BACCHUS, balekfis (Gk. Dcbdxoc, Bukchos). Also called Dionysus (Gk. AtOcerdoc, Dionysos) by the Greeks. A god who originally belonged to the great group of vegetation-spirits, whose worship was widely spread among European na tions. As such his coming in the early part of the year was received with joy and revelry, while his departure or death was also celebrated at the winter season. In some cases the old spirit is regarded as dying that the new one may be born, and there is some reason for believing that this feature was also found in the rites of Dionysus. The god never lost his early connection with the flourishing of vegetation and with fruitfulness generally, but he came to be associated more and wore closely with the vine and its inspiring pro duce. His worship was exceedingly widespread, and appears in local forms and with large admixtures of foreign elements. Indeed, some of the myths seem to indicate the presence of a god of light as well as a true chthonic deity. There is also much in the worship and legends that indicates a foreign origin for the cult, though there can be no doubt that many features, such as the satyrs, are purely Greek. So widely different are the stories and so varied the myths in which the god appears. that only some of the more important can be indicated. The common legend of his birth seems to have been that of Thebes. Zeus loved Semele, the daughter of Cad mus; but the jealous Hera induced her rival to beg the god to appear to her in all his splendor. Naturally, the mortal was consumed by the thunderbolt; hurt Zeus saved her unborn child, and sewed it in his thigh, whence in due time it was born. The infant was intrusted to Hermes, who delivered him to the nymphs of Nyssa, in Thrace. here he discovered and taught the powers of the grape, and headed a band of nymphs and satyrs, the so-called Thiasos, with whom ire wandered over the earth, communicat ing his new gift to men, blessing those who re ceived him gladly, and punishing his enemies. For the legends have much to tell of opposition to the new worship. So Lycnrgus, King of Thrace, drove Dionysus in terror to the depths of the sea; but later perished miserably. The story of Penthens, King of Thebes, who cast Dionysus into prison. but was himself later torn
in pieces by his own mother, Agave, and the Theban women who had been driven by frenzy to celebrate the rites of the god, forms the sub ject of the Bucchw of Euripides. There is much to indicate that in these stories we have really versions of the death and return of Dionysus himself. In friendship Dionysus visits Icarus at learia, in Attica; but even here the story ends in death, since learns is killed by peasants, who fancy themselves poisoned by his new gift of wine. Another instance of his power is fur nished by the story of the transformation into dolphins of the Tyrrhenian pirates. who bound him in order to carry him to Italy. It is told in a Homeric hymn, and also in the marble re liefs which decorate the •horagie monument of Lysicrates in Athens. Legend also makes him wed Ariadne (q.v.), when abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos. The conquering tour of Dionysus was greatly extended under the influ ence of Alexander's conquests; and the god's sub jeetion of the East and India became a subject of later poets, and is preserved to us in the epic of \onnus (q.v.).
In art, two types prevail. In the earlier pe riod the god is represented as hoarded and fully draped, and this type was not unknown in later times, when it was sometimes called the Indian Bac•hus.' From the middle of the Fourth Cen tury B.C., another type steadily gains in popular ity, representing tire god as a beardless youth. nude or wearing only the fawnskin, ur aebrd,. The chief attributes of the god are the thyrsus, or rod ending in a pine cone, and wreathed with ivy, and the great two-handled drinking-eup (the cantharus). He is often accompanied by a pan ther, and the bull and goat were closely asso ciated with his worship. Naturally. as a god of vegetation and the vine, Dionysus was associated with Demeter, Core, and the Eleusinian Myster ies (q.v.). where he bore the name Iaechus. In the mystic worship which grew up in the Sixth Century B.C., under the name of Orpheus (q.v.) Dionysus Zagreus played a prominent part, and no doubt Orphic influence helped to produce the confusion of elements which is so marked in all this cult.