Europa by Daniel Clarke Eddy

Out a little distance from Rome, on the Appian Way [...] is the temple of Bacchus. Converted from its pagan use, it is adorned with the fixtures of a Catholic church. There still remain about it the evidences of its former devotion to debauchery and crime. Retired from the highway, the old pleasure seekers came hither to enjoy a season of dissipation in the temple of the divinity who was supposed to look with pleasure upon their excesses. The building is rectangular, surrounded by marble columns; and Pope Urban, who converted it into a Catholic temple, spoiled half its beauty when he gave it to a religion as senseless and abhorrent as paganism itself.

- Daniel Clarke Eddy, Europa; or, Notes of a recent ramble through England, France, Italy and Switzerland 1852

The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop

Accordingly we find that in the dark ages the Pagan Messiah has not been brought into the Church in a mere clandestine manner. Openly and avowedly under his well known classic names of Bacchus and Dionysus has he been canonized and set up for the worship of the “faithful.” Yes Rome that professes to be pre-eminently the Bride Christ, the only Church in which salvation is to be found, has had the unblushing effrontery to give the grand Pagan adversary of the Son of God UNDER HIS OWN PROPER NAME, a place in her calendar. The reader has only to turn to the Roman calendar and he will find that this is a literal fact; he will find that October the 7th is set apart to be observed in honour of “St Bacchus the Martyr.” Now, no doubt, Bacchus was a “martyr;” he died a violent death; he lost his life for religion; but the religion for which he died was the religion of the fire-worshippers; for he was put to death as we have seen from Maimonides, for maintaining the worship of the host of heaven. This patron of the heavenly host and of fire-worship (for the two went always hand in hand together) has Rome canonized; for that this “St Bacchus the Martyr” was the identical Bacchus of the Pagans, the god of drunkenness and debauchery, is evident from the time of his festival; for October the 7th follows soon after the end of the vintage. At the end of the vintage in autumn the old Pagan Romans used to celebrate what was called the “Rustic Festival” of Bacchus and about that very time does the Papal festival of “St Bacchus the Martyr” occur. As the Chaldean god has been admitted into the Roman calendar under the name of Bacchus, so also is he canonized under his other name of Dionysus. The Pagans were in the habit of worshipping the same god under different names [...] Now the Papacy in its excess of zeal for saints and saint-worship, has actually split Dionysus Eleuthereus into two, has made two several saints out of the double name of one Pagan divinity; and more than that has made the innocent epithet Rusticum which even among the heathen had no pretensions to divinity at all a third and so it comes to pass that under the date of October the 9th we read this entry in the calendar “The festival of St Dionysius and of his companions St Eleuther and St Rustic.” Now this Dionysius whom Popery has so marvellously furnished with two companions is the famed St Denys the patron saint of Paris; and a comparison of the history of the Popish saint and the Pagan god will cast no little light on the subject. St Denys, on being beheaded and cast into the Seine, so runs the legend, after floating a space on its waters, to the amazement of the spectators, took up his head in his hand and so marched away with it to the place of burial. In commemoration of so stupendous a miracle a hymn was duly chanted for many a century in the Cathedral of St Denys at Paris, containing the verse:

Se cadaver mox erexit,
Truncus truncum caput vexit,
Quem ferentem hoc direxit
Angelorum legio.

The corpse immediately arose;
the trunk bore away the dissevered head,
guided on its way by a legion of angels.

At last, even Papist began to be ashamed of such an absurdity being celebrated in the name of religion; and in 1789, “the office of St. Denys” was abolished. Behold, however, the march of events. The world has for some time past been progressing back again to the dark ages. The Romish Breviary, which had been given up in France, has, within the last six years, been reimposed by Papal authority on the Gallican Church, with all its lying legends, and this among the rest of them; the Cathedral of St. Denys is again being rebuild, and the old worship bids fair to be restored in all its grossness. Now, how could it ever enter the minds of men to invent so monstrous a fable? The origin of it is not far to seek. The Church of Rome represented her canonised saints, who were said to have suffered martyrdom by the sword, as headless images or statues with the severed head borne in the hand. “I have seen,” says Eusebe Salverte, “in a church of Normandy, St. Clair; St. Mithra, at Arles, in Switzerland, all the soldiers of the Theban legion represented with their heads in their hands. St. Valerius is thus figured at Limoges, on the gates of the cathedral, and other monuments. The grand seal of the canton of Zurich represents, in the same attitude, St. Felix, St. Regula, and St. Exsuperantius. There certainly is the origin of the pious fable which is told of these martyrs, such as St. Denys and many others besides.” This was the immediate origin of the story of the dead saint rising up and marching away with his head in his hand. But it turns out that this very mode of representation was borrowed from Paganism, and borrowed in such a way as identifies the Papal St. Denys of Paris with the Pagan Dionysus, not only of Rome but of Babylon. Dionysus or Bacchus, in one of his transformations, was represented as Capricorn, the “goat-horned fish;” and there is reason to believe that it was in this very form that he had the name of Oannes. In this form in India, under the name “Souro,” that is evidently “the seed,” he is said to have done many marvellous things. Now, in the Persian Sphere he was not only represented mystically as Capricorn, but also in the human shape; and then exactly as St. Denys is represented by the Papacy. The words of the ancient writer who describes this figure in the Persian Sphere are these: “Capricorn, the third Decan. The half of the figure without a head, because its head is in its hand.” Nimrod had his head cut off; and in commemoration of that fact, which his worshipers so piteously bewailed, his image in the Sphere was so represented. That dissevered head, in some of the versions of his story, was fabled to have done as marvellous things as any that were done by the lifeless trunk of St. Denys. Bryant has proved, in this story of Orpheus, that it is just a slightly-coloured variety of the story of Osiris. As Osiris was cut in pieces in Egypt, so Orpheus was torn in pieces in Thrace. Now, when the mangled limbs of the latter had been strewn about the field, his head, floating on the Hebrus, have proof of the miraculous character of him that owned it. “Then,” says Virgil:–

“Then, when his head from his fair shoulders torn,
Washed by the waters, was on Hebrus borne,
Even then his trembling voice invoked his bride,
With his last voice, “Eurydice,’ he cried;
‘Eurydice, the rocks and river banks replied.”

