Editing Dionysus (section)

==Worship and festivals in Rome==
Bacchus was most often known by that name in Rome and other locales in the Republic and Empire, although many "often called him Dionysus."<ref name=":7">{{Cite book |last1=McIntosh |first1=Jane |title=History of the World in 1,000 Objects |last2=Chrisp |first2=Peter |last3=Parker |first3=Philip |last4=Gibson |first4=Carrie |last5=Grant |first5=R. G. |last6=Regan |first6=Sally |date=October 2014 |publisher=[[DK (publisher)|DK]] and the [[Smithsonian]] |isbn=978-1-4654-2289-7 |location=New York |page=83 |author-link=Jane McIntosh |author-link2=Peter Chrisp}}</ref>

===Liber and importation to Rome===
[[File:Colossal statue of Antinous as Dionysus-Osiris.jpg|left|thumb|Colossal statue of [[Antinous]] as Dionysus.]]
[[File:Wall painting - Dionysos with Helios and Aphrodite - Pompeii (VII 2 16) - Napoli MAN 9449 - 01.jpg|thumb|Dionysus with long torch sitting on a throne, with [[Helios]], [[Aphrodite]] and other gods. Antique fresco from [[Pompeii]].]]
The [[mystery cult]] of Bacchus was brought to [[Rome]] from the [[Magna Graecia|Greek culture of southern Italy]] or by way of Greek-influenced [[Etruria]]. It was established around 200 BC in the [[Aventine Hill|Aventine]] grove of [[Semele#Semele in Roman culture|Stimula]] by a [[Paculla Annia|priestess]] from [[Campania]], near the [[Aventine Triad|temple]] where [[Liber Pater]] ("the Free Father") had a State-sanctioned, popular cult. [[Liber]] was a native Roman god of wine, fertility, and prophecy, patron of Rome's [[plebeian]]s (citizen-commoners), and one of the members of the [[Aventine Triad]], along with his mother Ceres and sister or consort Libera. A temple to the Triad was erected on the [[Aventine Hill]] in 493 BC, along with the institution of celebrating the festival of [[Liberalia]]. The worship of the Triad gradually took on more and more Greek influence, and by 205 BC, Liber and Libera had been formally identified with Bacchus and [[Proserpina]].<ref>[[T. P. Wiseman]], "Satyrs in Rome? The Background to Horace's Ars Poetica", ''The Journal of Roman Studies'', Vol. 78 (1988), p. 7, note 52.</ref> Liber was often interchangeably identified with Dionysus and his mythology, though this identification was not universally accepted.<ref>Grimal, Pierre, [https://books.google.com/books?id=iOx6de8LUNAC ''The Dictionary of Classical Mythology''], Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, {{ISBN|978-0-631-20102-1}}.[https://books.google.com/books?id=iOx6de8LUNAC&pg=PA259]</ref> Cicero insisted on the "non-identity of Liber and Dionysus" and described Liber and Libera as children of Ceres.<ref name=cicero/>

Liber, like his Aventine companions, carried various aspects of his older cults into official Roman religion. He protected various aspects of agriculture and fertility, including the vine and the "soft seed" of its grapes, wine and wine vessels, and male fertility and virility.<ref name=cicero>Cicero, ''De Natura Deorum'', 2.6O. See also St Augustine, ''De Civitatis Dei'', 4.11.</ref> Pliny called Liber "the first to establish the practice of buying and selling; he also invented the diadem, the emblem of royalty, and the triumphal procession."<ref>See Pliny, ''Historia Naturalis'', 7.57 (ed. Bostock) at Perseus: [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&layout=&loc=7.57 Tufts.edu]</ref> Roman mosaics and sarcophagi attest to various representations of a Dionysus-like exotic triumphal procession. In Roman and Greek literary sources from the late Republic and Imperial era, several notable triumphs feature similar, distinctively "Bacchic" processional elements, recalling the supposedly historic "Triumph of Liber".<ref name="Mary Beard 2007, pp. 315">[[Mary Beard (classicist)|Beard, Mary]]: ''The Roman Triumph'', The Belknap Press of [[Harvard University Press]], Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, 2007, pp. 315–317.</ref>

Liber and Dionysus may have had a connection that predated Classical Greece and Rome, in the form of the Mycenaean god Eleutheros, who shared the lineage and iconography of Dionysus but whose name has the same meaning as Liber.<ref name=Kerenyi/> Before the importation of the Greek cults, Liber was already strongly associated with Bacchic symbols and values, including wine and uninhibited freedom, as well as the subversion of the powerful. Several depictions from the late Republic era feature processions, depicting the "Triumph of Liber".<ref name="Mary Beard 2007, pp. 315"/>

