1993:47–50), Dionysus is calledenorkhe ̄s (with testicles intact), on Lesbos and
Samos; naked satyrs in his entourage are highly sexed and often depicted with
erections (Lissarague 1990b), and erectphalloiwere a ritual item in his dramatic
festivals.
Dionysus freely crosses gender boundaries, and often appears on vases in the same
garments as his female worshipers. In one of his first appearances in Greek tragedy his
dress is so much like a woman’s clothing that Lykourgos calls him ‘‘girlie-boy’’
(gunnis; Aeschylus,Edoniansfr. 61TrGF). Dionysus regularly wears akroko ̄tos,
‘‘party dress,’’ andmitra, ‘‘headband,’’ clothing normally worn by females (Bremmer
1999:187; Loraux 1990:37–8). On Delos he even inherits a hand-me-down garment
from Artemis. When the Chorus of Sophocles’Oedipus sings about Dionysus’
wardrobe, it chants:
I call on the one who wears the goldenmitraon his head, the god who gave his name to
this land, Bakkhos, with his ruddy face, to whom they cry ‘‘Euoi,’’ the one who wears the
same outfit as the maenads... (Oedipus Tyrannus209–12)Finally, in a society where most rituals were divided by gender and female attendants
rarely served male gods, Dionysus is often tended by an official priestess of the city.
When his rites are restricted to women, his attendants are usually female, but when
associated with the theater, Dionysus is always served by male priests.
Early History
The name of Dionysus is inscribed on two Mycenaean Linear B tablets found at Pylos
and on one from Khania, on Crete (Hallager, Vlasakis, and Hallager 1992), but we
have no idea what this god meant to the Mycenaean communities who worshiped
him. We do not meet him again until his walk-on part in Homeric epic many centuries
later. Here his major myths were so firmly established that a poet could allude briefly
to a narrative in the Dionysiac repertory and assume with confidence that audiences
would be familiar with its content.
Dionysus is already a complicated god in early epic. He is capable of revenge, his
divine status is difficult to recognize, and he is associated with an ambiguous gift.
When Odysseus notices Ariadne in the underworld, he says that it was the testimony
of Dionysus that led Artemis to kill her (Odyssey11.321–325). We can assume that
Dionysus was aggressive here, but the rest of the story is no longer available to us. In
theIliadDionysus reacts to danger with fear (Iliad6.128–42). When Lykourgos
attacks him and his followers, Dionysus trembles in terror and leaps into the sea,
where he is drawn to Thetis for comfort. Dionysus is linked with Thetis again in the
last book of theOdyssey. When Agamemnon arrives in the underworld, he tells the
dead Achilles how the Greeks at Troy placed his ashes in a golden amphora for burial,
reminding him that the amphora, made by Hephaestus, had been a gift to his mother
from Dionysus (Odyssey24.73–5).
Official Dionysiac cult grew with the developing polis, and Dionysiac rituals were
well integrated into local festival calendars of Greek cities at an early date (Samuel
1972:285, 283, 297). The month names Anthesterion, named for the Anthesteria,
328 Susan Guettel Cole