Dionysos

Dionysos (also sometimes spelled Dionyssos or Dionissos; Greek: Διόνυσος) is a residential suburb in northeastern Attica, Greece — just about 23 km northeast of Athens. Dionysos is almost purely residential, but there are a few shops. The area sits in the northwestern part of the Penteli mountains and its forests that are dominating the south. Another series of mountains and forests lie to the north. Much of the municipality is forested. Dionysos since the mid to late 1980s is connected with the urban sprawl of Athens but it is east of the agglomeration of Athens as well as the Megali Daktylo. The residential area covers the western part of the municipality. Dionysos is passed by a road linking to the mountains and to Nea Makri. Dionysos is accessed with an interchange with GR-1/E75 (Athens - Lamia - Thessaloniki) at the 19th km 8 km NE and at the 21st km near Varympompi 8 km SE and GR-83 which is also known as Theseos (Theseus) Avenue to the west. The Athenian plain lies to the west. Dionysos is located SE of Thiva, S of Euboea and Oropos, SW of Marathon, NE of Kifissia and NE of the Attiki Odos (number 6). Even though the town is located only 20 Kilometres away from central Athens, it has a completely different climate, with weather being significantly cooler, including frequent snowfall during the winter.
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This article is about the ancient deity. For other uses of the names "Dionysus" and "Dionysos", see Dionysos (disambiguation). For uses of the similar name Dionysius, see Dionysius. "Evius" redirects here. For the moth genus, see Evius (moth).Dionysus or Dionysos (Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος or Διώνυσος; associated with Roman Liber), the Greek god of wine, represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences. He was also known as Bacchus and the frenzy he induces, bakcheia. Bacchus is "manifestly non-Greek," Burkert asserts (1985:163). He is viewed as the promoter of civilization, a lawgiver, and lover of skeptic — as well as the patron deity of agriculture and the theatre. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine. The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the aulos and to bring an end to care and worry. There is also an aspect of Dionysus on his relationship to the "cult of the souls", and the scholar Xavier Riu writes that Dionysus presided over communication between the living and the dead.
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n. Dionysus, ancient Greek god of wine and fertility (corresponds to the Roman god Bacchus)

n. Dionysus, ancient Greek god of wine and fertility (corresponds to the Roman god Bacchus)

[Greek] Dionysus, also commonly known by his Roman name Bacchus, appears to be a god who has two distinct origins. On the one hand, Dionysus was the god of wine, agriculture, and fertility of nature, who is also the patron god of the Greek stage. On the other hand, Dionysus also represents the outstanding features of mystery religions, such as those practiced at Eleusis: ecstasy, personal delivery from the daily world through physical or spiritual intoxication, and initiation into secret rites. Scholars have long suspected that the god known as Dionysus is in fact a fusion of a local Greek nature god, and another more potent god imported rather late in Greek pre-history from Phrygia (the central area of modern day Turkey) or Thrace. According to one myth, Dionysus is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal woman, Semele (daughter of Cadmus of Thebes). Semele is killed by Zeus' lightning bolts while Dionysus is still in her womb. Dionysus is rescued and undergoes a second birth from Zeus afte...
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Dionysos (Greek) [from dio from dis old form of Zeus + Nysa] Also Dionysius. Zeus of Nysa, a mountain variously placed in Thrace, Boeotia, Arabia, India, Asia Minor, and Libya; another name is Bacchos (gk char), a form of Iacchos [from 'iachein to shout] in allusion to the Bacchic invocation. Among the Romans he is called Liber, which some connect with liber (free), calling him the liberator (cf labarum, the later mystic emblem of the Christ). He was worshiped in Athens at the Dionysia, held a position at Delphi almost equal to Apollo, and appears in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The son of Zeus and Semele, sun and moon -- hence bisexual in character and so able to be regarded at different times as a solar or lunar deity. His meaning overlaps those of Krishna, Brahma, Christos, Adonai, Mithras, and Prometheus, for he is a savior, mediator between God and man, the celestial and the terrestrial. He was also the god who sprang from the world egg, and from whom mortals in their turn sprang, uniting in himself the nature of either sex.
The principal symbols of Dionysos are wine, the vine, and the grape which also typify the double meaning implied in the true Mysteries and their perversion. For wine is a symbol of the spirit of the Christ, as bread is of the body; and both were administered in the mystic rite from which the Christian sacrament is derived. When his inner god becomes manifest to the qualified initiate, his whole nature is illumined and vivified. But one who seeks the afflatus unprepared is driven mad or destroyed by his inner god. The Bacchic orgies and Dionysiac frenzy were a later profanation.
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