The Birth of Tragedy
At the turn of the 20th century, Ivanov elaborated his views on the spiritual mission of Rome and the Ancient Greek cult of Dionysus. He summed up his Dionysian ideas in the treatise "The Hellenic Religion of the Suffering God" (1904), which traces the roots of literature in general and, following Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy", the art of tragedy in particular to ancient Dionysian mysteries.