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In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (/ d aɪ. ə ˈ n aɪ s ə s /; Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Diónysos) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre.
Dionysius the Areopagite with Thomas Aquinas, Madonna and the Child. Madonna and Child Enthroned between Angels and Saints by Domenico Ghirlandaio 1486. Διονυσίου του Αρεοπαγίτου, τα σωζόμενα πάντα, or Sancti Dionysii Areopagitæ, opera omnia quæ extant [All extant works of Dionysius the Areopagite] (Venice: Antonio Zatta, 1756)
The Bible never states when Jesus was born, [161] [162] [163] but, by late antiquity, Christians had begun celebrating his birth on 25 December. [162] In 274 AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian had declared 25 December the birthdate of Sol Invictus , a sun god of Syrian origin whose cult had been vigorously promoted by the earlier emperor Elagabalus .
Etymologically it is a nominalized adjective formed with a -ios suffix from the stem Dionys- of the name of the Greek god, Dionysus, [1] parallel to Apollon-ios from Apollon, with meanings of Dionysos' and Apollo's, etc. The exact beliefs attendant on the original assignment of such names remain unknown.
The etymology of the name is uncertain. Proposals include derivation from damar δάμαρ "wife, spouse", a contraction of the classical Greek name Damarete Δαμαρέτη (attested as the name of a daughter of Theron of Acragas and wife of Gelo), or derivation from damalis δάμαλις "heifer"; a Coptic derivation has also been considered.
A book on the subject, published in 1998 by the militant secularist Sefi Rechlevsky, aroused a major controversy in the Israeli public opinion. [ 8 ] With the rise of Christianity , some believers came to see the cross-shaped marking present on donkeys' backs and shoulders as a symbol of the animal's bearing Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday .
The cult of Dionysus was strongly associated with satyrs, centaurs, and sileni, and its characteristic symbols were the bull, the serpent, tigers/leopards, ivy, and wine. The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus , as well as the phallic processions .
Orphism has been described as a reform of the earlier Dionysian religion, involving a re-interpretation or re-reading of the myth of Dionysus and a re-ordering of Hesiod's Theogony, based in part on pre-Socratic philosophy. [3] The suffering and death of the god Dionysus at the hands of the Titans has been considered the central myth of Orphism ...