Quotes About Dionysos

Drinking can not be sacramentalised except in religions which set no store on decorum. The worship of Dionysos or the Celtic god of beer was a loud and disorderly affair.

Some," he says, "are prayers to the gods—these are called hymns; others of an opposite sort might best be called dirges; another sort are pæans, and another—the birth of Dionysos, I suppose—is called Dithyramb.

Dionysos the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once perceived, then remembered and conceived.

But it is equally clear and certain that the Dionysos of Greek worship and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle.

But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the Tree-God, arises from a dromenon, a rite, what is the rite of second birth from which it arises?

that shock of fear that runs right through an army before battle, that shock is Dionysos.

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober.

The sea-goddesses were also oracular goddesses. The oldest of them, Tethys, had an oracular shrine amongst the Etruscans. Her granddaughters, the daughters of Nereus, could often—or so it was believed—rescue seamen in danger of shipwreck. It was they, too, who revealed to men the mysteries of Dionysos and of Persephone.

I love you, rotten, Delicious rottenness. ...wonderful are the hellish experiences, Orphic, delicate Dionysos of the Underworld.

We can see in part why, though the dromena of Adonis and Osiris, emotional as they were and intensely picturesque, remained mere ritual; the dromenon of Dionysos, his Dithyramb, blossomed into drama.