CLA 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Orgia, Acropolis Of Athens, Pentheus
Document Summary
There is a parallel between blood and wine: male fertility god: complements demeter, dionysus causes honey to come forth, vines to grow, yet, dionysus inspires passion in the short term, while demeter grows grain over a whole season. Symbols: ivy, vines, phallus, horns of a bull. The role of the irrational, loss of control: challenge for the rational greeks to embrace their irrational selves in exuberant excess, mythic biography must be pieced together from various sources, most significant source (a tragedy): euripides" bacchae. Stories of dionysus: dionysus" birth and early life. Semel , princess of thebes, gets pregnant by zeus, who appears to her disguised as a mortal. Semel asks for one wish from zeus: that he appear to her in all his glory, as he does to hera (to prove that it"s true) Zeus and hermes save the fetus (dionysus: gives birth to dionysus three months later dionysus is twice born.
