Talk:Bacchus
BACCHUS
L. Dellius Liberalis Æstās MMDCCLXXVI
Detail, Bacchus (Michaelangelo, 1496)
OVERVIEW
The mystic Roman god of wine and viticulture, Bacchus was the bringer of ecstatic religious devotion and inducer of frenzied states of creativity and carnal eroticism.
Bacchus represented the spontaneous and unrestrained aspects of life and was believed to exercise his agency by means of inducing in his devotees a state of inebriation; freeing the inebriated from social conventions and allowed new ways of thinking and acting. The figure of Bacchus emerged from the blending of primarily three distinct deities: Dionysus, the Greek deity who lent his mythology to Bacchus in the second century BCE, the Etruscan Pufluns-Pacha, and Liber, an ancient Italic wine god who would later appear as part of the “plebeian” Aventine triad together with Ceres and Libera (Proserpina), and eventhough their cults, mythos and theology were eventually fused, the state came to treat the independent, popular Bacchanalia as subversive, in part due to the unrestrained intermingling of classes and genders that transgressed traditional social and moral constraints.
Celebration of the Bacchanalia was eventually made a capital offence, except in the toned-down sanctioned forms and greatly diminished congregations approved and supervised by the senate on behalf of the State. Ultimately, the Roman version of Bacchus came to be seen as a freewheeling lover of revelry who gave wine and granted drunkenness and divine ecstatic release to all who wished for it.
ETYMOLOGY
The Latin name “Bacchus” is derived from the Greek word Bakkhos (Βάκχος), an epithet of the god Dionysus. That word Bakkhos was itself derived from the term bakkheia; a Greek word used to describe the frenzied, ecstatic state that the god produced in people. In appropriating the name “Bacchus,” then, the Latins were claiming an aspect of Dionysus for their own god.
“Bacchus” could also be related to the Latin word bacca, meaning “a berry” or “the fruit of a tree or shrub.” In this context, such a word could be referencing grapes, the key ingredient in wine, though there is a theory within modern scholarship that now considers the possibility that both may in fact derive from the name of a Thracian fertility god.
Bronze statue of Bacchus (Pompeii, 2nd century BCE)
ATTRIBUTES
As the God of wine, the great reveller, and the paragon of drunkenness, Bacchus was the deity that bestowed the gifts of inebriation and altered states of consciousness upon humanity.
Bacchus was most often, if not always, depicted as a young man who was usually beardless and often drunk: he controlled the growth of grapevines and guided viticulturalists through the wine-making process. He was frequently depicted carrying a thyrsus— a fennel-stem staff, wound with ivy and dripping with honey, - which is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents.
Bacchus (Michaelangelo, 1496)
FAMILY
According to mythological tradition, Bacchus was born twice. His first father was Jupiter, and his first mother was Proserpina - who was famously abducted by Pluto - Ceres’ daughter (who later became syncretised with Libera, and together with Ceres and Liber made up the Aventine Triad). Bacchus was later reborn to Jupiter and Semele. Bacchus fathered a number of children recorded in the various myths and works of literature including Mutinus Titinus (known to the Greeks as Priapus) who was a phallic marriage deity and had a shrine on the Velian Hill, The Gratiæ (the Graces), and four sons by his mortal wife Ariadne.
MYTHOLOGY
In Roman mythology, the stories of Bacchus, along with those of Liber and the Etruscan Pufluns, were conflated with those of Dionysus, but were neither as common nor as richly told as those of Dionysus in the Greek traditions.
The Birth and Rebirth of Bacchus
The mythology of Bacchus centers on his birth, death, and unlikely rebirth through the figure of the mortal Semele. The first birth happened in a conventional manner for the gods. Jupiter became smitten with Proserpina, who was usually presented as the daughter of the great king of the gods. Assuming the form of a snake, Jupiter slithered into the Underworld and made love to Proserpina. During this encounter, they conceived a child: Bacchus. According to some, within the Roman tradition, this first incarnation of the god was understood to be Liber. This detail was an acknowledgment of the Italian wine god whom the Romans worshipped prior to adopting the cult of Dionysus.
Bacchus (or Liber) was among the early Roman gods who fought in the cataclysmic struggle known as the Titanomachy. This struggle pitted Jupiter’s kin against the defenders of this father, Saturn. In one of the conflict’s epic battles, Bacchus was killed, and his body torn to pieces. With a heavy heart, Jupiter gathered up the remains of his son and placed Bacchus’ mangled heart into a potion. Jupiter then gave the mixture to Semele, the mortal wife of the king of Thebes, who promptly drank it and became pregnant.
