Classical Dionysus: God of wine, fruitfulness, parties, festivals, madness, chaos, drunkenness, vegetation, ecstasy, and the theater. He is the twice-born son of Zeus and Semele, in that Zeus snatched him from his mother's womb and stitched Dionysius into his own thigh and carried him until he was ready to be born. In art he is depicted as either an older bearded god (particularly before 430 BC) or an effeminate, long-haired youth (particularly after 430 BC). His attributes include the thyrsus, a drinking cup, the grape vine, and a crown of ivy. He is often in the company of his thiasos, a group of attendants including satyrs, maenads, and his old tutor Silenus. The consort of Dionysus was Ariadne. It was once held that Dionysius was a later addition to the Greek pantheon, but the discovery of Linear B tablets confirm his status as a deity from an early period. Bacchus was another name for him in Greek, and came into common usage among the Romans. His sacred animals include dolphins, serpents, tigers, and donkeys.
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DIONYSOS, the youthful, beautiful, but effeminate god of wine. He is also called both by Greeks and Romans Bacchus (Bakchos), that is, the noisy or riotous god, which was originally a mere epithet or surname of Dionysus, but does not occur till after the time of Herodotus.
According to the common tradition, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus of Thebes (Hom. Hymn. vi. 56; Eurip. Bacch. init.; Apollod. iii. 4. § 3); whereas others describe him as a son of Zeus by Demeter, Io, Dione, or Arge. (Diod. iii. 62, 74; Schol. ad Pind. Pyth. iii. 177; Plut. de Flum. 16.) Diodorus (iii. 67) further mentions a tradition, according to which he was a son of Ammon and Amaltheia, and that Ammon, from fear of Rhea, carried the child to a cave in the neighbourhood of mount Nysa, in a lonely island formed by the river Triton. Ammon there entrusted the child to Nysa, the daughter of Aristaeus, and Athena likewise undertook to protect the boy. Others again represent him as a son of Zeus by Persephone or Iris, or describe him simply as a son of Lethe, or of Indus. (Diod. iv. 4; Plut. Sympos. vii. 5; Philostr. Vit. Apollon. ii. 9.)
Dionysus