King Pentheus of Thebes refused to accept the god's divinity and tried to apprehend him. As punishment, the god inflicted him with madness causing him to murder his wife and son and mutilate himself with an axe. The Thrakian king Lykourgos (Lycurgus) attacked Dionysos and his companions as they were travelling through his land and drove them into the sea. Hera was enraged when she learned of the boy's location and drove the couple mad, causing them to kill both their children and themselves. >Īfter his birth from the thigh of Zeus, Dionysos was first entrusted to the care of Seilenos (Silenus) and the nymphs of Mount Nysa, and later to his aunt Ino, Semele's sister, and her husband Athamas.

Zeus recovered their unborn child from her body, sewed him up in his own thigh, and carried him to term. Bound by oath, the god was forced to comply and she was consumed by the heat of his lightning-bolts. During the course of her pregnancy, the god's jealous wife Hera tricked Semele into asking Zeus to appear before her in his full glory. MYTHSĭionysos was a son of Zeus and the princess Semele of Thebes.

He was usually accompanied by a troop of Satyrs and Mainades (wild female devotees). His attributes included the thyrsos (a pine-cone tipped staff), a drinking cup and a crown of ivy. He was depicted as either an older, bearded god or an effeminate, long-haired youth. Liber, Bacchus Dionysus riding panther, Greek mosaic from Pella C4th B.C., Pella Archaeological MuseumĭIONYSOS (Dionysus) was the Olympian god of wine, vegetation, pleasure, festivity, madness and wild frenzy.

Amazon fates and furies