Dionysus狄俄尼索斯

Origins

Son of Zeus and the Theban princess Semele — the only one of the twelve with a mortal mother. Hera goaded Semele into asking Zeus to appear in his true form; no mortal could bear the thunder, and she burned to ash. Zeus saved the unborn child and sewed him into his own thigh until he came to term, which is why Dionysus is called "twice-born."

Sacred symbols

GrapevineThyrsusLeopardIvy

Myths

Pirates into dolphins

Pirates took him for a rich prince and dragged him aboard for ransom. Vines climbed the mast, he turned into a lion, and the terrified crew leapt overboard — every one of them became a dolphin.

The death of Pentheus

Pentheus, king of Thebes and his own cousin, outlawed his worship. Dionysus lured him into dressing as a woman to spy on the maenads' rites, where his own mother, in her frenzy, took him for a lion and tore him to pieces.

Ariadne's crown

Theseus abandoned Ariadne on Naxos after she had helped him out of the labyrinth. Dionysus married her and threw her wedding crown into the night sky, where it became the Corona Borealis.

Relationships with the other gods

• KinZeus

  The child in his thigh

  As Semele burned, Zeus snatched the six-month child from the flames, sewed it into his own thigh and delivered it when its time came. Having given birth to this son himself, he later brought the half-mortal up to Olympus as one of the twelve.

• FeudHera

  Hunting the bastard son

  First she tricked Semele to her death; then she drove mad the family of Ino, who took the baby in; and when Dionysus was grown she sent madness on him too, so that he wandered Egypt and Syria until the Great Mother cured him.

• RivalryApollo

  Apollonian and Dionysian

  One is reason, order and clarity; the other intoxication, chaos and ecstasy. Yet they shared one sanctuary at Delphi: each winter Apollo travelled north and the temple belonged to Dionysus. Two thousand years later Nietzsche used the "Apollonian" and the "Dionysian" to explain all of Greek art.

• AllianceHephaestus

  A homecoming bought with wine

  With Hera locked in the golden throne, Ares tried to drag Hephaestus back by force and was driven off with firebrands. Dionysus tried another way — no weapons, just wine — and led the drunken smith back to Olympus on a donkey, singing all the way.

• AllianceHermes

  Entrusted in swaddling clothes

  When the infant Dionysus was delivered from Zeus's thigh, it was Hermes who carried him from one hiding place to another to keep him from Hera, and finally gave him to the nymphs of Mount Nysa to raise. The famous Greek statue "Hermes and the Infant Dionysus" shows exactly this.