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Bacchus,
also Dionysus , god of wine and vegetation,
who showed mortals how to cultivate grapevines and make wine. A son of
Zeus, Dionysus is usually characterized in one of two ways. As the god
of vegetation—specifically of the fruit of the trees—he is often represented
on Attic vases with a drinking horn and vine branches. He eventually became
the popular Greek god of wine and cheer, and wine miracles were reputedly
performed at certain of his festivals. Dionysus is also characterized as
a deity whose mysteries inspired ecstatic, orgiastic worship. The maenads,
or bacchantes, were a group of female devotees who left their homes to
roam the wilderness in ecstatic devotion to Dionysus. They wore fawn skins
and were believed to possess occult powers. Dionysus was good and gentle
to those who honored him, but he brought madness and destruction upon those
who spurned him or the orgiastic rituals of his cult. According to tradition,
Dionysus died each winter and was reborn in the spring. To his followers,
this cyclical revival, accompanied by the seasonal renewal of the fruits
of the earth, embodied the promise of the resurrection of the dead. The
yearly rites in honor of the resurrection of Dionysus gradually evolved
into the structured form of the Greek drama, and important festivals were
held in honor of the god, during which great dramatic competitions were
conducted. The most important festival, the Greater Dionysia, was held
in Athens for five days each spring. It was for this celebration that the
Greek dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides wrote their great
tragedies. By the 5th century BC, Dionysus was also known to the Greeks
as Bacchus, a name referring to the loud cries with which Dionysus was
worshiped at the orgia, or Dionysiac mysteries. These frenetic celebrations,
which probably originated in spring nature festivals, became occasions
for licentiousness and intoxication. This was the form in which the worship
of Dionysus became popular in the 2nd century BC in Roman Italy, where
the Dionysiac mysteries were called the Bacchanalia. The indulgences of
the Bacchanalia became increasingly extreme, and the celebrations were
prohibited by the Roman Senate in 186 BC. In the 1st century AD, however,
the Dionysiac mysteries were still popular, as evidenced by representations
of them found on Greek sarcophagi.
Bellerophon,
the son of Glaucus, king of Corinth; he was the hero who tamed the winged
horse Pegasus with the aid of a bridle given him by the goddess Athena.
Falling in love with the wife of King Proetus of Argos, Bellerophon aroused
the jealously of Proetus, who sent him to his father-in-law Iobates, king
of Lycia, with a message requesting that the bearer be slain. The king,
having entertained Bellerophon before he read the message, was afraid to
anger the god Zeus by carrying out a request that would break the traditional
bond between host and guest. Instead of killing Bellerophon, he asked him
to kill the Chimera, a fire-breathing monster, which the hero did with
the help of Pegasus. He also defeated the Solymi and the Amazons, two warrior
tribes. Iobates was impressed by Bellerophon's superhuman courage and married
him to his daughter. After a time of prosperity, Bellerophon defied the
gods by trying to ride Pegasus up to Olympus, but, thrown to the earth
by the horse, he wandered in misery until he died.