There is diversity here, but amidst that diversity there is an obvious unity. In both cases, the head dissevered from the lifeless body occupies the foreground of the picture; in both cases, the miracle is in connection with a river. Now, when the festivals of “St. Bacchus the Martyr,” and of “St. Dionysius and Eleuther,” so remarkably agree with the time when the festivals of the Pagan god of wine were celebrated, whether by the name of Bacchus, or Dionysus, or Eleuthereus, and when the mode of representing the modern Dionysius and the ancient Dionysus are evidently the very same, while the legends of both so strikingly harmonise, who can doubt the real character of those Romish festivals? They are not Christian. They are Pagan; they are unequivocally Babylonian.

- Alexander Hislop (1806-1865), The Two Babylons: Papal worship Revealed to be the worship of Nimrod and His wife pgs 176-180

The Art of Preaching by Alanus ab Insulis

Drunkards are daughters of idolatry, whose stomach is their god. They are worshipers of Bacchus, thus we describe them as guilty of the sin of bacchilatria.

- Alanus ab Insulis (1128-1202), The Art of Preaching

Among the Leaves So Green by Tanith Lee

Often misunderstood, Dionysus is far more than a wine deity. He is the Breaker of Chains, who rescues not only the flesh but the heart and spirit from too much of worldly regulations and duties. He is a god of joy and freedom. Any uncultivated, tangled, and primal woodland is very much his domain.

- Tanith Lee, Among the Leaves So Green from The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest 2002

Prayer of the Vine-dresser by Andrea Navagero

This vine which, ever fruitful with many bunches of grapes, has a habit of never disappointing its owner’s prayers, is now consecrated, even now in its abundant prime, by the vine-dresser to thee, Bacchus. May thou, o god, ensure that this vine of yours disappoints not our hope and that the whole vineyard will fructify after its example.

- Andrea Navagero (1483-1529) Prayer of the Vine-dresser from Lusus

Spada di Verona

The wounds are not the mutilations among the Romans; when you are drinking together with Bacchus, Veles has them (already) carried away.

- The Spada di Verona transcribed by Ludovico Moscardo in 1672

[Another possible translation is: War and mutilation are to the Romans and the fury is to their god Bacchus, Veles is with us.]

Avril by Hilaire Belloc Avril by Hilaire Belloc

[The Song of the Vineyard Knife] is Marot’s best—even though many of his native critics will not admit it so; but to feel it in full one must be exiled from the vines. It is a tapestry of the Renaissance; the jolly gods of the Renaissance, the old gods grown Catholic moving across a happier stage. Bacchus in long robes and with solemnity blessing the vine, Silenus and the hobbling smith who smithied the Serpe, the Holy Vineyard Knife in heaven, all these by their diction and their flavour recall the Autumn in Herault and the grapes under a pure sky, pale at the horizon, and labourers and their carts in the vineyard, and these set in the frame of that great time when Saturn did return. All the poem is wine. It catches its rhymes and weaves them in and in, and moves rapid and careless in a fugue, like the march from Asia when the Panthers went before and drew the car. The internal rhythm and pulse is the clapping of hands in barns at evening and the peasants’ feet dancing freely on the beaten earth. It is a very good song; it remembers the treading of the grapes and is refreshed by the mists that rise at evening when the labour is done.

- Hilaire Belloc, Avril: Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance p. 111 1904

Song of the Vineyard Knife by Clément Marot

Enough of love; let’s leave for something new
All that to-do, and sing the vineyard knife;
No grower of vines but has recourse to you,
Makes use of you to prune his vines; O knife,
My vineyard knife, my little vineyard knife,
Renewing life, you make my good vines grow,
From which year after year the rich wines flow!

Vulcan, the high gods’ blacksmith, did design
This shape divine, in heaven hammered out
The white-hot steel, and dipped it in old wine
To give the fine edge temper; and the shout
Bacchus gave out proclaimed beyond a doubt
That even devout old Noah could not find
A knife for pruning vines more to his mind.

With vine leaves crowned, young Bacchus brings his slim
Curved blade to trim and bless the fruitful vine;
With flagons old Silenus follows him
And from each rim, in one unbroken line,
Pours down the wine, tries dancing, lies supine;
And for a sign his nose is cherry-red;
Of his great family many men are bred.

