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*Dionysus*, in Greek mythology, 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.