Dionysus' Symbol or Attribute: Grapes, winecups, and wineskins; the staff formed of a pinecone on a stick called a thyrsus.
Strengths: Dionysus is the creator of wine. He also shakes things up when it gets dull.
Weaknesses: God of intoxication and drunkenness, states he pursues frequently.
Parents: Son of Zeus and Semele, who unwisely asked to see her lover Zeus in his real form; he appeared and thunder and lightning and Semele was consumed; Zeus saved their child from the ashes of her body.
Spouse: Best known is Ariadne, Cretan princess/priestess who assisted Theseus defeat the Minotaur only to be abandoned by him on the shores of Naxos, one of the islands favored by Dionysos. Fortunately, Dionysus liked beachcombing and quickly comforted the abandoned princess with an offer of marriage.
Children:Several children by Ariadne, including Oenopion and Staphylos, both associated with grapes and winemaking.
Some Major Temple Sites: Dionysus was reverenced at Naxos and generally wherever grapes were grown and wine was produced. In modern times, the so-called "Dirty Monday" rites at Tyrnavos in the Thessaly region of Greece are believed to retain traditions dating back to when he was openly worshiped.
Basic Story: Other than the story of his birth, Dionysus is relatively myth-free, yet he was very widespread in later Greek belief. He was not considered to be one of the Olympians, and since Homer skips him, it is suspected that his worship came late to the Greeks, possibly from Anatolia. He was later "adopted" by the Romans under the name of Bacchus, god of the grape, but the Greek worship of Dionysus was more ecstatic and may have preserved some early shamanic practices related to the intoxication provided by wine.
Interesting Fact:Otherwise proper and repressed Greek matrons devoted to Dionysus would become wild maenads for a night and run the slopes of the mountains, looking for prey to catch and tear apart with their bare hands.
Alternate spelling Dionysos
More Fast Facts on Greek Gods and Goddesses:
The 12 Olympian Gods and Goddesses - The Greek Gods and Goddesses at Home (Temple Sites) - Aphrodite - Apollo - Ares - Artemis - Athena - Demeter- Eros - Hades - Hephaestus- Hera - Hercules - Hermes - Hestia - Medusa - Pan - Pandora - Pegasus - Persephone - Pluto (Hades) - Poseidon- Zeus.
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