Marble Roman sarcophagus depicting the Triumph of Bacchus returning from India. The top course shows Dionysus’s birth from the thigh of Zeus.
Below: Birth of the Buddha, Kushan period. Gandhara, probably Takht-i-Bahi. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Many have noticed the similarities between Bacchus and Buddha, Buddha and Christ, and Bacchus and Christ. The images of the trio are like that of the Three Hares of the Silk Road, sharing components as they endlessly circle each other.
Left: 2nd century Roman statue of Dionysus leaning on a herme, after a Hellenistic model (ex-coll. Cardinal Richelieu, Louvre)
Dionysus or Dionysos is the ancient Greek god of wine, the god who inspires ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology. Dionysus was a god of resurrection.
He was also known as Bacchus, the name adopted by the Romans. (In Greek “both votary and god are called Bacchus.” Burkert, Greek Religion 1985:162, noting, for the initiate, Euripides, Bacchantes 491, for the god, who alone is Dionysus, Sophocles Oedipus the King 211 and Euripides Hippolytus 560.)
Scholars have discussed Dionysus’ relationship to the “cult of the souls” and his ability to preside over communication between the living and the dead. (Riu, Xavier, Dionysism and Comedy, Chapter 4, Happiness and the Dead, p.105, “Dionysus presides over communications with the Dead”.)
In Greek mythology, Dionysus is made out to be a son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. Dionysus was born on Mount Pramnos in the island of Ikaria, where Zeus went to release the fully-grown baby from his thigh.
Dionysus is a god of mystery religious rites. In the Thracian mysteries, he wears the bassaris or fox-skin, symbolizing new life.
The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus. Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced Gnosticism[citation needed]. Orpheus was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus. (Apollodorus (Pseudo Apollodorus), Library and Epitome, 1.3.2. “Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been torn in pieces by the Maenads he is buried in Pieria.”)
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Wheel of Konark Sun Temple in Orissa, India Later tradition and legend characterized the Buddha’s father, King Suddhodana as the descendant of the Solar Dynasty of Ikshvaku, in the Vedic civilisation of ancient India. Aspects of this story may have been borrowed from Hindu texts, such as the account of the birth of Indra from the Rig Veda. The story may also have Hellenic influences. For a time after Alexander the Great conquered central Asia in 334 BCE, there was considerable intermingling of Buddhism with Hellenic art and ideas. There also is speculation that the story of the Buddha’s birth was “improved” after Buddhist traders returned from the Middle East with stories of the birth of Jesus. |
Introduced into Rome (c. 200 BCE), the bacchanalia were held in secret and attended by women only, in the grove of Simila, near the Aventine Hill, on March 16 and 17. Subsequently, admission to the rites were extended to men and celebrations took place five times a month. The notoriety of these festivals led to a decree by the Senate in 186 BCE — inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Calabria — by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout all Italy except in special cases that required specific approval by the Senate.
Parallels between Dionysus and Christ can be traced to Friedrich Hölderlin, whose identification of Dionysus with Christ is most explicit in Brod und Wein (1800–1801) and Der Einzige (1801–1803). (The mid-19th century debates are traced in G.S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany, 2004.)
Modern scholars such as Martin Hengel, Barry Powell, and Peter Wick, among others, argue that Dionysian religion and Christianity have notable parallels. (Studies in Early Christology, by Martin Hengel, 2005, p.331; Powell, Barry B., Classical Myth Second ed. With new translations of ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1998.; Wick, Peter (2004). “Jesus gegen Dionysos? Ein Beitrag zur Kontextualisierung des Johannesevangeliums”. Biblica (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute) 85 (2): 179–198.)
