Dionysus

God of wine, ritual ecstasy, and the theatre — late-coming youngest of the Olympians. Hera tricked his mortal mother Semele of Thebes into demanding Zeus reveal himself in his true form; she was consumed by the lightning and Zeus sewed the unborn child into his thigh, from which Dionysus was born twice. Euripides's *Bacchae* dramatises his return to Greece and the punishment of Pentheus, who refused him.

Associated Places