The Bacchanalia

[Neos Dionysos]

I've been trying to dig around information on this festival and over the Dionysos cult in general and I still seem lost.

 

I know Dionysos is one of those few Gods who enterned into the Greek culture from who knows where, just that he's always been there, (or at least longer than the Greeks), and over time his image and interpretation changed.

 

Concerning the Bacchanalia, why did Rome declare it illegal and subversive to the Roman Way of life? I've heard why they claimed they did but was thier any truth to those claims? Was it something else entirely? Were they scared of it?

 

And finally... did early Christianity borrow many aspects of the early faith from the worship of Dionysos, as in stories and events or believed actions that had been performed etc? Thanks for any comments, info or simply suggestions guys.

[Kosmo]

You can find something in Mircea Eliade "History of religious ideas" vol 2, chapter 20. "Roman Religion: From Its Origin to the Prosecution of the Bacchanals (ca. 186)."

[Pantagathus]

Dionysos seems to have originated in Neolithic Asia Minor. Or at least elements of his cult symbolism show up in the Archaeological record of Catal Huyuk.

 

That's why he seems to have 'always been there' as you say, because he was carried by the people during different diaspora waves. That's why he was featured in many of the ancient mystery cults of Pelsgian origins as well.

 

Initially, the cult was about initiation into life, the respectful celebration of earthly existence, death, and resurrection.

 

The celebration of earthly existence part got a little too crazy and orgiastic over time and that's why the Romans got fed up with it...

 

There are definite elemental similarities with Christianity but I

[Pertinax]

Oddly I mentioned Fraser's "Golden Bough" in passing when commenting on a blog entry. Although considered to be an anachronism in contemporary terms I think it might repay at least a cursory perusal.

 

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3623

Edited February 16, 2006 by Pertinax

[Favonius Cornelius]

For information on the Roman version of this cult, see my thread on The Cult of Bacchus.

[Ursus]

Supposedly the adherents of the cult would take on an ecstatic euphoria where the god would obliterate all boundaries - between male and female, man and animal, mortal and god. While in this state the cult adherents were rumored to commit atrocities, ranging from eating raw animal flesh to committing nocturnal murders.

 

Even if the claims were exaggerated, doubtless the cult was a rowdy bunch whose mores offended conservative Romans. More to the point, the cult was a private arrangement that had nothing to do with the venerable State sanctioned religion. In this private cult there were certain arrangements that defied conventional Roman sensibilities. For instance, powerful men would have to submit their lives and fortunes to the lower class, rural women who were often the clergy of Bacchus. The Roman Senate had little tolerance for what they saw as social perversions and severely restricted the cult.

 

At some point in the empire, the cult as a counter-culture, revolutionary and "subversive" movement practically ceased to exist. Instead the Roman well-to-do had reasonably quiet celebrations of Bacchus as the god of wine in furtherance of a feel-good Roman imperial pride. Bacchus was turned from a demonic god into an excuse for the establishment to toast their own success. The Roman Empire at its height was so grand that it managed to subvert the subversive god.