- Clément Marot (1496-1544), Song of the Vineyard Knife

Young Bacchus and the Faun by François Fénelon

One day the young Bacchus, whom Silenus was instructing, was looking for the Muses in a forest whose silence was only broken by the sound of the fountains and the song of the birds. The sun could not pierce the dense vegetation with its rays. Semele’s child sat down at the foot of an old oak tree, from whose trunk several men of the golden age had been born, in order to study the language of the gods. This tree had even given oracles in former times, and Father Time with his cutting scythe had not dared to fell it. A young faun was hiding beside this sacred and ancient oak. He lent his ear to the verses that the child Bacchus was singing and whose faults Silenus was noting with a mock smile. At the same time the naiads and other nymphs of the woods were smiling as well. Now this critic, the faun, was young, gracious and full of mirth. Though he was carefully arrayed in all of the attire of those who worship Bacchus he had no respect for the young god and laughed whenever he made even the tiniest mistake. Finally Bacchus could stand the mocking of this jokester no longer and told him in a proud and impatient tone of voice, “How do you dare mock the son of Zeus?”

The faun replied nonchalantly, “Ha! How can the son of Zeus dare commit an error?”

- François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Young Bacchus and the Faun from The Fables of Fénelon 1710

Ariadne in Naxos by Maurice Hewlett

Chorus
Soon shall be music, high delirium,
Sobbing music, high procession!
Life is heavy with fate too big to be borne;
Fury shall enter, darkness gather possession;
Dreaming shall follow on woe, for anguish remission!

Ariadne
What sing ye? What is your song?
Have ye not that to give me the grace of tears?

Chorus I
I know not. But where hath been
Dejection, Madness enters the tilth
New broken and sows a seed.

Chorus II
This is the harbourage favoured of one
Subtly sweet, terribly strong.
Guard thee the guile of his tongue,
Beware the cloudy abode
Of Bromius, wilful and young.

Chorus III
The God of the flame, the God of the torch!
The God of Chorus, the vintage, loosing of hair,
Theban Iacchus!

Chorus IV
Storm in his eyes!

Chorus V
Fire sits eating his eyes, buffets his wing!

Chorus VI
Bacchus is King!

Chorus I
Even so come on the breath of the spring,
Come Bacchus, our King!

[Ariadne rises.]

Ariadne
Are ye wise, women, are ye wise?

Chorus II
Yea for my wisdom issues
Darkly; my lips have words from on high.
I know he is near.

Chorus III
Fear him, fear!

Ariadne
Nay, but I fear him not.
Who stoopeth to strike the stricken?

Chorus IV
Belike — O dreamer, O dreamful!
Belike stooping with words
Silky as balm, he will lighten thy load.

Chorus V
The fawnskin, the thyrsus, O come!
Hark! Hark!

Chorus VI
The winding of flutes –
Padding feet in rhythmical dance!

Chorus I
As herds to the water, advance –
Come, for Bacchus is near!

[They circle about Ariadne who stands perplexed.]

Ariadne
What is your speech? I know not.
Whom sing ye so shrilly?

[The Chorus now in wild excitement run about and urge one another.]

Chorus I
Again the riot, the passion, the beating
Of wings in the void, the rapture, the greeting
Of shadowy forms and vast!

Chorus II
Bacchus!

Chorus III
Numbed are the senses, the horror is past!
Mountain calleth to mountain, deep unto deep!

Chorus II
Bacchus, O Bacchus!

Chorus IV
Sleepers awake! Nymphs of the grove,
Nereids, reedy and still, shiver and move.
Your white arms as I move!

Chorus V
I feel the God! I am mad with light.

Chorus II
Bacchus, Bacchus, Iacchus!

Chorus VI
It is thou, it is thou, Giver of Fire!

Chorus II
Bacchus, Bacchus, Iacchus!

Chorus I
Nymph-beloved, it is thou, the myriad named,
Thou, born in Thebae, shameless, unshamed,
God of the vine, God of the lyre!

Chorus II
Bacchus, Bacchus, Evoe!

[Dionysus appears with the Maenad.]

Dionysus
Mine, Ariadne, now by day and by night.

[The Chorus offer themselves to him madly.]

Chorus I
Lord, I am thine!

Chorus II
And I!

Chorus III
And I!

Chorus IV
Lord, we follow —

Chorus V
Ah, lord take me!

Ariadne
Who art thou, lord?

Chorus
Bacchus, named lord of the earth!

Dionysus
Hail to the chosen bride!
Hail to thee, loved and sought by a God,
Anointed thus with my breath
Upon bosom and brows, upon mouth and eyes,
Softer shed than dew on the grass,
Lighter than gossamer, calling thee hence,
Ariadne, to follow desire
Whither I lead.

[Speaking he breathes upon her, bending down over her where she kneels.]

Chorus
We toil in thy track through thicket and hollow,
Over the rocky steep of the mountain,
Through the marish and salt lagoon,
Through bramble and briar, over the dune,
Through harsh bent grass bitter with wind from the sea.
Fire aches in our blood to thrust a way through –
Ah, we madden, we die!

Dionysus
Mine, mine, O much beloved!

– Maurice Hewlett, Ariadne in Naxos 1911

Idylles IX by André Chénier

Come Bacchus, come Thyoneus ever young,
As Dionysus or as Leneus sung!
O come, as when in Naxos lone and wild
Thy voice did soothe the fears of Minos child!
The towered elephant, slain in glorious war,
Had fashioned with his spoils thine ivory car;
Vine leaves and tendrils linked in flowing chains
The broad-flanked tiger, furrowed with dark stains,
And dusky pard, fierce panther and starred lynx
That led thee with thy courtiers to these brinks.
On wheels and axles gold shone everywhere;
The Maenads ran with loose and streaming hair
And Io Bacche! Evohe Bacche! sung,
Leneus, Euan, Thyoneus ever young
And all thy splendid names in Greece renowned
Till rock and vale echoed the jovial sound.
Lo, now with wreathed horns and flutes they come,
Crotals and clamorous cymbals and hoarse drum
Waved on thy noisy path with song and dance!
Satyr and Faun and sylvan gods advance
Trooping at random round Silenus hoar,
Who, cup in hand, from the far Indian shore,
Drunken and drivelling as of old, will pass
With slow pace tottering on his lazy ass.

