Wine could ease suffering, bring joy, and inspire divine madness. Wine was a religious focus in the cult of Dionysus and was his earthly incarnation. His attribute of "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults, as he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called "the god that comes". Most accounts say he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner. The Eleusinian Mysteries identify him with Iacchus, the son or husband of Demeter. In Orphic religion, he was variously a son of Zeus and Persephone a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus or the twice-born son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself. His thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. As Dionysus Eleutherios ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. He was also known as Bacchus ( / ˈ b æ k ə s/ or / ˈ b ɑː k ə s/ Ancient Greek: Βάκχος Bacchos) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Romans) for a frenzy he is said to induce called baccheia. ə ˈ n aɪ s ə s/ Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Dionysos) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus ( / d aɪ. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. This article contains special characters.
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