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The marginal presence of Dionysus in the Homeric Poems offered a large faction of investigators, the basis for believing in the foreign origin of the god, a native of Thrace, belatedly admitted to the Olympic pantheon. This conviction, underlined by Herodotus' testimony, was revalidated by the ambiguity of the mythical versions, has however never been unanimously subscribed nor in ancient times, nor recently. As son of Semele and Zeus, linked with the wildest and most uncontrolled facets of nature, Dionysos was for centuries the god of vegetation, wine, and natural, disordered and liberating pleasures. But not all the mythical narratives and ritual interpretations associated with him boil down to festivals of unreasonable joy; many are related to death and atonement. The remarkable recurrence of the theme of violent death, which multiply in the framework of some of the versions of the myth seems to indicate poetic treatment, corresponding to a ritual phase of human sacrifice, that is not historically documented in the Greek religion. Closer than any of the Olympians, Dionysos shares with the unfortunate mortals his perishable nature. As the vine that represents it, he is capable of being reborn from its own painful severed finitude. His contradictory nature embodies duality and dissolves into a disturbing coexistence the boundaries. After being worshiped in the Ancient World as a god, through a cult of exceptional projection, Dionysos became an irreducible symbol of a human state of mind: that of antithesis, latent opposition, of rebellion against all mechanisms of oppression and all tyrannies, and against prejudice of all kinds in all times. With his contradictory, enigmatic, and fascinating nature, he further evokes, in the innermost recesses of our unconscious, our unavoidable desire to defy the frontiers of death, and inscribe ourselves into eternity.
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Dionysus Greek mythology Greek tragedy Homeric poetry Mysteries