DIONYSOS is included in the pantheons of the majority of Greek cities and is present at such very early festivals as the Apaturia, the festival of the phratries, and the Anthesteria, that of new wine and the assembly of the dead. The youngest of the...

OMOPHAGIA is an ancient Greek term (ōmophagia, "eating raw [flesh]") for a ritual in the ecstatic worship of Dionysos. All human groups, including the so-called primitives, are aware of their cultural identity by contrast to...

Greek god of vegetation and fruitfulness, known especially as the god of wine and ecstasy. His Roman equivalent was Bacchus. He was known to the ancient Mycenaens, and he became one of the most important of all the Greek gods. A son of Zeus and...

Old Italic god of animal and vegetable fertility; after equation with → Dionysos, he figured on his own as nothing more than a god of wine. On the day of his feast (17 March) youths donned the toga virilis for the first time, in token of their...

Dionysus or Dionysos (in Greek, ΔιÏνυσος or ΔιÏνυσος; associated with Roman Liber), is the Thracian god of wine and a major figure from Greek mythology. He represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and...