Biography Bacchus

Bacchus (Bacchus), sometimes called Dionysus by the Greeks, and Romans Lieber, was originally a Thracian or Phrygian god, whose cult was the Greeks took over in a very early age. Due to the prevalence in the Greek wine-making this cult is firmly entrenched, especially among the rural population. Under the assumption of some researchers, Bacchus – the god of Greek, in myths and rituals which reverence crept over time outlandish elements, mainly Phrygian and Thracian religion. It is the god of heaven and the earth's moisture and causes it and the warmth of the sun the living forces of nature, and – god of wine and its stimulating action on the person. Most popular festivals devoted to him, directly linked with studies on wine making and viticulture. Thus, for example., Consumption of new, fresh wine after the grape harvest and the husks, accompanied by a special celebration in Attica – Dionysius, the beginning of casting already vybrodivshego wine was in Athens, his celebration – Antesteriya, the festival of colors. All the myths and stories about how the VA went to Aeneas in Aetolia and Icarus in Attica, gave them wine vine and taught winemaker, traveled, accompanied by a satyr, strong, and maenads bacchantes for all countries involved in winemaking – it all stems from the values of Bacchus as god of wine and merriment. Legends are acquired particularly prevalent after the conquest of the East by Alexander the Great, when the cult of Vladimir was moved even in India. Dionysus was the son of God the heavens and the thunder-cloud, or, otherwise, the son of the goddess of the earth, fertilized heavenly god in the guise of rain. This poetically recast the legend makes it, then, the son of the Theban king's daughter, Semele, and Zeus, at what explains the following: Semel, on the advice of the jealous Hera, Zeus wished to see in all its regal splendor and divine, but when he was surrounded by lightning and thunder she fell down dead. Zeus then took out from her womb still premature child, Dionysus, put him in his thigh, and born again after some time the child had given to the development of nymphs. According to another legend, Bacchus is the son of Zeus and Demeter and Persephone, in the service of which he is in Elevzise (in the mysteries). Orfiytsy called Dionysus Zagreem and tell that he killed and ripped apart the Titans, came to life again, after Zeus had swallowed his heart or, in another version, gave it to Semele. This is a tale of suffering and death of God, and then his resurrection, linked directly with the flowering and withering of nature during the annual cycle of time. Night celebration in honor of W. perpetrated in many places in Greece. At Cithaeron, according to legend, King Pentheus of Thebes, in retaliation for the persecution of God, was torn to pieces by women, sunken in Bacchic frenzy, and the way her own mother took him for an animal. This and similar stories due to the fact that indeed some women in a frenzy and ecstasy (maenads Fury), burst into a sacrifice to God live animals, mostly young kids, and in some localities in the old days, sacrificed to Dionysus, even human sacrifices, as indicated by partly nickname God – Omestes (devouring raw meat). Alien to the Greek kind, frenzied celebration of Bacchus in Greece underwent a complete transformation. It soon had an artistic touch and partly merged with the cult of Apollo, a fanatical Phrygian rites, which plays an important role phallus, praised as a symbol of the productive forces of nature have disappeared, gradually taking the form of comedies. Another form of dramatic poetry, tragedy, emerged from the so-called. dithyrambs – choral songs, in which men dressed as satyrs, and praised the act and the suffering of God. In Naxos, where according to legend, Dionysus met Ariadne abandoned by Theseus, and made her his wife, the celebration of Bacchus consisted of two parts: first bewail the deplorable situation of the forgotten of Ariadne and the other noisy expressed joy over the happy ending. In Rome, the cult of Bacchus – or, as it was formerly called, Lieber, identification with old-Italian LiberPater, – was borrowed from the South-Italic Greeks, together with the cult of Demeter and Persephone (Ceres). In the year 496 BC X. was built by a common temple for all the three deities and set an annual celebration in the month of March – the liberals. Only much later entered the Greek mystical ministry Bacchus, which is taken soon the nature of extreme promiscuity and immorality.Works of Art earlier Bacchus represented in the form of a man already in middle age, a majestic posture, with long hair and beard, wearing long clothes, with a bandage on his head and a bowl of grapes or a brush in his hand. Later art depicted V. boys, soft, tender body, completely naked or camouflaged deer skin (nebris) and in the hunting stilts or something. He wears a bandage and a wreath in his hand Tears. Wed Muller, "Denkmaler der alten Kunst" (2 vols Göttingen, 1860); Konze, "Heroen und Gottergestalten der griech. Kunst" (Vienna, 1874).