Dionysus.

Dionysus. The worship of Dionysus, who was originally the god of vegetation, and not till after the time of Homer the god of wine, was borrowed by the Greeks from the Thracians. When adopted as a Greek god he was naturally made the son of Zeus, the sky from which falls the rain that makes the vegetation grow. His mother, Semele, was destroyed before his birth through her own folly in begging the sky-god to visit her in all his majesty of thunder and lightning. As the remainder of the period of gestation was accomplished in the thigh of Zeus, the paternity of Dionysus was made doubly sure by the myth, and Dionysus was called the 'twice born.' The spread of the worship of the god is mirrored in myths which represent him as bestowing blessings on those who accepted him, and madness on those who, like Lycurgus and Pentheus, resisted him. The peculiar characteristic of the cult is that it is orgiastic. Of the orgies as they were actually celebrated we may form an idea from the way in which at the present day in France (on the jour des brandons) the peasants carry torches, and utter loud cries, for the purpose of insuring fertility in vineyard and orchard; and in South Germany they dance and leap and make every kind of noise in order to 'rouse the corn,' 'to wake the spring'—the madder the dance and the cries, the more effectual the invocation. In mythology the 'orgies' are imagined as being performed by Menades, Bacchantes, and others, who in their ecstasies rend animals to pieces, as they rush with their torches by night over the land. Part of the cult of Dionysus consisted in eating oxen and goats, which were regarded as the incar- nation of the generative power of which Dionysus was the god. Mythology makes Dionysus himself, under the name of Zagreus, to have been devoured by the Titans; his heart alone was saved, and he was born again as the son of Semelé. The orgiastic worship of Dionysus explains the fact that wine when it became known was regarded as the gift of Dionysus (see BACCIUS).—The Dionysia were festivals held in his honour throughout Greece. In Attica alone there were four Dionysia at different seasons of the year—the most important, the Lenea, celebrated with a procession and scenic contests in tragedy and comedy, out of which grew all the glories of the Greek drama.