The Mythology Of Dionysus Explained

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

Dionysus first traveled around Greece to share his divinity. Several of his myths involve Dionysus cursing various people with madness because they were disrespectful to him.

According to Theoi, pirates accosted Dionysus and his companions, hoping to sell them into slavery, and the irate Dionysus gave them visions of vines and wild animals and then turned them into dolphins, one of his sacred animals. King Pentheus of Thebes refused to accept Dionysus as a god, and as punishment, Dionysus caused his daughters to go mad and tear his body to pieces. Like the other Greek gods, Dionysus did not take well to being made fun of or ignored.

Another myth deals with the betrayal of a man Dionysus helped and shows off his relatively beneficial nature. Icarius of Athens wanted to learn the craft of winemaking, so Dionysus taught him. Icarius gave a group of shepherds some of the wine he had made, and thinking they were being poisoned, the shepherds murdered him. Icarius' daughter and their dog subsequently killed themselves in grief. Dionysus, deeply moved, set the three separately in the constellations Bootes, Virgo, and Canis Major. 

Dionysus went even further by punishing the entire city-state of Athens, instead of just the shepherds. He caused the women of the city to go mad and instituted a drought. Athens consulted an oracle and constructed a festival for the three dead, thus lifting the punishment from the god (via Theoi).

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