Bacchus

cults3d

Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility theatre and religious ecstasy in Greek mythology. Wine played an important role in Greek culture with the cult of Dionysus the main religious focus for unrestrained consumption.His name, thought to be a theonym in Linear B tablets shows that he may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks, other traces of the Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms, some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner, in others, from Ethiopia in the South.