===Bacchanalia===
{{Main|Bacchanalia}}
[[File:Sacrificio a Baco (Massimo Stanzione).jpg|thumb|left|''Sacrifice to Bacchus''. Oil on canvas by [[Massimo Stanzione]], c. 1634]]
In Rome, the most well-known festivals of Bacchus were the [[Bacchanalia]], based on the earlier Greek Dionysia festivals. These Bacchic rituals were said to have included [[Omophagia|omophagic]] practices, such as pulling live animals apart and eating the whole of them raw. This practice served not only as a reenactment of the infant death and rebirth of Bacchus, but also as a means by which Bacchic practitioners produced "enthusiasm": etymologically, to let a god enter the practitioner's body or to have her become one with Bacchus.<ref>Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy.Routledge, 1996, p. 25</ref><ref>Kraemer, Ross S. "Ecstasy and Possession: The Attraction of Women to the Cult of Dionysus." The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 72 60 Jan.–Apr. 1979.</ref>

[[File:Schutze Bacchus.jpg|thumb|right|''Bacchus with leopard'' (1878) by [[Johann Wilhelm Schütze]]]]
In [[Livy]]'s account (late 1st century BC), the Bacchic mysteries were a novelty at Rome; originally restricted to women and held only three times a year, they were corrupted by an Etruscan-Greek version, and thereafter drunken, disinhibited men and women of all ages and social classes cavorted in a sexual free-for-all five times a month. Livy relates their various outrages against Rome's civil and religious laws and traditional morality (''[[mos maiorum]]''); a secretive, subversive and potentially revolutionary counter-culture. Livy's sources, and his own account of the cult, probably drew heavily on the Roman dramatic ''genre'' known as "Satyr plays", based on Greek originals.<ref>... "the Bacchic passages in the Roman drama, taken over from their Greek models, presented a pejorative image of the Bacchic cult which predisposed the Romans towards persecution before the consul denounced the cult in 186." Robert Rouselle, Liber-Dionysus in Early Roman Drama, ''The Classical Journal'', 82, 3 (1987), p. 193.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |quote=Certainly it is hard to imagine anything less consistent with Roman [[mos maiorum]] than the anarchic hedonism of satyrs. It was precisely libido, that morally subversive aspect of the Bacchic cult, that led to its brutal suppression&nbsp;... |author-link=T. P. Wiseman |last=Wiseman |first=T.P. |title=Satyrs in Rome? The Background to Horace's Ars Poetica |journal=The Journal of Roman Studies |year=1988 |volume=78 |pages=1–13 |doi=10.2307/301447 |jstor=301447 |s2cid=161849654 |url=https://www.jstor.org/pss/301447 }}</ref> The cult was suppressed by the State with great ferocity; of the 7,000 arrested, most were executed. Modern scholarship treats much of Livy's account with skepticism; more certainly, a Senatorial edict, the ''[[Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus]]'' (186 BC) was distributed throughout Roman and allied Italy. It banned the former Bacchic cult organisations. Each meeting must seek prior senatorial approval through a [[praetor]]. No more than three women and two men were allowed at any one meeting, and those who defied the edict risked the death penalty.

Bacchus was conscripted into the official Roman pantheon as an aspect of Liber, and his festival was inserted into the [[Liberalia]]. In Roman culture, Liber, Bacchus and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable equivalents. Thanks to his mythology involving travels and struggles on earth, Bacchus became [[Euhemerism|euhemerised]] as a historical hero, conqueror, and founder of cities. He was a patron deity and founding hero at [[Leptis Magna]], birthplace of the emperor [[Septimius Severus]], who promoted his cult. In some Roman sources, the ritual procession of Bacchus in a tiger-drawn chariot, surrounded by maenads, satyrs and drunkards, commemorates the god's triumphant return from the conquest of India. [[Pliny the Elder|Pliny]] believed this to be the historical prototype for the [[Roman Triumph]].<ref>Pliny attributes the invention of the triumph to "Father [[Liber]]" (who by Pliny's time was identified with Bacchus and Dionysus): see Pliny, ''Historia Naturalis'', 7.57 (ed. Bostock) at Perseus: [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&layout=&loc=7.57 Tufts.edu]</ref>
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