He was a god.
- Greek god of wine, celebrations and fertility, inspiration, ritual madness, theatre and religious ecstasy.
- In Roman mythology, known as Bacchus or Liber.
- Patron deity of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
- His Roman name, Liber, means ‘free’, and he was often paired with Libera, a goddess often equated with his mother, Semele, or his consort, Persephone.
- Greek religious rituals that incorporated music and dance as means of worshipping gods were a significant feature of the Dionysian cults.
- Greek theatre originated from ritual performances to honour Dionysus that often involved actors wearing goat skins
(tragoi = goats).
- In mythology, one of the Twelve Olympians, the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Semele. Zeus took the infant into his thigh to save him from Semele when her wish to behold Zeus in all his thunderous celestial glory consumed her to ashes with her mortal eyes.
- Depicted as an eternally youthful, attractive male or androgynous figure in art