- André Chénier (1762-1794), Idylles IX

Katherine Harris Bradley to the family of Frances Brooks

Edith and I are now Maenads with “a longing for the hills & ecstasy.” Let Frances expect to see me at the midland station with cone-pointed thyrsos & fawn-skin. Tell him I shall walk to Lindelhurst in this array. He need not think of hiding my originality in a fly!

- Katherine Harris Bradley to the family of Frances Brooks in a letter dated 1882

Reveille by Michael Field

Come to us O Dionysus,
From the Alcyonian water!
By the lake the spring tide trumpets
With their cavernous entreaty,
With their tingling sunstruck music,
Summon thee across the ripples,
Through the depths and lowest shadows,
Till they reach the gulf of Hades,
And thine ears with slumber soulless.
Let the trumpets roar their sunlight
To thy sleep and draw thee sternly
From the under hollows upward!

And in tribute to the warder
Of the dead this lamb, entwisted
With the stars and clumps of blossom
From the fields in earliest flowering,
By our hand is cast a victim,
To the lake mid blast of trumpets.

None of all the lambs that speckle
With bare whiteness hill and valley
Do we offer, but a black one,
Black as if by smoke commended.
Dionysus, it is drowning:
We await thee by the water!

Argives see the waves unbroken,
And the reeds an army silent;
Not a swan with breezy plumage
On the waves that drank their victim!
Sullen water watery meadows
Wait for raciness of purpose;
Every vale and bank deploring
That their hour is unaccomplished.
Dionysus, Dionysus!
Solidly the trumpets clamour,
With demand the gates of Pluto
Dare not frustrate in their hatred.

Fixedly the trumpets thunder
Deep toned over the pale reaches;
And we call with mourning passion,
As they call the dead that lose them:

“Come to us, return, beloved!”
Argives, see, within the ripple
Rhythm of a light is playing;
And the sky, behold, is lucid
As the light that chimes its current
With the current of the water,
So that never swan more bravely
Measured out her splendid waftage.

Argives how the spangles brighten!
Flashing trumpets draw the presence
In the water to our vineyards,
To our farmsteads and bleak meadows!
In that light upon the water
Is our springtide, our affiance,
Buoyancy of heart and herbage,
Touch and redolence of freedom.
Veil your eyes, for none may see him
Reach the Alcyonian pastures.
Dionysus O Beloved!
Blind, bright trumpets, blow him welcome!

- Michael Field, Reveille from Wild honey from various thyme 1908

Note: ‘Michael Field’ was the pen-name of Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper

Jane Ellen Harrison to Gilbert Murray

It’s rather dreadful, the whole centre of gravity of the book [Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion] has shifted. It began as a treatise on Keres with a supplementary notice on Dionysus. It is ending as a screed on Dionysus with an introductory talk about Keres. Whose fault is that?

- Jane Ellen Harrison to Gilbert Murray in a letter circa 1900

Midas by Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

Silenus: (very drunk) Again I find you, Bacchus, runaway!
Welcome, my glorious boy! Another time
Stray not; or leave your poor old foster-father
In the wild mazes of a wood, in which
I might have wandered many hundred years,
Had not some merry fellows helped me out,
And had not this king kindly welcomed me,
I might have fared more ill than you erewhile
In Pentheus’ prisons, that death fated rogue.

Bacchus (to Midas) To you I owe great thanks & will reward
your hospitality.

- Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prosperine and Midas: Two Unpublished Mythological Dramas 1820

The handbook for travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont by John Murray

The wines of the neighbourhood of Vevey, especially on the sunny district extending hence to Lausanne, and called La Vaux, enjoy a considerable reputation. The Romans are believed to have first planted the vine on these hills and the discovery of a stone inscribed Libero Patri Colliensi proves that they had erected a temple to Father Bacchus at Collium, a little village now called Cully, on the margin of the lake between Vevey and Lausanne.

A society or guild of very high antiquity called L’Abbaye des Vignerons having for its motto the words Ora et labora exists at Vevey. Its object is to promote the cultivation of the vine and for this purpose it despatches every spring and autumn “experts”, qualified persons, to survey all the vineyards of the district and upon their report and testimony it rewards the most skilful and industrious vinedressers with medals and pruning hooks (serpes d’ honneur) as prizes.

In accordance with a custom handed down from very ancient times, which is possibly a relic of pagan superstition, this society periodically celebrates a festival called la Fête des Vignerons. It commences with the ceremony of crowning the most successful cultivator of the vine, which is followed and accompanied by dances and processions formed of the lads and lasses of the neighbourhood attired as Fauns bearing the thyrsus and nymphs. Father Bacchus in his car and Ceres throned on a waggon filled with wheat sheaves appear in the most classical costume in the midst of their followers. But the procession includes a singular mixture of scriptural characters along with these heathen Bacchanals. Thus Silenus riding on his ass is followed by Noah in his ark and Pomona is succeeded by the spies from Canaan bearing between them the bunch of grapes. A vine press and a forge at work are also exhibited drawn by fine horses. On other days of the fête (for it lasts for several) the spectators are entertained with the native dances and songs of Switzerland performed by the herdsmen and shepherdesses of the neighbouring Alps and the concluding and perhaps the most interesting part of the festivities consists in the bestowing upon a young maiden, the fairest in fame and form in the vicinity, a dower and in the celebration of her marriage with a partner of her choice.