Before she could give birth, however, Semele was killed through Juno’s treachery. Jupiter’s ever jealous wife managed to entice Semele into desiring Jupiter sexually and asking him to present himself to her in his true celestial majesty. As Gaius Julius Hyginus wrote in his Fabulae: Liber (Bacchus), son of Jove and Proserpina, was dismembered by the Titans, and Jove gave his heart, torn to bits, to Semele in a drink. When she was made pregnant by this, Juno, changing herself to look like Semele’s nurse, Beroe, said to her: ‘Daughter, ask Jove to come to you as he comes to Juno, so you may know what pleasure it is to sleep with a god.’ At her suggestion Semele made this request of Jove and was smitten by a thunderbolt. He took Liber from her womb and gave him to Nysus to be cared for.
Ovid’s Twist
A variant of this myth was found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In this version, Juno similarly tricked Semele into wanting Jupiter. When Jupiter came to satisfy Semele, however, the mortal could not bear the god’s embraces: The mortal dame, too feeble to engage the lightning’s flashes, and the thunder’s rage, consumed amidst the glories she desired, and in the terrible embrace expired. Following Semele’s death, Jupiter took the growing foetus from her womb and sewed it into his thigh, where he was nourished for the rest of his development. The baby emerged sometime later and was raised in the company of nymphs near Mt. Nysa. Ovid described these events in detail: But, to preserve his offspring from the tomb, Jove took him smoking from the blasted womb: And, if on ancient tales we may rely, enclosed the abortive infant in his thigh. Here when the babe had all his time fulfilled, Ino first took him for her foster-child; Then the Niseans, in their dark abode, nursed secretly with milk the thriving God.
Bacchus (Simeon Solomon, 1867)
BACCHUS AND THE ROMAN STATE RELIGION
The primary festivals held in Bacchus’ honour were the infamous Bacchanalia. Though specific details surrounding the Bacchanalia are scarce—partly due to a lack of sources, the nature of the mystery schools, and partly due to the distortions of ancient authors such as Livy, who were scandalized by the Bacchic cults—the festivals were known to feature drinking wine to excess, revelry, men and women mingling between different social classes, and fornication outside of societal norms. In response to at least two significant scandals (potentially invented for political purposes) connected with these extravagant practices, the Roman Senate passed legislation that drastically limited the festivities in 186 BCE, though without outrightly banning the festival. Wild Bacchanalia festivals were still likely held outside Rome's direct authority throughout the Italian peninsula but most vibrantly in the Southern Region of Campania the former Magna Græcia, often held in the countryside, far from unnatural and stiff city life.
Rome continued to host plays and performances dedicated to the god Bacchus. These included so-called satyr plays, from which the term satirical is derived. Such plays were comedic in tone and often featured norm-breaking content, and these were hosted in amphitheaters in Rome and in every corner of the Roman Empire. Versions of the festival were held several times a year in southern Italy and, following their conquest, in the Near East and Greek regions of the Roman Empire such as Baalbek-Heliopolis in Syria-Phoenicia.
Bacchanalia, (Henryk Siemiradzki, 1890)
BIBLIOGRAPHY Apollodorus, E.1.9. Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.424–426. Baldini, Chiara (2015). "The Politics of Ecstasy: The Case of the Bacchanalia Affair in Ancient Rome". In Luke, David; King, Dave (eds.). Neurotransmissions: Essays on Psychedelics from Breaking Convention. MIT Press. Gildenhard, I & Zissos, A (2016). "The Bacchanalia and Roman Culture". In Gildenhard, Ingo; Zissos, Andrew (eds.). Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.511-733: Latin Text with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary of Terms, Vocabulary Aid and Study Questions. Open Book Publishers. pp. 65–68. Hyginus, Fabulae CLXVII Isler-Kerényi, C (2011). The Cult of Liber/Bacchus in the Roman World. Kuivalainen, I (2021). The Pompeian Bacchus, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, Societas Scientiarum Fennica (The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters) Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, XXXIX Manuwald, G (2020). Dionysus/Bacchus/Liber in Cicero. McIntosh, J., Chrisp, P., Parker, P., Gibson, C., Grant, R. G. & Regan, S (2014). History of the World in 1,000 Objects. New York: DK and the Smithsonian. p. 83 Nonnus, Dionysiaca 7. 14 ff (trans. Rouse) Olszewski, E. (2019). Dionysus’s enigmatic thyrsus. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 163(2), 153–173. Ovid, Heroides 6.114–115 Ovid, Metamorphōsēs Riedl, M. (2012). "The Containment of Dionysos: Religion and Politics in the Bacchanalia Affair of 186 BCE". International Political Anthropology. 5 (2): 113–133. Senatus Consultum De Bacchanalubus - www.thelatinlibrary.com/scbaccanalibus.html Statius, Thebaid 4.768–769, 5.265–266. Takács, S A. (2000). "Politics and Religion in the Bacchanalian Affair of 186 B.C.E.". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 100: 301–310. Walsh, P. G. (1996). "Making a Drama out of a Crisis: Livy on the Bacchanalia". Greece & Rome. 43 (2): 188–203. Wiseman, T. P (1988) "Satyrs in Rome? The Background to Horace's Ars Poetica", The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 78, p. 7, note 52.