They point to the symbolism of wine and the importance it held in the mythology surrounding both Dionysus and Jesus. (Pausanias, Description of Greece 6. 26. 1 – 2; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 2. 34a)
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Good shepherd, Chi-Rho, swastika, anchor, fish, and ichthus from Catacombs of St. Sebastian, Rome There are many parallels between Dionysus and Christ: both were said to have been born from a mortal woman but fathered by a god, to have returned from the dead, and to have transformed water into wine. The modern scholar Barry Powell also argues that Christian notions of eating and drinking “the flesh” and “blood” of Jesus was influenced by the cult of Dionysus. It is also possible these similarities between Christianity and Dionysiac religion are all only representations of the same common religious archetypes. According to Martin A. Larson in The Story of Christian Origins (1977), Osiris was the first savior, and all soteriology in the region borrowed this religion, directly and indirectly, including Mithraism and Christianity, from an Osirian-Dionysian influence. As with their common dying and resurrected saviors, they all share common sacraments, ostensibly grounded in their reliance on seasonal cereal agriculture, having adopted the rituals with the food itself. Larson notes that Herodotus uses the names Osiris and Dionysus interchangeably and Plutarch identifies them as the same, while the name was anciently thought to originate from the place Nysa, in Egypt. |
Some scholars argue that both Dionysus and Jesus represent the dying-god mythological archetype. (Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion, 1985 pp. 64, 132)
Other elements, such as the celebration by a ritual meal of bread and wine, also have parallels. (Powell, Barry B., Classical Myth Second ed. With new translations of ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1998.)
Powell, in particular, argues precursors to the Christian notion of transubstantiation can be found in Dionysian religion.
Dionysus has changed appearances over the centuries many times over, yet one attribute has been consistent time and time again: his dominion over the vine. Dionysus provides the sweet grapes and the intoxicating wines of the Earth; in fact, Dionysus IS the wine. It should then follow suit that if Dionysus IS the wine and the grapes, he is also of the and IS the Eartha doctrine which is also seen in Christian beliefs of the Eucharist as the body of Christ and the wine as his blood. Similarly, worshippers of Dionysus offered libations of wine, usually in a goblet or dish, in reverence of the god for fertility and bountiful harvest; a ritual which today is a part of both Christian and Catholic mass.
– Parallels of Christianity: Paganism, and the Modern World: Bacchus
In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche contrasted Dionysus with the god Apollo as a symbol of the fundamental, unrestrained aesthetic principle of force, music, and intoxication versus the principle of sight, form, and beauty represented by the latter.
Right: 2nd century CE Roman statue of Apollo depicting the god’s attributes—the lyre and the snake Python. God of music, poetry, plague, oracles, medicine.
There are generally two broad opinions on the origins of Apollo: one derives him from the East, the other connects him to the Dorians and their apellai (cf. also the month Apellaios). (Fritz Graf, Apollo, p. 104-113)
Homer pictures him on the side of the Trojans, against the Achaeans, during the Trojan War and he has close affiliations with a Luwian deity, Apaliunas, who in turn seems to have traveled west from further east.
The Late Bronze Age (from 1700–1200 BCE) Hittite and Hurrian Aplu, like the Homeric Apollo, was a god of plagues, and resembles the mouse god Apollo Smintheus. Here we have an apotropaic situation, where a god originally bringing the plague was invoked to end it, merging over time through fusion with the Mycenaean healer-god Paeon (PA-JA-WO in Linear B).
Paeon, in Homer’s Iliad, was the Greek healer of the wounded gods Ares and Hades. In other writers, the word becomes a mere epithet of Apollo in his capacity as a god of healing, but it is now known from Linear B that Paeon was originally a separate deity.
Homer illustrated Paeon the god, as well as the song both of apotropaic thanksgiving or triumph, and Hesiod also separated the two; in later poetry Paeon was invoked independently as a god of healing. It is equally difficult to separate Paeon or Paean in the sense of “healer” from Paean in the sense of “song.”
Such songs were originally addressed to Apollo, and afterwards to other gods, Dionysus, Helios, Asclepius.
About the fourth century BCE, the paean became merely a formula of adulation; its object was either to implore protection against disease and misfortune, or to offer thanks after such protection had been rendered. It was in this way that Apollo had become recognised as the god of music. Apollo’s role as the slayer of the Python led to his association with battle and victory; hence it became the Roman custom for a paean to be sung by an army on the march and before entering into battle, when a fleet left the harbour, and also after a victory had been won.
Unusually among the Olympic deities, Apollo had two cult sites that had widespread influence: Delos and Delphi.