- John Murray The handbook for travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont 1865

Occult Philosophy by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Now the second phrensie proceeds from Dionysius: this doth by expiations exterior, and interior, and by conjurations, by mysteries, by solemnities, rites, temples, and observations divert the soul into the mind, the supream part of it self, and makes it a fit and pure temple of the Gods, in which the divine spirits may dwell, which the soul then possessing as the associate of life, is filled by them with felicity, wisdom, and oracles, not in signs, and marks, or conjectures, but in a certain concitation of the mind, and free motion: So Bacchus did soothsay to the Beotians, and Epimenides to the people of Cous, and the Sybil Erithea to the Trojans. Sometimes this phrensie happens through a clear vision, sometimes by an express voyce: So Socrates was governed by his Demon, whose counsel he did diligently obey, whose voyce he did often hear with his ears, to whom also the shape of a Demon did often appear. Many prophesying spirits also were wont to shew themselves, and be associats with the souls of them that were purified; examples of which there are many in sacred Writ … We also read that in the country of Thracia there was a certain passage consecrated to Bacchus, from whence predictions, and Oracles were wont to be given: the Priors of whose temples having drank wine abundantly did do strange things.

- Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), Occult Philosophy 3.47-48

CIL 6.1.1779

To the Divine Shades. Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, Augur, Priest of Vesta, Priest of the Sun, Member of the Fifteen, Curial of Hercules, Consecrated to Liber and the deities of Eleusis, Hierophant, Superintendent Minister, initiated by the bull’s blood Father of Fathers.

- CIL 6.1.1779 (4th century)

Die Entführung aus dem Serail by W. A. Mozart

Oh, how the drink of the gods warms me up!
Vivat Bacchus!
Long life to Bacchus!
Bacchus, who invented wine!
Bacchus was a good man,
so let us drink to his memory!

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Alexander in Babylon by H. A.

Evoë! Evoë! Evoë! Evoë!
Oh the tyrannous flute and the ivy vine
And the whirl of the dance and the madness of wine
And thou art mine and I am thine
Io Paean! Io Dionyse!
Bacchus Bacchus Nysa’s son
Babe and man and god in one
Harken to thy Bacchanals
Bacchus Bacchus Leopard Lord
Smite us with thy vined sword
Let our blood with thine be poured
Bacchus Bacchus Out of Ind
Thou dost sweep us like a wind
Singing loud thy Bacchanals
Evoë! Evoë! Evoë! Evoë!
Oh the flute of the god is a tyrant flute
And none can stay and none be mute
While timbrel clash and sounding lute
Sing Paean! Dionyse!

- H. A., Alexander in Babylon: A Tragedy in Five Acts 1887

Bacchanal by Paul Czege

It is late summer in Puteoli, south of Rome, 61 A.D., when the city finds itself playing unexpected host to the god Bacchus. Caught up in the madness of wine, the citizens throw off their togas and mingle as equals with slaves and foreigners in a debased fervor. And your own plans for a hasty departure are lost to this decadence which separates you from the companion with whom you would travel.

- Paul Czege, Bacchanal; a roleplaying game for adults 2005

The Vineyard Of Dionysus by Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov

Dionysus walks his vineyard, his beloved;
Two women in dark clothing – two vintagers – follow him.
Dionysus tells the two mournful guards – The vintagers:
“Take your sharp knife, my vintners, Grief and Torment;
Harvest, Grief and Torment, my beloved grapes!
Gather the blood of scarlet bunches, the tears of my golden clusters -
Take the victim of bliss to the whetstone of grief,
The purple of suffering to the whetstone of bliss;
Pour the fervent liquid of scarlet delights into my ardent Grail!”

- Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (1866-1949), The Vineyard Of Dionysus

Dionysiac Imagery in Coptic Textiles and Later Medieval Art by Susan Heuck Allen

Dionysiac iconography survived from the classical period into late antique and Coptic Egypt. We can trace this continuity in the medium of woven textiles, most of which were discovered in Egypt and date from the fourth to the seventh centuries. In the late antique world, Dionysos stood for the principle of fertility inherent in the grape, the life force of the vine itself. The polarity of his dual nature (with divine sire and mortal mother) expressed itself in the creative and destructive characteristics of pleasure and brutality. As discussed below, scenes of Dionysos and his entourage, and imagery of the vine and grape harvest were especially popular. Previously employed by the Ptolemies in their ruler cult, Dionysos emerged as a politicized god of theatrical revels and triumphs. In the Early Christian era, Dionysos was identified as martyred fertility god and hence a prototype of Christ in Alexandrian iconography and literature. Though the survival of Dionysos’cult ended abruptly in the seventh century, the god’s image resurfaced in the West in the later Middle Ages because of Carolingian and Ottonian interest in antiquity, the use of spolia, and the twelfth-century translation of Alexandrian Greek texts into Latin.

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During the late antique period certain pagan deities were taken up as prototypes of Christ. The imagery of Dionysos in birth and death was appropriated by the Christians, just as the Bacchae of Euripides, which described the power and passion of Dionysos, was used as a model by the author of the Christus Patiens. In this work the author employed the lamentation of Agaue over the body of her dead son (Bacchae 1280ff) for the scene where the Virgin weeps over Christ after the descent from the cross. In the second century AD, the Christian apologist Justin Martyr wrote that demons, trying to deceive and seduce the unwary, mimicked the Old Testament prophets by having Dionysos fulfill that which was prophesied of Christ. For Dionysos, like Christ, was killed and returned to life. Hence the Early Christian monuments, especially sarcophagi and funerary textiles associated with death and resurrection, often employed references to Dionysos.

