Dionysus

Dionysus Europe
In Greek mythology, the youthful deity of vegetation, wine, and ecstasy. The son of Zeus by Semele, a Theban princess, Dionysus was ‘the roaring one’, a ‘bull-horned god’, because he often manifested himself as a bull, rampant with fertility and power. Dionysus' mother, tricked by jealous Hera, demanded that her divine lover come to her in his true form and, since Zeus was the god of lightning, she was consumed to ashes. From her charred remains, however, Zeus took the unborn child and sewed it up in his thigh until it reached maturity. Thrace and Phrygia vied for the honour of Dionysus' birthplace, though he may have come from the island of Crete: to the Greeks, he was a foreign deity of incredible power—the Thebans refused his worship and were driven to legendary madness and murder. Dionysus was Dimetor, ‘twice mothered’; Enorches, ‘the betesticled’; Arsenothelys, ‘the man-womanly’; Endendros, ‘he in the tree’;...

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