BACCHUS. This name appears in the A. V. as the equivalent of the Greek Aibpuo-os, 2 Macc. vi. ry ; xiv. 33. The latter occurs also in (the so called) 3 Macc. ii. 29. In all these instances this mythic deity is named in connection with circum stances which would indicate that he was an object of special abhorrence to the Jews ; for, in the first, it is stated that the Jews were compelled to go in procession to Bacchus ; in the second, the erection of a temple to him is threatened in order to compel the priests to deliver up Judas to Nicanor ; and in the third, the branding with the ivy leaf, sacred to him, is reported as inflicted on them by way of punishment. This falls in with what Tacitus says, that it was a mistake to imagine that, because the priests of the Jews accompanied their singing with flute and cymbals, and had garlands of ivy, and a golden vine was found in the temple, they worship ped Bacchus, for that this was not at all in accord ance with their institutes (nequaquam congruentibus institutis, Hist. v. 5). As Bacchus was the god of
wine, and in general of earthly festivity and jollity, and as his rites sanctioned the most frantic excesses of revelry and tumultuous excitement, he would necessarily be an object of abhorrence to all who believed in and worshipped Jehovah. Probably, also, the very fact that some things connected with the Jewish worship had, as mentioned by Tacitus, and still more fully by Plutarch (Symposiac. iv. qu. 6), led to the supposition that they reverenced Bacchus may have produced in their minds a more determined recoil from and hatred of all pertaining to his name. (For the mythological history and attributes of Bacchus, see Smith's Dia. of Biog. and Mythol. s. v. Dionysus ; Creuzer, Synzbolik and Mythologie, pt. iii. bk. 3 ch. 2 of Moser's Abridgment ; Moritz, Mythol. of the Greeks and Romans, E. T., p. ro3.)—W. L. A.