Dionysus

Born twice

The best-known story of Dionysus’s birth comes from Thebes. His mother was Semele, a daughter of Cadmus. Zeus promised to grant her whatever she asked. The goddess Hera persuaded her to ask Zeus to appear to her in his true form as a god.

Zeus came with lightning and thunder, and Semele died. He took her unborn child, six months old, out of the fire. He sewed the baby into his own thigh and let him out when the time for birth had come.

So Dionysus was born once from a mortal mother and again from the body of Zeus. That history lies behind titles such as Dimetor, “of two mothers.”

Many places claimed his birth

Even so, the place of his birth was disputed from early on. The first Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, an early poem in his honour that survives only in pieces, lists rival claims. It names Dracanum, windy Icarus, Naxos, the river Alpheus and Thebes. It does not choose between them.

The island of Naxos made a strong local claim of its own. Naxian writers on myth placed his birth on the island and linked Semele with a local king, Asterius.

This family story is different from the one Apollodorus gives in his Library, which retells the Greek myths. It is best read as a tradition of the island, kept separate from any single version for all of Greece.

Raised on Naxos

Diodorus, a Greek historian from Sicily, keeps Zeus as the father but sets the birth from his thigh on Naxos. Zeus gave the baby to three nymphs, Philia, Coronis and Cleide, who raised him on the island. Local stories placed their care in caves on Mount Zas or near Koronos. The sanctuary at Yria, a sacred place with a temple of Dionysus, gave the god his place in the worship of Naxos.

Naxos also received Dionysus through Ariadne. The hero Theseus left her behind on the island, and the god found her and married her.

His birth, his rescue of Ariadne, his marriage and the voyage he planned with the pirates all draw Dionysus back to Naxos. None of these stories cancels the competing claims of Thebes and the other places.

The pirates’ captive

One of the Homeric Hymns tells how sailors met Dionysus. These were pirates the Greeks called Tyrrhenians. They saw a young man on a headland and decided he would sell for a good price. They seized him, tied him up and took him on board. The ropes fell away from his hands and feet. Only the helmsman understood the warning.

Then wine began to run across the deck. Ivy climbed the mast, and a vine spread over the sail with grapes hanging from it. Dionysus turned into a lion at the front of the ship. The terrified sailors jumped into the sea and became dolphins. The helmsman, who had urged them to set the stranger free, was spared.

Another version of the voyage

Apollodorus tells the episode with a different route and different wonders. In his version, Dionysus hired the ship to take him from Icaria to Naxos. The crew sailed on towards Asia to sell him instead. He turned the mast and oars into snakes and filled the ship with ivy and the sound of flutes. The pirates leapt into the water.

The Homeric Hymn never names Naxos. Apollodorus makes the island the place Dionysus meant to reach. The hymn leaves the voyage without a location.

Names made from events

Diodorus explains the god’s titles through things that happened around him. Bromius, the roaring one, comes from the thunder at his birth. Pyrigenes recalls the child born from fire. Lenaeus links him with grapes trodden in the wine vat. Baccheius comes from the bands of followers who went with him in a religious frenzy.

These names suit a god known through change. Grapes become wine. Worshippers pass into altered states in ritual. A young man becomes a lion, and sailors become dolphins. These changes can bring joy, fear or violence, and the myths do not neatly separate them.

So the pirates’ mistake goes further than failing to recognise a god. They assumed the beautiful young man had a fixed price, and that they controlled where he went. Dionysus turned all of it against them. The captive held the power, the cargo turned into plants and the voyage became a transformation. The sailors only understood who he was after the ship had stopped obeying them.