Can someone help on my Greek god Dionysus speech?
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at
1:47 pm
I am doing a speech on the Greek god Dionysus and I already know what he was the god of and how he had a double nature, but I was just seeing if anyone could give me more topics to talk about. I also need to make an outline for it. If you get any information on him, please tell me the website/bibliography information please.
Thank you.
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Tagged with: double nature • greek god dionysus • website bibliography
Filed under: Greek Language
Go to http://www.mythman.com – good stuff.
Tell about his origin – it is very unique and funny.
Tell a myth about how he was often merciful – he took back Midas’ gift and he turned the pirates that kidnapped him into dolphins – dolphins are cool…Tell how the Festival of Dionysia was a theater contest. Tell how his mom was rescued from the underworld and got to live with him on Olympus. Tell how he was half human, yet still got to be a god on Olympus. There’s lots of cool stuff about him!
Well years ago i did a speech on him, I do remember that the greek goddess Hestia gave up her seat for him. Hope that helps any.
Appearance: Dionysus is usually depicted as a dark haired, bearded young man but he can be shown beardless as well.
Dionysus’ Symbol or Attribute: Grapes, winecups, and wineskins; the staff formed of a pinecone on a stick called a thyrsus.
Strengths: Dionysus is the creator of wine. He also shakes things up when it gets dull.
Weaknesses: God of intoxication and drunkenness, states he pursues frequently.
Parents: Son of Zeus and Semele, who unwisely asked to see her lover Zeus in his real form; he appeared and thunder and lightning and Semele was consumed; Zeus saved their child from the ashes of her body.
Spouse: Best known is Ariadne, Cretan princess/priestess who assisted Theseus defeat the Minotaur only to be abandoned by him on the shores of Naxos, one of the islands favored by Dionysos. Fortunately, Dionysus liked beachcombing and quickly comforted the abandoned princess with an offer of marriage.
Children:Several children by Ariadne, including Oenopion and Staphylos, both associated with grapes and winemaking.
Some Major Temple Sites: Dionysus was reverenced at Naxos and generally wherever grapes were grown and wine was produced. In modern times, the so-called "Dirty Monday" rites at Tyrnavos in the Thessaly region of Greece are believed to retain traditions dating back to when he was openly worshiped.
Basic Story: Other than the story of his birth, Dionysus is relatively myth-free, yet he was very widespread in later Greek belief. He was not considered to be one of the Olympians, and since Homer skips him, it is suspected that his worship came late to the Greeks, possibly from Anatolia. He was later "adopted" by the Romans under the name of Bacchus, god of the grape, but the Greek worship of Dionysus was more ecstatic and may have preserved some early shamanic practices related to the intoxication provided by wine.
Interesting Fact:Otherwise proper and repressed Greek matrons devoted to Dionysus would become wild maenads for a night and run the slopes of the mountains, looking for prey to catch and tear apart with their bare hands.
http://gogreece.about.com/od/greekmythology/a/mythdionysus.htm
Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a mortal woman. Semele, the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes, and his father Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus’ wife, Hera, a jealous and prudish goddess, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant. Appearing as an old crone (in other stories a nurse), Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele’s mind. Curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he agreed. Therefore he came to her wreathed in bolts of lightning; mortals, however, could not look upon an undisguised god without dying, and she perished in the ensuing blaze. Zeus rescued the foetal Dionysus by sewing him into his thigh. A few months later, Dionysus was born on Mount Pramnos in the island of Ikaria, where Zeus went to release the now-fully-grown baby from his thigh. In this version, Dionysus is borne by two "mothers" (Semele and Zeus) before his birth, hence the epithet dimētōr (of two mothers) associated with his being "twice-born".
In another version of the same story, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, the queen of the Greek underworld. A jealous Hera again attempted to kill the child, this time by sending Titans to rip Dionysus to pieces after luring the baby with toys. Zeus drove the Titans away with his thunderbolts, but only after the Titans ate everything but the heart, which was saved, variously, by Athena, Rhea, or Demeter. Zeus used the heart to recreate him in the womb of Semele, hence he was again "the twice-born". Other versions claim that Zeus gave Semele the heart to eat to impregnate her.
The rebirth in both versions of the story is the primary reason why Dionysus was worshipped in mystery religions, as his death and rebirth were events of mystical reverence. This narrative was apparently used in several Greek and Roman cults, and variants of it are found in Callimachus and Nonnus, who refer to this Dionysus with the title Zagreus, and also in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus
The legend goes that Zeus gave the infant Dionysus into the charge of Hermes. One version of the story is that Hermes took the boy to King Athamas and his wife Ino, Dionysus’ aunt. Hermes bade the couple raise the boy as a girl, to hide him from Hera’s wrath.[19] Another version is that Dionysus was taken to the rain-nymphs of Nysa, who nourished his infancy and childhood, and for their care Zeus rewarded them by placing them as the Hyades among the stars (see Hyades star cluster). Other versions have Zeus giving him to Rhea, or to Pers