Myth Monday - Dionysus, Dismemberment, and the Origin of Humans

Last week I pointed out elements of the birth story of Dionysus about which there was agreement in the early writers. In that version, Semele, mother of Dionysus, died before she could give birth, so Zeus sewed the fetus in his thigh. Thus, when Dionysus finally emerged into the light, he had been born twice. There is, however, more to the story of the birth of Dionysus. As Max Bini commented last week, it is possible to think of Dionysus as thrice-born. This version is sometimes used to assert a Dionysian origin for mankind.

Dismemberment

The stories connected with Dionysus include a repeated theme of dismemberment (sparagmos).

Euripides - The Bacchae

In Euripides' well-known version of the story of Dionysus' appearance in his ancestral land, Thebes (the city Cadmus founded), close relatives challenge Dionysus' claim to be the son of a god. In retaliation, Dionysus drives the Theban women mad. They become "maenads". In their bacchic frenzy, wearing snake-belted fawn skins, with loose, ivy-twined hair, and carrying Dionysus' emblematic thyrsus, they tear apart the cousin of Dionysus, King Pentheus.

This sparagmos is the subject of an Attic vase by Euphronios from about 510 B.C. (I couldn't find a creative commons image of the Euphronios, but the accompanying photo depicts pretty much the same scene.) It continued as a popular subject of vase painting and tragedy. In Euripides' Bacchae, the frenzied women are identified as the late Semele's sister Agave (mother of Pentheus) and her sisters. To make sure you grasp the full horror, even at the risk of re-stating the obvious, this means that the mother and aunts killed their own son/nephew.

So them [the sisters of Semele] I stung in madness from their homes and they dwell on the mountain stricken in their wits; I compelled them to wear the apparel proper to my rites, and all the female seed of the Cadmeians, all of the women,I maddened from their homes; together with the children of Cadmus, mingled with them, under the green firs they sit on rocks, with no roof above. For this land must learn to the full, even against its will, that it is uninitiated in my bacchic rites. (Eur. Bacchae 31-40 from the Hedreen article).

• Dionysus: The God a Foolish Mortal Imprisoned

Dionysus Causes Other Dismemberments

When daughters of King Minyas at Orchomenon refused to worship Dionysus, they, too, wound up worked to a Bacchic frenzy in order to dismember their child. Apollodorus reports similar son-killing by a king named Lycurgus (Lykourgos):

But Lycurgus, son of Dryas, was king of the Edonians, who dwell beside the river Strymon, and he was the first who insulted and expelled him. Dionysus took refuge in the sea with Thetis, daughter of Nereus, and the Bacchanals were taken prisoners together with the multitude of Satyrs that attended him. But afterwards the Bacchanals were suddenly released, and Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad. And in his madness he struck his son Dryas dead with an axe, imagining that he was lopping a branch of a vine, and when he had cut off his son's extremities, he recovered his senses. But the land remaining barren, the god declared oracularly that it would bear fruit if Lycurgus were put to death. On hearing that, the Edonians led him to Mount Pangaeum and bound him, and there by the will of Dionysus he died, destroyed by horses.
Apollodorus 3.5.1

• Iliad Book VI refers to Lycurgus and Dionysus

Another Version of Dionysus' Birth, With Dismemberment

Another major dismemberment is connected with the birth stories of Dionysus. In one thread, the real mother of Zagreus, aka Dionysus, is Persephone, the queen of the Underworld. Dionysus' father is, as ever, Zeus. A jealous Hera, wife of the philandering Zeus, sets the Titans to do her dirty work. They cut to pieces the toddling wine god and eat him, but his heart is saved and brought to Zeus by Athena. Zeus swallows the heart and with it, impregnates the mortal Semele. Semele, as before, dies before she can give birth, etc.

Titans Punished

The Titans wind up imprisoned or dead. Sometimes it is the killing of Dionysus rather than the revolt against Zeus that leads to the Titan imprisonment in Tartarus. In other versions, Zeus kills the Titans with his lightning bolts.

• Titanomachy

Creation of Humans

Some versions of the Titan story about Dionysus begin with the sparagmos and end with the punishment of the Titans, but in others there is a third phase, the anthropogony or creation of the human race from the ashes of the Titans. Since these creatures have cannibalized Dionysus, the creation from their remains bears a trace of the god.

Dionysus and the Orphic Mysteries

This anthropogony makes humans a combination of the good, the god, and the bad, the Titans. This is especially associated with Orphic mysteries. This is a complicated topic of its own that deals with the idea of inherited guilt and the parallel journeys of Orpheus and Dionysus to the Underworld where Orpheus, unsuccessfully, and Dionysus, successfully, retrieve, in the one case, his wife, and in the other, his mother. If this is a topic you understand and wish to elaborate on, please post in the comments.

Sources:

• "Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth: A Few Disparaging Remarks on Orphism and Original Sin," by Radcliffe Edmonds. Classical Antiquity, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Apr., 1999), pp. 35-73.
  
• "Silens, Nymphs, and Maenad," by Guy Hedreen. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 114 (1994), pp. 47-69.
• "Dionysus and Tragedy," by Laszlo Versényi. The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Sep., 1962), pp. 82-97.