…wild, ineffable, secretive, two-horned and two-shaped.
Ivy-covered, bull-faced, warlike, howling, pure,
You take raw flesh, you have feasts, wrapt in foliage, decked with grape clusters…
Invocations of Dionysus (from the Orphic hymns)
In Caravaggio’s renowned Bacchus painting (c.1596), Bacchus gazes at us dreamily from under his lashes, offering us a goblet of wine. The basket of overripe fruit set before him is an example of vanitas, a type of still life painting where symbolism is used to remind the viewer of their own mortality. Greek god of wine-making, festivity and insanity, we look at the rotting fruit, and are given a warning about the fleeting nature of hedonism. But the promise of pleasure is present. It exists in Bacchus’s makeshift toga that is slung meaningfully over a single shoulder, a half-hearted attempt at covering his exposed skin. His pale chest becomes paler against the crimson of his outstretched goblet, and the charged scene invites us to succumb to carnal desire. The glazed sheen of his eyes and his flushed cheeks hint at his drunkenness, and perhaps arousal.
Bacchus-or Dionysus in the Greek-has certainly caught the artist’s imagination. Frequently depicted in literature and art as a young man clad in grapes and ivy, this fresh-faced character appears to evoke the inspiration of the creator as much as he did his ancient cults, the Bacchae. Orphic legends describe him as son of Zeus, the King of the gods, and Persephone, Queen of the Underworld (and herself daughter of Zeus.) Zeus’s love for the child was a display of favouritism that sparked his wife Hera’s jealousy. Upon her command, the baby was torn apart and devoured, but his heart was spared. Zeus gave it to his mortal lover, Semele, who then birthed the reincarnated Dionysus. The god’s mutilated infanthood was only the beginning of his longstanding associations with wild and cannibalistic feasting.
Though born of two Greek deities, Dionysus was often depicted as an outsider who struggled to be accepted in Greece. His ‘foreignness’ was in part due to his associations with travelling; he was described to have conquered India with wine and dance, and legend went that wherever grapevines sprouted, Dionysus had trodden. According to myth, his affiliations with wine began when he fell in love with a Ampelos, a young satyr renowned for his beauty:
'From his rosy lips escaped a voice breathing honey. Spring itself shone from his limbs; where his silvery foot stept the meadow blushed with roses...'
Nonnus, Dionysiaca
The two became lovers. But after Ampelos mocked the goddess Selene, he was killed by a wild bull. The Fates took pity on Dionysus’s misery, and raised Ampelos from the grave as a grapevine. Dionysus crushed the fruit and tasted the drink, which filled him with ecstasy. He collected more grapes, spread them on the ground and danced on them, birthing the tradition of winemaking. Famous for his moody temperament, Dionysus promised the same double-edged effects of the wine he had learned to create, either bringing divine ecstasy, or brutal rage.
Dionysus’s cults took varied forms, and attributed him different names and appearances, believing that like wine, the god was flavoured according to region. Traditionally offered ivy, wine, honey, thistle, and wild trees, among other such sylvan gifts, Dionysus was not worshipped in a temple, but instead deep in the woods. Introduced into Rome from Ancient Greece, these Bacchanalia (also known as Orgia- guess why) were held in secret, and here his followers would frenziedly embody the insanity that the god represented. As Dionysus Eleutherios (‘the liberator’), his wine, dance, and music stripped his followers of self-restraint and fear, encouraging them to shun conventional behaviour in their journey towards spiritual ecstasy. He was sometimes called ‘the god that comes,’ a nod to the moments of epiphany that these rites were said to induce. Particularly attractive to those marginalised by society, the Bacchanalia were initially attended solely by women, and viewed with hostility by men.
Our women have deserted from their homes, pretending Bacchic rites, and now they lurk in the shady hill-tops, reverencing forsooth this Dionysus…
The Bacchae, Euripedes
Despite the resistance of their husbands, followers took to the woods in fawn skins and crowns of ivy, wielding thyrsoi (a sceptre wound with ivy and grapevine – Dionysus’s dual benevolent wand and fatal weapon.) Dancing by torchlight, they were thought to reach crazed states that culminated in sexual initiations, divine revelation, and the chasing, tearing apart, and devouring of animals. They would drink wine – thought to have been mixed with a psychoactive ingredient-and feast.
In the myth of Pentheus, the King of Thebes, Pentheus, banned the worship of Dionysus, and forbid participation in his rites. In retaliation, Dionysus lured Pentheus to the Bacchic rites in disguise as a woman. The women mistook Pentheus for a wild animal, and in their crazed state, tore him limb from limb. This sparagmos, the act of tearing apart a living animal or human being, was often followed by omophagia, the eating of their raw flesh, with the aim of embodying the essence of the god himself. The desire for collective escape from the socialized to the primal was seen as a catharsis from the restraints of society, and an opportunity to release the spiritual within. The Greek name for his female followers was ‘Maenad’, literally meaning ‘raving ones.’
The outstretched goblet in Caravaggio’s Bacchus, then, is an invitation to the frightening primal that exists within us all. Much like his ‘raving’ followers, we are drawn to his youthful features and parted lips. Yet the dreaminess of his eyes betrays a darker reality, one of mania, of violence. Leaning in for a closer look, we can almost hear the thrumming chants that echo deep in the woods. We gaze at Caravaggio’s Bacchus, and he exudes a clear, ominous message: join in on the Bacchic revelry. Partake in the drunken feasts.
They climbed mountain paths with heads thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood…
The Bacchae, Euripides