198 i Flora Unveiled
The story of Dionysus’s birth reprises the theme of Zeus’s procreative power, first dem-
onstrated by Athena’s birth from his head. But instead of emerging from his father’s head,
Dionysus emerges from a slit in his thigh— suggesting a vulva- like opening (Figure 7.6).
Unlike Athena, who represents an extension of Zeus’s head (i.e., masculine intellect),
Dionysus draws his godlike power from his father’s faux- vulva (i.e., feminine passion).
Dionysus is therefore a male deity with a feminine orientation (he was often depicted
wearing women’s robes), and his psychological qualities are those that Greek writers, from
Hesiod onward, attributed to women. Whereas male attributes included reason, sobriety,
and the rule of law, women were associated with emotionalism, unbridled sexuality, and a
tendency toward indulgence of the appetites.^32 In general, women were considered to be
closely allied with the dangerous forces of nature, which it was necessary to rein in and
subdue if civilization was to flourish. Dionysus thus came to be identified with wine, whose
power to subvert normal social inhibitions and induce wild, emotional, and disorderly con-
duct was closely associated with the god.
Two types of Dionysian rites and festivals were held, one appealing to men and the other
to women.^33 The male rituals were essentially drinking parties where politics, literature, and
philosophy were discussed, as in the Symposia, or where men attempted to drink each other
under the table, as on the second day of the Anthesteria, the spring festival of Dionysus.
Figure 7.6 Birth of Dionysus from Zeus’s Thigh (Proto- Apulian, c. 390 bce).
Proto- Apulian red- figure volute krater from Ceglie del Campo, late fifth to early fourth centuries bce. Museo
Nazionale, Taranto.