Editing Dionysus (section)

===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"/>