows us from what ancient times the original story must date: from times when it was still mothers who gave their daughters to husbands, and not the fathers who had authority and allowed their daughters to be abducted. The birth of the son and successor to the throne actually took place in the maternal cave. A late ivory relief shows the bed in the cave: the bed in which the horned child (the horns signify that he is the son of Persephone), had just been born to the goddess.

This same illustration, late but after an ancient original, also shows the subsequent scene in the cave, with the enthroned child: the enthronement is an ancient ceremony in the mysteries of the great mother Rhea and her Korybantes, or whatever else her male companions were called. In this illustration they are two Kouretes, who dance round the throne with drawn swords while a kneeling woman holds a mirror in front of the delighted child. The Orphic story also named the toys of the new ruler of the world: toys that became symbols of those rites of initiation which were first undergone by the divine boy, the first Dionysos: dice, ball, top, golden apples, bull-roarer and wool. The last two played a part in the ceremony of initiation, the other had more to do with the tale itself. This tale can now be told only in the version adopted by the followers of Orpheus, who introduced the Titans into the story. There is, however, another version according to which it was not necessarily the Titans who behaved so cruelly to the son of Zeus and Persephone, but simply "earth-born beings", without nearer description. It is known, however, that the Kouretes were included amongst such beings. It is also known that of the sons of the Great Mother the two older ones were always hostile to the third. The number of the Titans who murdered the first Dionysos is expressly stated to have been two.

In the Orphic continuation of the story, the Kouretes were replaced, as I have indicated, by the Titans. It was told that they surprised the child-god as he was playing with the toys. Jealous Hera had instigated them to this: it was she who on a previous occasion had sent the Kouretes against Epaphos, the Dionysos-like son of Zeus and the cow-shaped Io. The Titans had whitened their faces with chalk. They came like spirits of the dead from the Underworld, to which Zeus had banished them. They attacked the playing boy, tore him into seven pieces and threw these into a cauldron standing on a tripod. When the flesh was boiled, they began roasting it over the fire on seven spits.

One would be inclined to regard the meal prepared in this fashion as a cannibal meal, were it not that the horns worn by the torn-up, boiled and roasted child suggest that the victim was in fact a sacrificed kid or small calf, the former animal being used at certain ceremonies and in certain regions, and the other animal in other regions. They were treated exactly as the god was treated in this story. In one tale Zeus himself appeared at the Titans' meal, drawn thither by the smell of roasting. With his lightning he hurled the Titans back into Tartaros and gave the child-god's limbs to Apollon, who took them to Parnassus and set them beside his own tripod at Delphi. In another tale it seems that when Zeus smote the Titans with his lightning they had already eaten the flesh of Dionysos. They must have been hurled back into the Underworld, since in the Orphic hymn they are invoked as the subterranean ancestors of mankind. But from the steam caused by the flash of lightning, which set them on fire, was formed a sort of ash. The ash turned into that substance from which the followers of Orpheus taught that men were made. This teaching, however, is of much later date than the story of the sufferings of the horned child-god.

The story was also told: The boiled limbs of the first Dionysos, the son of Demeter, went into the earth. The earth-born beings had torn him to pieces and boiled him, but Demeter gathered the limbs together. This may, however, be a story concerning the creation of the vine. We learnt from the followers of Orpheus that Dionysos's last gift was wine, and indeed he himself by then assumed the name Oinos, "Wine". It was Zeus who brought fulfillment, but it was Dionysos who completed the fulfillment or, to use a modern expression, "set the crown on the world's creation". But this notion, too, is of later date. In the original tale the boiled limbs of the god were burnt( with the exception of a single limb), and we may presume that the vine arose from the ashes. All tales spoke of this exception of one limb, which was devoured neither by the Titans nor by the fire nor by the earth. A goddess was present at the meal in later tales, the goddess Pallas Athene, and she hid the limb in a covered basket. Zeus took charge of it. It was said to have been Dionysos's heart. This statement contains a pun: for it is also said that Zeus entrusted the kradiaios Dionysos to the goddess Hipta, so that she might carry her head. "Hipta" was a name in Asia Minor for the great mother Rhea, and Kradiaios is a word of double meaning: it can be derived from the kradia, "heart", and from the krade, "fig-tree", in which latter derivation it means an object made of fig-wood. The basket on Hipta's head was a liknon, a winnowing-fan, such as was carried on the head of festal processions and contained a phallus under a pile of fruit, Dionysos himself having made the phallus of fig-wood. It also reported that the Liknites, "he in the winnowing fan", was repeatedly "awakened" by the Thyiades, the women who served Dionysos on Mount Parnassus.

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