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Conversely, Dionysos is occasionally Christianized as in the sixth-century textile excavated at Akhmim, where a cross precedes the inscribed name Dionysos, next to a representation of the god with a panther. On the same garment, the cross was also applied to an amphora held by a male god (Dionysos?) seated in the center of a roundel. In this scene the negative aspects of the pagan god were exorcized while the positive powers were invoked by the cross and then incorporated into the Christian community. Here, and the lapidary of Kyranos, Dionysos was identified with Christ to heighten the potency of the image and the invocation. The Kyranides lapidary, essentially a medical treatise, was probably written during the second century in Alexandria. It records the names of Aphrodite and Bacchus, Dionysiac festivals, and invocation formulae, praising Dionysos and Christ in the same breath, while Christ is invoked in the language of the Bacchic rites.

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Though representations of Dionysos appear sporadically in the West in the fourth through the seventh centuries, no comparable examples in the East have survived. Between the seventh and eleventh centuries Dionysiac depictions seem to disappear in both East and West. In the West, earlier sculptures of Dionysos were occasionally reused or copied in religious sculpture and minor arts. In Aachen, Henry II (1002-1014) acquired sixth- to seventh-century Alexandrian ivories which he had inserted into the pulpit of the Cathedral. These spolia were signs of Henry’s imperial ambitions; he used both antique and contemporary prototypes to identify with the world of antiquity. Also preserved within the Ottonian realm is a 1023 copy of the encyclopedic De rerum naturis of Rabanus Magnentius Maurus, archbishop of Mainz (784?-856), the Carolingian original of which has disappeared. In this work, Rabanus adapts the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville. In the best illustrated copy (Cod. Casinensis), Bacchus is shown in the presence of nine other gods, including his companion Pan. Goldschmidt has shown that various elements of the illustration use classical prototypes. As late as 1430, the illuminator of Palatinus 291 copied the same work as Rabanus Maurus, injecting contemporary flavor into figures which are clearly of classical descent.

About 1180, the abbot of St. Denis gave his monks a fountain whose upper basin was oddly decorated with thirty heads of pagan gods, heroes of fables and ancient allegories. Among these are Ceres, Bacchus, Pan, Jupiter, Juno, Thetis, Neptune, Paris and Helen, the elements, and the wolf and the lamb of fables. The inscription reads, “Labrum quod est in propilaeo fani diui Dionysii.” Adhemar rightly stresses the singularity of this composition of gods and heroes in the interior of an abbey cloister, a place destined for meditation and prayer. He explains the presence of mythology in a religious context as a product of the new classicizing preference of the Scholastics.

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The one spolium which might consciously invoke Dionysos as Christ can be found on the thirteenth-century bookcover of the gospel of St. Lebuinus. A Roman gem of Bacchus set in the center of the cover of the Utrecht gospel shows continued appreciation, if not for the god himself, for the potency of classical images in general. This chalcedony gem was probably carved between the first and third centuries of the Roman era, provenance unknown. The pudgy face of Bacchus is crowned with ivy leaves and schematic flowers bound by fillets and is quite similar to the depiction in a third- to fourth-century textile from Egypt. Placed at the center of the cross it recalls the identification of Christ with Dionysos one sees in the Kyranides lapidary, which was translated into Latin in the twelfth century and hence accessible to readers in the West. Despite ecclesiastical attempts to eradicate the pagan gods, Dionysos seems to have been revived, perhaps in his Christological aspect, in the thirteenth century, to which the Utrecht gospel may testify.

Through the agency of the Carolingian authors and the Ottonian collectors and copyists, works were brought to the West to inform the court and strengthen the connection with antiquity inherent in imperial political ideologies. Moreover, the copying of the illustrated manuscripts kept mythological images available. In the educated circles of the Scholastics, rare depictions of the gods of Virgil and Ovid were produced, while spolia and mirabilia were incorporated into Christian settings.

- Susan Heuck Allen, Dionysiac Imagery in Coptic Textiles and Later Medieval Art from The Classics in the Middle Ages edited by Aldo S. Bernardo and Saul Levin 1990

Houston’s Bacchus does the Roman god justice by Greg Morago

Most people recognize that Bacchus is the Roman god of wine and the grape harvest. Many an oenophile has enjoyed the bacchanalian pleasures afforded by a bountiful array of white, pink, red and purple fermentations of the fruit of the vine. Go, grape god!

But not everyone recalls that Bacchus (Dionysus in Greek mythology) wore a couple of hats. He also is the patron god of nature and theater; a deity representing delivery from the daily world through physical and spiritual intoxication. He’s the god of ecstasy and ritual madness.

Where the latter is concerned, we’ve had a heck of a summer. The roiling stock market; our downgraded credit rating; unforgiving heat and record-breaking drought; political craziness of the highest order — it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world (ritualized or not).

We sure could use a drink. Thank goodness we have Bacchus to comfort us — Bacchus the wine bar, that is.

Officially dubbed Bacchus at the Elysium, this new come-as-you-are neighborhood cafe and casual wine bar is the perfect antidote for summer insanity. Or for summer heat. Or for summer economic doldrums. Let’s just say it’s a good place to take your mind off any troubles and place it on a wine list sure to bring you a degree or two of ecstasy and spiritual intoxication.

