Ritual Performance
Dionysiac ritual is a ritual of performance where worshipers play the parts of charac-
ters in Dionysiac narratives, whether the scene is set outdoors in the countryside or in
the heart of the city. Dionysus himself is impresario. He energizes the set, animates
the costumes, and inspires the action. As Diodorus says, the women who served
Dionysus imitated the raving women who accompanied Dionysus in the ancient
stories (4.3.3). Official groups, like the Thuiades at Delphi and Olympia, the Athenian
women who joined the Thuiades at Delphi to dance on Parnassus (Pausanias 10.4.2),
or the Agriades in the Peloponnese, performed ritual dances that imitated the wild
dancing of their imaginary counterparts. They carried thethursosand wore the
costumes of themainades: the long, light, pleatedkhito ̄nor the long-sleeved pleated
versions with elbow sleeves that covered the hands, thenebris(fawn skin), the
pardelee ̄, (leopard skin), and in Thrace, thebassara, a costume made of fox skins.
They knew the music and they memorized the correct, stylized motions of the dance.
At Sicyon sacred paraphernalia were kept in thekosme ̄te ̄rion, a dressing room in a
sanctuary of Dionysus near the theater. Stone statues of Dionysus andBakkhaistood
outside the nearby temple of Dionysus for all to see. Special images were kept hidden
in a place not to be revealed. One night in the year these images were brought from
thekosme ̄te ̄rionto the temple in a procession lit by torches and accompanied by the
singing of hymns (Pausanias 2.7.5–6). Ritual paraphernalia and costumes stored in
thekosme ̄te ̄rionwould have been used to equip and clothe those eligible to perform
the Dionysiac ritual.
Dionysus himself could be represented by his costume (usually a khito ̄nand
himation) together with his mask or even by his mask alone. On red-figure pottery
women celebrate wine under an image of Dionysus that is simply a figured garment
wrapped around a pole capped with a mask facing the viewer (Peirce 1998:80–4). The
same word,proso ̄pon, meant both ‘‘face’’ and ‘‘mask,’’ and the face of Dionysus was
powerful in itself (Frontisi-Ducroux 1991:66–85; 189–201; Henrichs 1993:36–9).
At Corinth two wooden statues (xoana; Pausanias 2.4.7) had faces painted red and
bodies covered in gold. These two statues represented a double Dionysus: Bakkheios,
‘‘Raving with Bacchic mania’’ and Lusios, ‘‘Releaser.’’ At Megara there was a
wooden statue of Dionysus covered up except for its face (Pausanias 1.43.5), and
when fishermen at Methymna hauled up from the sea a mask of Dionysus made of
olive wood, the Delphic oracle advised the people to worship Dionysus as aproso ̄pon
(Pausanias 10.19.3).
Dionysus is a god who plays many roles, and he can change his appearance at will.
As god of the theater, he is associated with the process of transition actors undergo
when taking on a new role, because the actor puts on a new identity with each new
mask (Bassi 1998:192–244; Henrichs 1993:38 n.66). In Aristophanes’Thesmophor-
iazusaethe playwright Agathon says that to write successful tragedies, the dramatist
must identify with his characters. To write about women, a writer should wear a
woman’s clothing and experience a woman’s habits (148–52). Dionysus had the
power to change from one identity to another, and such transitions were also part
of the Bacchic experience for his worshipers, both actors and spectators. Dionysus
himself, who received the dedications of prizewinners, was part of the theatrical
334 Susan Guettel Cole