The Roman worship of Apollo was adopted from the Greeks. Helios was increasingly identified with the god of light, Apollo. The equivalent of Helios in Roman mythology was Sol, specifically Sol Invictus.
Apollo with a radiant halo in a Roman floor mosaic, El Djem, Tunisia, late 2nd century
We know this image of Apollo, of course, from Helios; and we can recognise him as Alexander the Great as Helios. See also: Helios and Selene in Alexandria on the Oxus.
Hellenistic cultures in different locations – including both Greco-Roman and Greco-Indian – and periods, each interpreted Helios as a divine man in their own manner.
Bacchanalian scene, representing the harvest of wine grapes and a drunken Dionysos, Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, 1st-2nd century CE.
Among the earliest and most celebrated Christian martyrs, originally commemorated in the Eastern and Western churches, are Saints Sergius and Bacchus.
According to their hagiography, Sergius and Bacchus were officers in Caesar Galerius Maximianus’s army, and were held high in his favour until they were exposed as secret Christians. They were then severely punished, with Bacchus dying during torture, and Sergius eventually beheaded.
Left: Floor Plan of the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Abu Serga), a 4th century church and today is considered to be the oldest of Cairo’s Christian churches. It is traditionally believed to have been built on the spot where the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary and the infant Christ, rested at the end of their journey into Egypt. Many patriarchs of the Coptic Church were elected here: the first was Patriarch Isaac (681-692). It is the episcopal church of Cairo, and it was the episcopal See of Misr (the district of Old Cairo) that replaced the former See of Babylon. The church is considered to be a model of the early Coptic churches and its basilican style is easily recognisable, resembling religious structures in Constantinople and Rome. It has two aisles with a western return aisle (a passage at the west end of the church), along with a tripartite sanctuary that measures 17 x 27 meters and is 15 meters high. Within the sanctuary is an altar surmounted by a wooden canopy supported by four pillars. On the east wall of the sanctuary rises a fine, semi-circular tribune with seven steps. There was probably a khurus, a transverse room preceding the sanctuary, in front of the sanctuary but which no longer exists.
There is no firm evidence for Sergius and Bacchus’ scholae palatinae having been used by Galerius or any other emperor before Constantine I.
The saints’ story is told in the Greek text known as The Passion of Sergius and Bacchus. The Passion, replete with supernatural occurrences and historical anachronisms, has been dismissed as a reliable historical source. (Woods, David (2000). “The Origin of the Cult of SS. Sergius and Bacchus”. From The Military Martyrs.)
Helios was sometimes referred to with the epithet Helios Panoptes (“the all-seeing”) and perhaps we will see later how this relates to the office of episkopos, the Persian and Greek “king’s eye”, the Roman office of hostage-holder and the Christian office of bishop.
This series of posts has spanned from Alexander the Great to Alexander Lysimachus and across the many Alexandrian cities from Egypt, into the eastern satrapies of Persia, as far as the Indus, and across seven or more centuries of cultural tradition. Yet, the major changes – as evidenced by the appearance of divine men – take place in a much tighter time frame and geography.
Despite the traditions (Eastern and Western), the archaeology of these divine men begins in the last century of the last era at the very earliest. If one takes a conservative view, then we must move forward into the first century – and maybe even the second – of this era.
We have identified kings as the prime movers and an occasional assistant, such as Agesilas, who oversaw work at Kanishka’s stupas, and the monk, Lokaksema. We must not ignore, however, those of ambition, such as the Lysimachus, who have pretensions to royalty. Kings or pretenders, these are dynasties vying for power across the Greco-Roman world and over centuries.
These contenders for power, using trade (taxation) and faith (organised state religion) as their means, become the priest-kings of Antiquity. We shall have a lot more to do with them.
Related posts:
- Helios
- Helios and Selene in Alexandria on the Oxus
- Archaeology of a magical, distant land
- Private: Hadrian’s perverted insanity
- The message of Alexander the Great
- Romans at Stonehenge: from standing stones to cosmic pillars
- Private: An army of divine men and the secret army of Mithras
- Chrest Magus
- Hadrian’s parody
- Augustus: the Roman Messiah
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