Editing Dionysus (section)

===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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