- Greg Morago, Houston’s Bacchus does the Roman god justice from the Houston City Guide 2011

Wotan by Carl Gustav Jung

The German youths who celebrated the solstice with sheep-sacrifices were not the first to hear the rustling in the primeval forest of the unconsciousness. They were anticipated by Nietzsche, Schuler, Stefan George, and Ludwig Klages. The literary tradition of the Rhineland and the country south of the Main has a classical stamp that cannot easily be got rid of; every interpretation of intoxication and exuberance is apt to be taken back to classical models, to Dionysus, to the puer aeternus and the cosmogonic Eros. No doubt it sounds better to academic ears to interpret these things as Dionysus, but Wotan might be a more correct interpretation. He is the god of storm and frenzy, the unleasher of passions and the lust of battle; moreover he is a superlative magician and artist in illusion who is versed in all secrets of an occult nature.

In the dithyramb known as Ariadne’s Lament, Nietzsche is completely the victim of the hunter-god:

Stretched out, shuddering,
Like a half-dead thing whose feet are warmed,
Shaken by unknown fevers,
Shivering with piercing icy frost arrows,
Hunted by thee, O thought,
Unutterable! Veiled! horrible one!
Thou huntsman behind the cloud.
Struck down by thy lightning bolt,
Thou mocking eye that stares at me from the dark!
Thus I lie.
Writhing, twisting, tormented
With all eternal tortures,
Smitten
By thee, cruel huntsman,
Thou unknown — God!

This remarkable image of the hunter-god is not a mere dithyrambic figure of speech but is based on an experience which Nietzsche had when he was fifteen years old, at Pforta. It is described in a book by Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche. As he was wandering about in a gloomy wood at night, he was terrified by a “blood-curdling shriek from a neighbouring lunatic asylum,” and soon afterwards he cam face to face with a huntsman whose “features were wild and uncanny.” Setting his whistle to his lips “in a valley surrounded by wild scrub,” the huntsman “blew such a shrill blast” that Nietzsche lost consciousness — but woke up again in Pforta. It was a nightmare. It is significant that in his dream Nietzsche, who in reality intended to go to Eisleben, Luther’s town, discussed with the huntsman the question of going instead to “Teutschenthal” (Valley of the Germans). No one with ears can misunderstand the shrill whistling of the storm-god in the nocturnal wood.

Was it really only the classical philologist in Nietzsche that led to the god being called Dionysus instead of Wotan — or was it perhaps due to his fateful meeting with Wagner?

In his Reich Ohne Raum, which was first published in 1919, Bruno Goetz saw the secret of coming events in Germany in the form of a very strange vision. I have never forgotten this little book, for it struck me at the time as a forecast of the German weather. It anticipates the conflict between the realm of ideas and life, between Wotan’s dual nature as a god of storm and a god of secret musings. Wotan disappeared when his oaks fell and appeared again when the Christian God proved too weak to save Christendom from fratricidal slaughter. When the Holy Father at Rome could only impotently lament before God the fate of the grex segregatus, the one-eyed old hunter, on the edge of the German forest, laughed and saddled Sleipnir.

We are always convinced that the modern world is a reasonable world, basing our opinion on economic, political, and psychological factors. But if we may forget for a moment that we are living in the year of Our Lord 1936, and, laying aside our well-meaning, all-too-human reasonableness, may burden God or the gods with the responsibility for contemporary events instead of man, we would find Wotan quite suitable as a casual hypothesis. In fact, I venture the heretical suggestion that the unfathomable depths of Wotan’s character explain more of National Socialism than all three reasonable factors put together. There is no doubt that each of these factors explains an important aspect of what is going on in Germany, but Wotan explains yet more. He is particularly enlightening in regard to a general phenomenon which is so strange to anybody not a German that it remains incomprehensible, even after the deepest reflection.

Perhaps we may sum up this general phenomenon as Ergriffenheit — a state of being seized or possessed. The term postulates not only an Ergriffener (one who is seized) but, also, an Ergreifer (one who seizes). Wotan is an Ergreifer of men, and, unless one wishes to deify Hitler — which has indeed actually happened — he is really the only explanation. It is true that Wotan shares this quality with his cousin Dionysus, but Dionysus seems to have exercised his influence mainly on women. The maenads were a species of female storm-troopers, and, according to mythical reports, were dangerous enough. Wotan confined himself to the berserkers, who found their vocation as the Blackshirts of mythical kings.

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It is above all the Germans who have an opportunity, perhaps unique in history, to look into their own hearts and to learn what those perils of the soul were from which Christianity tried to rescue mankind. Germany is a land of spiritual catastrophes, where nature never makes more than a pretense of peace with the world-ruling reason. The disturber of the peace is a wind that blows into Europe from Asia’s vastness, sweeping in on a wide front from Thrace to the Baltic, scattering the nations before it like dry leaves. or inspiring thoughts that shake the world to its foundations. It is an elemental Dionysus breaking into the Apollonian order. The rouser of this tempest is named Wotan, and we can learn a good deal about him from the political confusion and spiritual upheaval he has caused throughout history. For a more exact investigation of his character, however, we must go back to the age of myths, which did not explain everything in terms of man and his limited capacities, but sought the deeper cause in the psyche and its autonomous powers. Man’s earliest intuitions personified these powers. Man’s earliest intuitions personified these powers as gods, and described them in the myths with great care and circumstantiality according to their various characters. This could be done the more readily on account of the firmly established primordial types or images which are innate in the unconscious of many races and exercise a direct influence upon them. Because the behavior of a race takes on its specific character from its underlying images, we can speak of an archetype “Wotan.” As an autonomous psychic factor, Wotan produces effects in the collective life of a people and thereby reveals his own nature. For Wotan has a peculiar biology of his own, quite apart from the nature of man. It is only from time to time that individuals fall under the irresistible influence of this unconscious factor. When it is quiescent, one is no more aware of the archetype Wotan than of a latent epilepsy. Could the Germans who were adults in 1914 have foreseen what they would be today? Such amazing transformations are the effect of the god of wind, that “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.” It seizes everything in its path and overthrows everything that is not firmly rooted. When the wind blows it shakes everything that is insecure, whether without or within.

