Bacchus
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"With the Bacchic comus, which turned a noisy festal banquet into a boisterous procession of revellers, a custom was from the earliest times connected, which was the first cause of the origin of comedy. The symbol of the productive power of nature was carried about by this band of revellers, and a wild, jovial song was recited in honour of the god in whom dwells this power of nature, namely, Bacchus himself, or one of his companions. Such phallophoric or ithyphallic songs were customary in various regions of Greece."--History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (1841) by Karl Otfried Müller |
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Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication, known as Dionysus to Greeks.
The adjective bacchic means relating to Bacchus; hence, jovial, or riotous,with intoxication.
In art
- Bacchus (Leonardo), painting of John the Baptist
- Bacchus (Michelangelo), marble sculpture depicting Bacchus in an inebriated state
- Bacchus and Ariadne, an oil painting by Titian
- Bacchus and Ariadne, a ballet by Albert Roussel
- Bacchus (Caravaggio), a painting held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Young Sick Bacchus, an early self-portrait by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, now in the Galleria Borghese in Rome
See also