Greek Tragedy: Background

1. Dionysus

1. Festivals: the plays were all written for a single performance at one of the dramatic festivals dedicated to Dionysus.

The most important was the Great Dionysia held in the spring of the year.

2. Dionysus: the god of drama and dance, the god of the symposium and of wine; the god of mysteries of devotion and communion with the god.

Ambiguities of Dionysus: powerful and masculine but also pretty and effeminate; the smiling god and a god of primitive violence; liberating god who can deny a person dignity and even identity [v. Bacchae].

[Dionysos'] domain is...the whole of hugra phusis, not only the liquid fire of the grape, but the sap thrusting in a young tree, the blood pounding in the veins of a young animal, all the mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature. (E. R. Dodds, in his edition of the Bacchae.

 

 

Dionysus (Cos Museum)