Day 18 with Dionysus (11.10.2016)

• p26: about how communality is possible and political
• dionysos is not a god of the upper classes — p27 (therefore not present much in homer and when he is he’s weak)
• he is honoured at aristocratic drinking parties but

a feature of Dionysos that may not have appealed to some aristocracts was his inclusiveness, his association with the celebrations of a whole community — 27

• Demosthenes, Meidias 52- athenian citizens worship dionysos ‘all mixed up together’
• plato, Laws 665- free man/slave, man/woman, the whole polis

A community, especially a polis, needs to express its unity, to make itself visible, to itself and others — 28

• st Augustine in 354–430 is writing about bacchic fenzy in north africa (Ep.17.4)
• there is still a festival in Skyros that resembles closely the anthesteria
• Aeschines 3.41- slaves freed, and prisoners freed
• artemidorus 2.37- signifies freedom in slave cult
• Bacchae 443–7, 498, 649; Pausanias 9.16.6- frees from prison
• tibullus 1.7.41–2- rest to chained slaves
• plutarch, Moralia 613c and Aelius Aristides 2.331 Keil- realses from everything
• at Eretria (308 BCE) his cult is deployed to help celebrate the liberation of the city
• at Athens (294 BCE) the liberator Demetrius Poliorkētēs was associated with Dionysos
• Dionysos promotes peace.
• Bacchae 419–20- he ‘loves Peace who gives wealth’

As early as about 600(bc)BCE a canctuary of Zeus, Hera, and Dionysos was -it seems- common to the rival cities of Lesbos (Akaios fragment 129). And as late as the first century (ad)CE Diodorus maintains that Dionysos ‘in general resolved conflicts between peoples and cities, and created concord and much peace in place of civil conflicts and wars’ (3.64.7)— 29

• according to Seaford Dionysos’ association with freedom and communality comes from his association with wine

He liberates psychologically through wine (Bacchae 279–83, Plutarch Moralia 68d, 716b). And wine tends to dissolve boundaries between poeple. — 29

• Spartans apparently did not do Dionysos or wine drinking and the whole thing reminds me of the warrior in GOT

this guy

anyway…

• the festivals do include elements of opposites.
• In particular isolation through two myths that are a part of the athenian anthesteria
• Dionysus manages to get Hephaistos back into Olypos.
• this equates to getting craftsmen back into the community because even though aristocrats may not like them, or may look down on them, ‘craftsmen are necessary, and so the political exclusion threatens the community’- 30
• the images of reintergrating Hephaistos on the françois vase

seems to embody the power of Dionysos and his wine to intergrate into a single group (Olympos) vital but potentially marginalised or centrifugal people such as rustics and craftsmen: social intergration is expressed in the (ritual) processional integration of space. — 31

• in sme examples Dionysos himself is rejected first and then carried back in (on a procession of phallus’)

The rejection may express — amoung other things — hostility to a marginal group — 31

• the arrival of an outsider (something attributed to Dionysos) may also help to unite people because he bwlongs to no faction and can provide a focus for everyone
• devision between the rich and poor was a thing needing sorting in anciet Greece. It’s been around a while. just sayin’
• “mystic initiation merges the individual soul into the group” -32
• plato Symposium 218b- Dionysiac frenzy is a shared experience
• cohesion: cleaving together. women&nature. ‘paradoxical cohesion of an ecstatic group’- 33
• Dionysos doesn’t need wine to dissolve the boundaries of the soul (seaford)
• psychic cohesion=group consciousness for Seaford.
• Pentheus is isolated because he rejects Dionysos. like he is isoltaed psychologically
• aristophanes Lysistrata 1–3- says athenian women would ‘gladly’ gather together to do some frenzied dancing
• p34- lots of examples of women leaving the polis/city space and going into nature together to worship Dionysos

the polis is composed of separate households, a structure that is most conspicuously embodied in the tendancy for each woman to be confined to the domestic sphere. And so for her to leave her seperate household (in some versions, as in the Bacchae, specifically her loom) so as to transcend the boundaries, both physical and psychic, between herself and other women and between herself and nature — this is a symbolic reversal of the civilised structure of the polis. — 34

• this is kind of applicable to the LGBT community. In ‘coming out’/ entering the ‘scene’/ or participating politically the LGBT leave their ‘seperate’ housholds and transcend boundaires and come together.

But this reversal of the structure of the pollis is also the most conspicuous possible expression of its communality. — 34

• by reversing of the controlling aspects of the polis or society. By reversing the civilising act of the polis. There is an expression of unity amoung the people. This is connected to the counter culture.

The polis contains a tension between adherence to the polis and adherence to the household. — 34

• An interesting idea, maybe not relevant to my paper though?
• Maybe you could talk about an adhearance to the ‘houshold’ of the Queer community, and the ‘polis’ as societal norms?
• the appeal of foreign spirits to mrginal groups — 36
• by reversing the Polis, it als re-inforces it becuase it is just a temporary reversal….the festival ends.- 36

Dionysos is in the Athenian democracy imagined as subversive of autocracy, but for this very reason may in an actual autocracy be appropriated by the autocrat. — 37

• ‘as a symbol of universal joy persisted into nineteenth-century Germany’.- 37
• p38. rulers/dictators associated themselves with the dionysiac cult in an effort to control the cult. As is the cult was something dangerous? There is a recognition there that the Dionysiac is something to be reconned with for rulers.
• also Dionysos is associated with victory, and conquering (asia)
• p39. Dionysos does a lot of Epiphany. By wich we can say he is a god who is concerned with existing amoungst the poeple.
• epiphany is associated with human control over order. — 40
• p43. Dionysos is all about being outside, being roofless, and he is more likely to destroy a building than give instructions to build one. mobility is a thing.
• p44. If they are not doing communal things then it is called disease and Dionysos is portrayed as the healer.

His healing power consists in the social unity achieved by communal ritual and by his status as an outsider. — 44

• Maybe then we can call the dionysiac healing? that the act of community is healing and that the act of being together and being frenzied and a bit mad that is healing.
• power coming from powerlessness sort of or the imagine of powerlessness — 44
• Dionysus has an inner circle — 47