CLA 2100	Lecture Twenty-Two: Picking Up the Pieces: Angry Gods and Personal Devotion.
Mainpage Syllabus Calendar Dr. H-F O Mueller

Dionysus: The Myth, The Rituals, The Religion.

• The House of Cadmus.
• Link to Prof. Kirk Summer's (Univ of Alabama) slide show on Dionysus.
• Mystery Religions.

  Examples: Ceres, Bacchus, Isis and Serapis, Cybele and Attis, Mithra.

  • A. General
    1. Focus: Fertility, sexuality, immortality.
    2. Rites of Initiation: the Mystery (e.g. phallus), epopteia.
    3. Union with the god: ecstasy through intoxication, sex, violence.
    4. Organization of cults (temples, ritual, processions).
    5. Syncretism.

    B. Dionysus (Bacchus)

    1. General characteristics.
    2. Thiasos (group of worshippers), maenads (female worshippers), oreibasia (mountain dancing), thyrsus (staff wrapped with ivy), sparagmos (tearing animal to bits), omophagis charis (pleasure of eating raw flesh).
    3. Festival in Athens, Greek tragedy.

Euripides Bacchae: Characters, Places, Terms

• Dionysus, aka Bacchus, Iacchus, Evius, Bromius, Sone of Semele, Son of Zeus, Wine.
• Chorus
• Tiresias
• Pentheus
• Soldier
• Herdsman
• Agave
• Messenger
• Guards
• Thebes
• Oppositions: male/female; city/nature; civilized/barbarian; human/animal; mortal/immortal; chaste/unchaste; reason/emotion; law&order/freedom; native/foreign; believers/unbelievers.

Illustrations to Euripides Bacchae

Links to a variety of external sites.

• Ancient wall painting of Pentheus' sparagmos. If you forgot what sparagmos means, look at the picture!
• Agave holds up Pentheus' head in an old Liverpool Merseyside Production.
• Agave holds up Pentheus' head in a 2000 UMass production.
• UC Davis Bacchae Project (v. good).