Dionysus and Politics

Constructing Authority in the Graeco-Roman World

Filip Doroszewski, Dariusz Karłowicz, Filip Doroszewski, Dariusz Karłowicz

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000392425
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: Ancient History

This volume presents an essential but underestimated role that Dionysus played in Greek and Roman political thought. Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, the volume covers the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman Empire.

The reader can observe how ideas and political themes rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted and developed over the course of history. The authors (including four leading experts in the field: Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Jean-Marie Pailler, Richard Seaford andRichard Stoneman) reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different types of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in Greek city-state politics, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, and shows how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy.

Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion.

Part I

Dionysus and the polis

1 Dionysos, the polis and power

Cornelia Isler-Kerényi

Before beginning my presentation, two preliminary ideas need setting forth: (1) the perception of Dionysos I have developed from studying his iconography, and (2) the appreciation of art as an indispensable source for approaching the ancient world.

1. Since Friedrich Nietzsche, Dionysos has been considered an expression of the irrational and wild element of the individual and society, in contrast to Apollonian measure and beauty. He was believed to stand outside the Olympic order and therefore outside the regulated world of the polis – a divine ‘Other’. However, as early as 1985, Jean-Pierre Vernant, in his interpretation of Euripides’ Bacchae, demonstrated that although Dionysos is a kind of ‘Other’ vis-à-vis the other gods and may personify evasion and rupture, he nonetheless does so within the system, and with the aim not of destroying it, but of consolidating its internal order and guaranteeing peace in the polis.¹
2. There are at least two serious reasons to take ancient figurative art into account when reflecting on more general cultural topics such as religion or politics in Antiquity. The first is that it is a direct witness of its time. The second is that it expresses a culture that was, in stark contrast to ours, very sparse in images. For its original recipients, each image – whether sculpted or painted on a vase – held enormous communicative power. However, when interpreting an image, it is always necessary to take into account its image-bearer and thus the type of message that its creator wanted to transmit.

Dionysos Gigantomachos in the archaic and classical periods

Dionysos appears in Greek ceramic imagery as early as the seventh century BCE, but it is in Athens that we are able to follow the development of his iconography from generation to generation starting in 580 BCE. Until the age of Pericles, Dionysos is normally portrayed as a bearded man, dressed in a long chiton and himation. His movements are measured and dignified. This is his countenance in the numerous images in which he is accompanied by a thiasos of satyrs and dancing women, but also in the mythological representations in which he always appears as an intermediary and defender of the cosmic order, that is to say, of the authority of Zeus. After 430 BCE, this image changes radically: Dionysos is now most commonly portrayed as a handsome youth, almost completely naked, lying down, sitting or in motion; we do not have time here to explain the meaning of this metamorphosis.² In addition to these two types of representation, another image of Dionysos emerged in 560 BCE and continued to be current until the Hellenistic period: that of the gigantomachos, the god who combats the Giants.³ The Gigantes were children of the Earth, so they belonged to a generation before the Olympian gods, who were children of Kronos and Rhea. The Giants had revolted against the Olympians with the aim of ousting them from power. There was a cruel struggle between the gods (including Dionysos) and the Giants supported by their mother Gea. The victory of the gods would not have been possible without the help of Heracles. The literary tradition, therefore, sees Dionysos fighting not on the side of those opposed to the gods, but alongside those who are committed to the cosmic order and the authority of Zeus. For the Greeks, the gigantomachy was a prefiguration and model of any conflict against barbarian enemies, while the victory of the Olympians foreshadowed the victory of civilisation over those who would try to undermine it. The gigantomachy was therefore a frequent subject of official art, as seen for example in the sculptural decoration of Greek temples.⁴

A revealing example is the decoration of the Siphnian Treasury at the Sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi erected just before 525 BCE. It had two decorated pediments and a frieze running around the outer walls. The frieze at the top of the north face, the first to come into a visitor’s view, is the best preserved. It shows the gigantomachy with a host of figures. Dionysos, whose name is written on the plinth at the bottom of the figuration, is attacking an enemy. He is wearing a short chiton, leaving his legs free, while a panther skin on his shoulders indicates that he is a hunter (Fig. 1.1). It is important to note here that his team of lions is led by Themis (who is also labelled), the deity personifying cosmic order.⁵

Figure 1.1 Dionysos Gigantomachos and Themis. Detail of the gigantomachy frieze, Siphnian Treasury, Delphi (after LIMC IV.2, 374 Dionysos 651).

