Editing Bacchanalia (section)

==Background and development==
{{See also|Bacchus|Liber|Dionysia|Dionysian Mysteries}}
The Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy. They were based on the Greek [[Dionysia]] and the [[Dionysian Mysteries]], and probably arrived in Rome c. 200 BC via the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and from [[Etruria]], Rome's northern neighbour. [[Tenney Frank]] suggests that some form of Dionysian worship may have been introduced to Rome by captives from the formerly Greek city of [[Taranto|Tarentum]] in southern Italy, captured from the Carthaginians in 209 BC.<ref name=Walsh1996/> Like all [[mystery cult]]s, the Bacchanalia were held in strict privacy, and initiates were bound to secrecy; what little is known of the cult and its rites derives from Greek and Roman literature, plays, statuary and paintings. One of the earliest sources is Greek playwright [[Euripides]]'s ''[[The Bacchae]]'', which won the Athenian Dionysia competition in 405 BC. The Bacchanalia may have had mystery elements and public elements; religious dramas which were performed in public, and private rites performed by acolytes and priests of the deity.<ref name="Gildenhard & Zissos 2016">{{cite book |last1=Gildenhard |first1=Ingo |last2=Zissos |first2=Andrew |chapter=The Bacchanalia and Roman Culture |pages=65–68 |jstor=j.ctt1fzhh5b.10 |editor1-last=Gildenhard |editor1-first=Ingo |editor2-last=Zissos |editor2-first=Andrew |title=Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.511-733: Latin Text with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary of Terms, Vocabulary Aid and Study Questions |date=2016 |publisher=Open Book Publishers |isbn=978-1-78374-085-7 }}</ref><ref name=Walsh1996/><ref>{{cite book |last=Baldini |first=Chiara |chapter=The Politics of Ecstasy: the Case of the Bacchanalia Affair in Ancient Rome |editor1-last=Luke |editor1-first=David |editor2-last=King |editor2-first=Dave |title=Neurotransmissions: Essays on Psychedelics from Breaking Convention |date=2015 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-1-907222-43-6 }}</ref>

[[Livy]], the principal Roman literary source on the early Bacchanalia, names [[Paculla Annia]], a [[Campania#Roman period|Campania]]n priestess of Bacchus, as the founder of a [[Religion in ancient Rome#Religio and the state|private, unofficial]] Bacchanalia cult in Rome, based at the grove of [[Semele#Semele in Roman culture|Stimula]], where the western slope of the [[Aventine Hill]] descends to the [[Tiber]]. The Aventine was an ethnically mixed district, strongly identified with Rome's [[plebeian]] class and the ingress of new and foreign cults.<ref name=Orlin2002>{{cite journal |last1=Orlin |first1=Eric M. |title=Foreign Cults in Republican Rome: Rethinking the Pomerial Rule |journal=Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome |date=2002 |volume=47 |pages=1–18 |doi=10.2307/4238789 |jstor=4238789 }}</ref> The wine and fertility god [[Liber Pater]] ("The Free Father"), divine patron of plebeian rights, freedoms and [[augur]]y, had a long-established official cult in the nearby [[Aventine Triad|temple he shared with Ceres and Libera]].<ref name=Takács2000/> Most Roman sources describe him as Rome's equivalent to Dionysus and Bacchus, both of whom were sometimes titled  ''Eleutherios'' (liberator).<ref name=Rousselle1987>{{cite journal |last1=Rousselle |first1=Robert |title=Liber-Dionysus in Early Roman Drama |journal=The Classical Journal |date=1987 |volume=82 |issue=3 |pages=193–198 |jstor=3297899 }}</ref>