Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
Dionysos is a very difficult divinity to define – and one suspects that this is exactly how he would want it to be. He is a god of vegetation, particularly of the creeping vine. He is a god of liquid fertility: the catalyst that initiates the process of growth, the vital force that sustains it, and the fluid nourishment that flows from it. Semen, blood, water, wine, honey, milk – Dionysos is all of this. His very essence is a fluidity that is at once defined and undefined.
Notes on Orphic Hymn 30. To Dionysos: The Orphic Hymns Translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis & Benjamin M. Wolkow
![m-l-rio:
“If there is no god of wine,
there is no love, no Aphrodite either,
nor other pleasure left to men
(Euripides, Bacchae [trans. William Arrowsmith])
Dionysus (detail), the British Musuem, 29 October 2015
”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/cc926f690536da11677e6c48f1fd864a/tumblr_nx5eycbyYV1us9ea5o1_400.jpg)
m-l-rio:
If there is no god of wine,
there is no love, no Aphrodite either,
nor other pleasure left to men
(Euripides, Bacchae [trans. William Arrowsmith])
Dionysus (detail), the British Musuem, 29 October 2015