Twenty Epithets for Dionysus
| December 31, 2012 | 
|
Drinking Bacchus, Guido Reni, 1623
Acratophorus, (“giver of unmixed wine”), at Phigaleia in Arcadia.
Acroreites at Sicyon.
Adoneus (“ruler”) in his Latinised, Bacchic cult.
Aegobolus (“goat killer”) at Potniae, in Boeotia.
Aesymnetes (“ruler” or “lord”) at Aroë and Patrae in Achaea.
Floor mosaic of the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe, from the House of Dionysus, 3rd century A.D.Agrios (“wild”), in Macedonia.
Bromios (“the thunderer” or “he of the loud shout”).
Dendrites (“he of the trees”), as a fertility god.
Bacchus, Peter Paul Reubens, 1638-40Dithyrambos, form of address used at his festivals, referring to his premature birth.
Eleutherios (“the liberator”), an epithet for both Dionysus and Eros.
Endendros (“he in the tree”).
Enorches (“with balls,” with reference to his fertility, or “in the testicles” in reference to Zeus’ sewing the baby Dionysus into his thigh, i.e., his testicles). Used in Samos and Lesbos.
Bacchus, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1595Erikryptos (“completely hidden”), in Macedonia.
Eviüs, in Euripides’ play, The Bacchae.
Iacchus, possibly an epithet of Dionysus and associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries. In Eleusis, he is known as a son of Zeus and Demeter. The name “Iacchus” may come from the Ιακχος (Iakchos), a hymn sung in honor of Dionysus.
Liknites (“he of the winnowing fan”), as a fertility god connected with the mystery religions. A winnowing fan was used to separate the chaff from the grain.
Lyaeus (“he who unties”) or releases from care and anxiety.
Melanaigis (“of the black goatskin”) at the Apaturia festival.
Oeneus, as god of the wine press.
Pseudanor (“false man”), in Macedonia.
| Literature: | History: | Art: |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Fitzgerald's Depression Thomas Heise After forty, all life is a matter of saving face. For those whose successes have run out early, the years are measured less by the decreasing increments of honors achieved, than by the humiliations staved off and the reversals slowed. Among our canonical twentieth-century writers, none suffered this pronouncement—one avoids labeling it a fate—more than F. Scott Fitzgerald. Read More | How Western Europe Developed a Full Scientific Method Christopher Beckwith The lone survivor of traditional Western European ‘scientific’ culture is science. It has survived because it is now the handmaid of technology, without which contemporary civilization would collapse utterly. Anyone who doubts this should try to get a research grant for genuinely “pure” research. Read More | William Kentridge and The Benefits of Doubt Daniel Bosch He had started the series from inside Plato’s cave, so when William Kentridge launched his sixth and final Charles Eliot Norton Lecture with a retelling of the story of Perseus, he gave familiar things back to his audience — the myth itself, and art’s gesture of circling toward origin at closure. Read More |
