"Now you, Bacchus, will I sing, and with you the forest saplings, and the offspring of the slow-growing olive. Hither Lenaean sire! Here all is full of your bounties."
Virgil, Georgics 2.1
🏛 Dionysos-Bacchus, Roman marble copy of an original 360 BCE, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Venezia
"Let us be merry and drink wine and sing of #Bakkhos [Dionysos], the inventor of the choral dance, the lover of all songs."
The Anacreontea, Fragment 38
🏛 One of my favourite depicions of #Dionysos, who is seated on his throne rather casually, Temple of Dionysos, #Delos
"You, #Bacchus [Dionysos], from thyrsus-bearing India, with unshorn locks, perpetually young, you who frightens tigers with your vine-clad spear, and with a turban binds your horned head."
Seneca, Phaedra 753
"They say that a certain stranger [xenos] has come, a sorcerer from the Lydian land, with the locks of his tawny hair smelling sweetly, having in his eyes the wine-dark graces of Aphrodite. He stays with the young girls during the evenings and nights, alluring them with joyful mysteries."
Euripides, The Bacchae 230-245
🏛 #Dionysos, 2nd century CE, Musée du Louvre, Paris
"They enchanted their minds with cups in great abundance. Then the immortals loudly cheered, and gave Bakkhos the chief prize for his delicious potion of wine. And Eros, the conductor of the game, drunken himself, crowned the hair of Lyaios (Dionysos) with a vine-and-ivy garland."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 13
"The god [#Dionysos], the son of Zeus, delights in banquets, and loves Eirene (Peace), giver of riches (olbodotes), goddess who nourishes youths. To the blessed and to the less fortunate, he gives an equal pleasure from wine that banishes grief."
Euripides, Bacchae 420
🏛 #Bacchus Mazarin, dated 2nd century CE, Louvre, Paris
"#Bacchus himself, grape-bunches garlanding his brow, brandished a spear that vine-leaves twined, and at his feet fierce spotted panthers lay, tigers and lynxes too, in phantom forms." #Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.572
🏛 #Dionysos with #Panther, terracotta figurine, Myrina, 1st century BCE
"He [#Dionysos] holds this office, to join in dances, to laugh with the flute, and to bring an end to cares, whenever the delight of the grape comes at the feasts of the gods, and in ivy-bearing banquets the goblet sheds sleep over men."
Euripides, Bacchae 375
🏛 Dionysos, Roman sculpture after a Greek model of the 4th century BCE, collection of The Hermitage, St Petersburg
"When Liber [#Dionysos] had come as a guest to Oeneus [. . .] he gave the vine as a gift, and showed him how to plant it, and decreed that its fruit should be called 'oinos' from the name of his host."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 129
🏛 Dionysos, 2nd century CE, Marble, Italy. The arms and legs were heavily restored in the 18th century.
"After Dionysos had demonstrated to the Thebans that he was a god, he went to Argos where again he drove the women mad when the people did not pay him honour, and up in the mountains the women fed on the flesh of the babies suckling at their breasts."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.37
"Some say that because he once gave a judgment against Dionysos, #Midas was changed into an ass; or because he wronged the companions of Dionysos, #Dionysos in anger forced him to have ass's ears."
Suidas s.v. Midas
🏛 Dionysos and #Maenad, 62–79 CE, Fresco from #Pompeii, now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
"But dainty #Bacchus does not blush to sprinkle with perfume his flowing locks, nor in his soft hand to brandish the slender thrysus, when with mincing gait he trails his robe gay with barbaric gold."
Seneca, Hercules Furens 472
"[Dionysos] cut the thickest branch from a fig tree, smoothed and crafted it into a male member, fixed it to the grave, exposed his buttocks, lowered himself and inserted it. In his horniness he moved his buttocks to suffer from the wood what he had promised."
Arnobius of Sicca Adversus gentes 5.28
🏛 Roman intaglio ring depicting #Dionysos with a winged phallus
"Beardless #Ampelos, they say, a Nymph's and a Satyr's son, was loved by #Bacchus [Dionysos] on Ismarian hills. He trusted him with a vine hanging from the leaves of an elm; it is now named for the boy. The reckless youth fell picking gaudy grapes on a branch. Liber [#Dionysos] lifted the lost boy to the stars." #Ovid, Fasti 3.407
""I will tell of #Dionysos, the son of glorious Semele, how he appeared on a jutting headland by the shore of the fruitless sea, seeming like a stripling in the first flush of manhood: his rich, dark hair was waving about him, and on his strong shoulders he wore a purple robe."
Homeric Hymn 7 to Dionysos
🏛 Dionysos detail on Coptic Egyptian tapestry from the 4th Century
"But the god changed into a dreadful lion there on the ship and roared loudly: And so the sailors fled into the stern and crowded about the helmsman, until suddenly the lion sprang upon the master and seized him; and when the sailors saw it they leapt overboard into the bright sea."
Homeric Hymn 7
🏛 #Dionysos, Silenos & pirates, #mosaic, 2nd century CE, Bardo National Museum
"Note that the ancients used the word phlyein (to luxuriate) of an abundant yield of fruit. So they called #Dionysos Phleon (the luxuriant), Protrygaios (the first at the vintage), Staphylites (the god of the grape), Omphakites (the god of the unripe grape), and various other #epithets."
Aelian, Historical Miscellany 3. 41
🏛 Relief of Dionysos with a thyrsos and grape clusters
"In the Erythraian Sea, the daughters of Nereus cherished #Dionysos at their table, in their halls deep down under the waves [...] So he remained in the hall deep down in the waves under the waters, and he lay sprawled among the seaweed in #Thetis' bosom."
🏛 Epiphany of Dionysos #mosaic from the Villa of Dionysos, 2nd century CE, Archeological Museum of Dion, Greece
"They say that when Ariadne wed Liber [Dionysos] on the island of Dia [Naxos], and all the gods gave her wedding gifts, she first received this crown as a gift from Venus [#Aphrodite] and the Horae (Seasons)."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2.5
"Receive this god [#Dionysos] . . . For he is great in other respects, and they say this too of him, as I hear, that he gives to mortals the vine that puts an end to grief. Without wine there is no longer Kypris [#Aphrodite] or any other pleasant thing for men."
Euripides, The Bacchae 770
🏛 #Eros adjusts a kottabos stand while Dionysos reclines on a couch, Bell Krater 395–375 BCE
"Receive this god [Dionysos] . . . For he is great in other respects, and they say this too of him, as I hear, that he gives to mortals the vine that puts an end to grief. Without wine there is no longer Kypris [Aphrodite] or any other pleasant thing for men."
Euripides, The Bacchae 770
🏛 Eros adjusts a kottabos stand while Dionysos reclines on a couch, Bell Krater 395–375 BCE
"We shall rule that the young man under thirty may take wine in moderation, but that he must entirely abstain from intoxication and heavy drinking. But when a man has reached the age of forty, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke #Dionysos, above all other gods." #Plato, Laws 665b
🏛 Drunken Dionysus #Mosaic from Antiochia, 4th century CE