page_title: Dionysian Mysteries
section_title: Role of wine
hierarchical_section_title: Dionysian Mysteries / Early Dionysus cult / Role of wine
caption_attribution_description: 5706. Table support with a Dionysiac group. Marble from Dokimeion in Asia Minor. Unknown provenance. This piece was the single support for a table top. The pillar-support is adorned by a group of Dionysos, Pan and a Satyr. The nude Dionysos holds a rhyton (ritual vase) ending in the front half of a panther. Next to him the goat-footed god Pan holds a lagobolon (stick to hares). In front of him is a small cylindrical basket, from which a snake is emerging. A young Satyr climbs up the vine and cuts grapes with in his right hand. From the branch hangs a lagobolon, a pan-pipe and a goatskin. The exposed parts of the bodies are very well polished. Traces of red and yellow colour are preserved on the hair of the figures and the branches. This elaborate piece is from an Asia Minor workshop. AD 170-180. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece --- 5706. Τραπεζοφόρο με διονυσιακό σύμπλεγμα. Μάρμαρο Δοκιμείου Μικράς Ασίας. Άγνωστης προέλευσης. Αποτελούσε το μονόποδο στήριγμα της πλάκας ενός τραπεζιού. Τον πεσσό-στήριγμα στολίζει σύμπλεγμα Διονύσου, Πανός και Σατύρου. Ο γυμνός Διόνυσος κρατεί ρυτόν (τελετουργικό αγγείο) που απολήγει σε ημίτομο πάνθηρα. Πλάι τou ο τραγοπόδαρος Παν κρατεί λαγωβόλο. Μπροστά του υπάρχει μια μικρή κυλινδρική κίαιην από όπου ξεπροβάλλει φίδι. Ο μίκρος Σάτυρος είναι οκαρφαλωμένος στην κληματαριά και, κρατώντας στο δεξί χέρι ένα δρεπάνι, κόβει σταφύλια. Από το κλαδί ένα λαγωβόλο, η σύριγγα του Πανός και μια δορά αίγας, Τα γυμνά μέρη των σωμάτων είναι πολύ καλά στιλβωμένα. Ίχνη κόκκινου και κίτρινου χρώματος οώζονται στα μαλλιά και στα κλαδιά. Το περίτεχνο έργο προέρχεται από μικρασιατικό εργαστήριο. 170-180 μ.Χ. Εθνικό Αρχαιολογική Μουσείο. Αθήνα.
context_page_description: The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek society: women, slaves, outlaws, and non-citizens. In their final phase the Mysteries shifted their emphasis from a chthonic, underworld orientation to a transcendental, mystical one, with Dionysus changing his nature accordingly. By its nature as a mystery religion reserved for the initiated, many aspects of the Dionysian cult remain unknown and were lost with the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism; modern knowledge is derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.
context_section_description: The original rite of Dionysus (as introduced into Greece) is associated with a wine cult (not unlike the entheogenic cults of ancient Central America), concerned with the grapevine's cultivation and an understanding of its life cycle (believed to have embodied the living god) and the fermentation of wine from its dismembered body (associated with the god's essence in the underworld). Most importantly, however, the intoxicating and disinhibiting effects of wine were regarded as due to possession by the god's spirit (and, later, as causing this possession). Wine was also poured on the earth and its growing vine, completing the cycle. The cult was not solely concerned with the vine itself, but also with the other components of wine. Wine includes other ingredients (herbal, floral and resinous) adding to its quality, flavour and medicinal properties. Scholars have suggested that, given the low alcoholic content of early wine, its effects may have been due to an additional entheogenic ingredient in its sacramental form. Honey and beeswax were often added to wine, introducing an even older drink (mead). Károly Kerényi postulated that this wine lore superseded (and partly absorbed) earlier Neolithic mead lore involving bee swarms associated by the Greeks with Dionysus. Mead and beer (with its cereal base) were incorporated into the domain of Dionysus, perhaps through his identification with the Thracian corn deity Sabazius.
  Other plants believed to be viniculturally significant were also included in wine lore such as ivy (thought to counteract drunkenness—thus the opposite of the grapevine—and seen as blooming in winter instead of summer); the fig (a purgative of toxins) and the pine (a wine preservative). The bull (from whose horn wine was drunk) and goat (whose flesh provided wineskins, and whose browsing pruned the vines) were also part of the cult, eventually seen as manifestations of Dionysus. Some of these associations had been linked with fertility deities (like Dionysus) and became part of his new role. An understanding of vinicultural lore and its symbolism is key to understanding the cult which emerged from it, assuming a significance other than winemaking that would encompass life, death and rebirth and providing insight into human psychology.
  Assuming the Dionysus cult arrived in Greece with the importation of wine, it probably first emerged about 6000 BC in one of two places—the Zagros Mountains and borderlands of Mesopotamia and Persia (with a rich wine culture via Asia Minor), or from wild vines on the mountain slopes of Libya and other regions in North Africa. The latter provided wine to ancient Egypt wine from about 2500 BC, and was home to ecstatic rites involving animal possession—notably the goat and panther men of the Aissaoua Sufi cult of Morocco (although this cult may have been influenced by the Dionysian one). In any case Minoan Crete was the next link in the chain, importing wine from the Egyptians, Thracians and Phoenicians and exporting it to its colonies (such as Greece). The Mysteries probably took shape in Minoan Crete from about 3000 to 1000 BC, since the name "Dionysus" exists nowhere other than Crete and Greece.
caption: Marble table support adorned by a group including Dionysus, Pan and a Satyr; Dionysus holds a rhyton (drinking vessel) in the shape of a panther; traces of red and yellow colour are preserved on the hair of the figures and the branches; from an Asia Minor workshop, 170-180 AD, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece
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