The first figurations of the gigantomachy on vases precede the Delphic relief by more than a generation. The most remarkable can be found on the fragments of a large globular vase offered to the Acropolis in Athens, signed – and perhaps also dedicated – by Lydos, the most important painter of the period from 560 to 540 BCE.⁶ The vessel is of exceptional value for its shape, size and quality of ornamentation. Here too, Dionysos wears the short chiton that leaves his legs free during the fight.⁷ The enemy giant, attacked by animals allied with Dionysos – three lions, a panther and a snake – has already fallen to one knee (Fig. 1.2). The more striking elements of Dionysos Gigantomachos iconography on black-figure vases – violent movement, short clothing, the wild animals that help the god in the struggle – are found in most of the red-figure images of the fifth century (Fig. 1.3).⁸ It is probably not a coincidence that these images become particularly frequent in the decades after 490 BCE, when the Greek poleis feel threatened by the expansion of the Medes. It should be noted that Dionysos is the most popular gigantomachos for vase painters, more popular even than Athena or Poseidon.⁹

Figure 1.2 Detail of the gigantomachy by Lydos. Fragments of a black-figure dinos, Athens, Acropolis inv. 607 (after Moore 1979, 99).

Figure 1.3 Gigantomachy of Dionysos. Red-figure attic stamnos, London, British Museum inv. E 443 (after Carpenter 1997, pl. 2A).

The most famous fifth-century gigantomachy is most certainly the one from the metopes that adorned the eastern façade of the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, erected between 447 and 438 BCE to celebrate the polis and its victory over the Medes in the Persian Wars. Although badly damaged, they give a fairly accurate idea of Dionysos’ gigantomachy. Here, too, he wears a short chiton and is helped by a panther (Fig. 1.4a‒b).

Figure 1.4a Dionysos Gigantomachos. Eastern metope 2, Athens, Parthenon (after Berger 1986, pl. 40).

Figure 1.4b Dionysos Gigantomachos. Eastern metope 2, reconstruction (after Praschniker 1928, 192, Fig. 119).

Among the iconographic elements characterising the archaic and classical Dionysos Gigantomachos, the most interesting is surely the panther that is almost always helping the god. It is represented under two guises: as the animal skin that the god wears over his shoulders, and as the living animal that supports him in the fight. The image expresses the fact that, although he is an ally of Zeus and of the polis, Dionysos is a hunter and therefore also belongs to the outside world. His action manifests itself in the regulated, civilised life as well as in the wild and dangerous nature that surrounds it.

Dionysos Gigantomachos in Pergamon

The Parthenon image of Dionysos Gigantomachos clearly served as the model for the one found on the monumental altar from the Hellenistic city of Pergamon, erected in tribute to Zeus in the first half of the second century BCE by King Eumenes II, son of Attalos I. Two large relief friezes adorn the monument: a gigantomachy extending over the base, reflecting, among other things, the permanent threat to Pergamon from the Galatians of Anatolia, and, in the colonnade that surrounded the upper courtyard of the building housing the altar, the life of Telephus, the founding hero of the Attalid dynasty. Dionysos is actively involved in both events.

In the gigantomachy, he is placed at the corner of the southern risalite, to the right of the visitor climbing the large staircase leading to the courtyard with the altar. Facing the northern risalite, whose sea deities evoke the Aegean, this risalite evokes the Pergamon region through Dionysos, Semele and Rhea-Cybele.¹⁰ The figure of the god is well preserved with the exception of the face, which, like those of the other gods, was destroyed during Christian times. Curls of hair frame what was once Dionysos’ young face. Like his predecessors, but in the baroque style typical of Pergamenian art, he wears the short chiton with an animal skin draped over it and boots (Fig. 1.5). With his right arm, he is throwing his thyrsus, just as his left-hand grabs the enemy giant (of whom nothing survives) by the hair. Between Dionysos’ legs, we can make out the outline of the panther that accompanies him. To his right are two young satyrs. A careful reading of Dionysos in this iconographic and historical context shows that he is not only a gigantomachos but also Dionysos Kathegemon, the god of the Dionysian mysteries for which Pergamon was famed. This interpretation also explains the exceptional participation of Semele, Dionysos’ mother, in this particular gigantomachy.¹¹

Figure 1.5 Dionysos Gigantomachos. Pergamon Altar, Berlin, Pergamonmuseum (after LIMC IV.2, 375 Dionysos 657).

In the story of the life of Telephus, the presence of Dionysos is implicit in several scenes, but he only actively intervenes in the crucial episode depicted at the centre of the frieze: when he...