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The Romans identified Wotan with Mercury, but his character does not really correspond to any Roman or Greek god, although there are certain resemblances. He is a wanderer like Mercury, for instance, he rules over the dead like Pluto and Kronos, and is connected with Dionysus by his emotional frenzy, particularly in its mantic aspect. It is surprising that Ninck does not mention Hermes, the god of revelation, who as pneuma and nous is associated with the wind. He would be the connecting-link with the Christian pneuma and the miracle of Pentecost. As Poimandres (the shepherd of men), Hermes is an Ergreifer like Wotan. Ninck rightly points out that Dionysus and the other Greek gods always remained under the supreme authority of Zeus, which indicates a fundamental difference between the Greek and the Germanic temperament. Ninck assumes an inner affinity between Wotan and Kronus, and the latter’s defeat may perhaps be a sign that the Wotan-archetype was once overcome and split up in prehistoric times. At all events, the Germanic god represents a totality on a very primitive level, a psychological condition in which man’s will was almost identical with the god’s and entirely at his mercy. But the Greeks had gods who helped man against other gods; indeed, All-Father Zeus himself is not far from the ideal of a benevolent, enlightened despot.

- Carl Gustav Jung, Wotan from Essays on Contemporary Events 1947

The Book of Martyrs by John Foxe

Then the bishop of Aix and the other bishops began to rage, and gnash their teeth against this poor prisoner. “What need you,” said they, “any more examination? let him be sent straight unto the fire, without any more words.” But the judge Laberius and certain others were not of that mind, neither found they sufficient cause why to put him to death; but went about to have him put to his fine, and to make him confess and acknowledge the bishop of Aix, and others his companions, to be the true pastors of the church. But the bookseller answered, that he could not do it with a good conscience, forasmuch as he did see before his eyes, that these bishops maintained filthy books, and abominable pictures, rejecting and refusing the holy books of God; and therefore he judged them rather to be the priests of Bacchus and Venus, than the true pastors of the church of Christ. Whereupon he was immediately condemned to be burned, and the sentence was executed the very same day.

- John Foxe, The Book of Martyrs 161. The Waldensian Martyrs in Provence 1563

The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes by Stephen Batman

Bacchus was portraited with a graunde paunch, his Charyot was drawen with an Ownce and a Tygre, his head was horned, and crowned with an Iuye Garlande, in one hande a Bunche of Grapes, in the other a Cuppe, hauing to his Garde an Ape loking in a glasse, a Hogge, a Lyon, a Uulfe, and a Dolphyn.

Signification.

Bacchus was the first that in Grece found the manner of planting Uines, the secret of pressinge Wines, called Liber Pater by an Adage, the Father of Liberty. In vino veritas. When men bee dronken they ridicule all, as when the Wine is in, the witte is out: all superfluous banquetings, and Riotous excesse are called Conuiuia Bacchanalia, dronken feastes. The Feastes of divers spottes and colours, as is the Dance, a Tigre, signifie the frenzied affections of ye dronken and desperate madnes. The Ape, the Hogge, and Lyon, the Woolfe and Dolphin are signifiers of the Dronken: for some playe the Ape in imitating every thyng, some the hogge in returning to their filthy affections, some the Lyon in executing cruelty, some the Wolfe in rauening spoyling, some the Dolphin ouerwhlemed in ye Bacchic Seas.

- Stephen Batman, The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes, Wherein is Described the Vayne Imaginations of heathen Pagans and counterfeit Christians 1577

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition by Clement Miles

Another feature of the Kalends, recorded not in the pages of classical writers but in ecclesiastical condemnations, was the custom of dressing up in the hides of animals, in women’s clothes, and in masks of various kinds. Dr. Tille regards this as Italian in origin, but it seems likely that it was a native custom in Greece, Gaul, Germany, and other countries conquered by the Romans. In Greece the skin-clad mummers may have belonged to the winter festivals of Dionysus supplanted by the Kalendae.

- Clement Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition 1912

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, “more like deer than human being.” To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.

- Donna Tartt, The Secret History 1992

Record of the interrogation of the barbes Martino and Pietro

Asked why the said synagogue is held, he replies that it derives from the fact that they as a custom were in the habit of adoring a certain idol called Bacchus and Baron and also the Sibyl and the Fairies and that Baron and the Fairies were accustomed to holding congregations during which there was no respect between daughter and father, nor with the godmother, as there is, however, outside the said synagogue. And in the synagogue, by night, when the candle was out, they mixed and each took the woman he could have, without recognising her and without speaking while the synagogue lasted; and if a son was begotten, he was the most appropriate and apt to exercise the office of barbe; and he said other things, that his companion had previously said.

- Record of the interrogation of the barbes Martino and Pietro, 1492