Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy:
Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus
Christian Wildberg
I.
If it were not Dionysus for whom they march in procession and chant the hymn of
the phallus, their action would be most shameless. But Hades and Dionysus are the
same, him for whom they rave and celebrate Lenaia. (Heraclitus fr. B 15 DK;
transl. Kahn)1
These well-known and much-discussed sentences are attributed to Heraclitus
of Ephesus (ca. 535  475 B.C.) by Clement of Alexandria. They appear to be
the oldest attested references to the god Dionysos in a philosophical context.2
Not untypically of a Heraclitean fragment, this short passage has raised
numerous questions of interpretation the answers to which depend in part on
the context in which it was preserved, on one s general view of Heraclitus
thought, and on how one is inclined to resolve certain grammatical difficulties.
All of this we shall discuss anon in some detail; for present purposes, the
Heraclitus fragment may serve us as occasion to preface this paper with a few
general remarks about the reception and interpretation of Dionysos in the
ancient philosophical literature, and what insights one can hope to garner from
examining just this literary genre.
The first point to make is the following: assuming that the ancient
philosophers were working towards what Mircea Eliade called the  desacral-
ization of the world, one might think that in line with their advocacy for a
general revision of traditional religion they might have had plenty of
motivation to ridicule and deride the Bacchic rituals as outbursts of irrational
superstition, and to offer philosophy as an antidote to this sort of (in their view)
confused religious practice. In principle, they should have applauded figures
I would like to thank the participants of the Berlin Symposium on Dionysos for their lively
discussion, Carrie Swanson and Stephen Menn for their thoughtful suggestions, and Renate
Schlesier for her remarkable editorial patience.
1 See Kahn (1979) 80 with comments 262 f. In his edition of Heraclitus, this fragment
carries the number CXIV.
2 Other early literary occurrences of the name Dionysos include Od. 11.325 and Hom.
Hymn 7.
206 Christian Wildberg
like Pentheus for their opposition to the god. After all, Pentheus was a
reasonable man. But until the time we get to the thinkers committed to
Christianity, there is actually very little evidence for this sort of intellectual
attitude, and the fragment of Heraclitus quoted at the beginning, with its
startling identification of Dionysos and Hades, should put us on notice that the
ancient philosophical responses to the cult of Dionysos, however much they
may exude the scent of intellectual superiority, were actually richer and more
complex than mere opposition would suggest. And as it turns out, the figure of
Dionysos as he appears in  the mirror of philosophy is no less complex than
the representations of Dionysos we know from literary or art-historical
contexts, if not more so.
The second point is that at the time of the ancient philosophers, at least
those of the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods, the public celebration of
the cult of Dionysos was still very much alive. The cult was part and parcel of
the annual cycle of festivals, and active or passive participation in them
continued to be a matter of personal experience. In short, the ancient
philosophers were much more closely acquainted with all things Dionysian
than we will ever be. Now, if one wants to understand who or what the god
Dionysos is, one might think that somebody so acquainted with the ancient
ritual should be best qualified to answer this question. After all, it is in the
enactment of ritual, understood and interpreted in the light of the relevant
myth, that a deity manifests him- or herself to the participants. But again, the
Heraclitus fragment cautions us also against that sort of assumption. Per se,
acquaintance with the ritual(s) does not amount to any privileged insight into
the metaphysical nature a deity is presumed to have. This, I take it, is at least an
incidental implication of Heraclitus fragment, even if Heraclitus meant to
convey an entirely different point. The first of the two sentences quoted above
focuses on the celebrants of the cult, condemning their actions as shameless;
the second sentence makes it clear that, according to Heraclitus, the followers
of Dionysos have no understanding of the nature of the god they are
worshiping. And indeed, if we can believe the numerous stories that tell of
Dionysos ostensible arrival in Greece, people seem to have had a genuine
problem with even recognizing Dionysos as a god at all, with detrimental
consequences. If even intimate acquaintance with the cult does not guarantee
that one knows what precisely one is doing and whom precisely one is
worshiping, then Protagoras was not only a cautious agnostic, but also clearly
right when he began his famous discourse On the Gods with the words:
 Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not
or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject and the
brevity of human life. 3
3 Protagoras, fr. 80 B 4 DK.
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 207
This general insight should not be suspended when it comes to Heraclitus.
Although he may very well claim superior understanding for himself, we have
no good reason to believe him without qualification, when he states with
authority and conviction that  Dionysos and Hades are the same . Maximally,
this could be some kind of crucial and welcome fact about Greek religion. But
it could just as well be a piece of private interpretation  both idiosyncratic and
provocative  by someone who enjoyed crafting such idiosyncratic provo-
cations.4 A historian of religion should resist the temptation to grant remarks
such as these some kind of higher-order veracity and draw sweeping historical
inferences from them, as has been done, for example, when it is claimed that
Heraclitus statement confirms the god s chthonic character, or that at an early,
and perhaps more authentic, stage in the history of Greek religion Hades and
Dionysos had yet to be differentiated. Any theological pronouncement made
in the course of a philosophical (re-)interpretation of ritual representation is
just another kind of representation, even if it may claim a different sort of
authority.
The third point is closely related to the second: philosophers have axes to
grind; even though they have a commitment to truth, they are typically not
even-handed historians of religion. There are good reasons to believe that
Heraclitus theological remarks (this one as well as others) are not  innocent
but rather part and parcel of his own peculiar philosophical agenda. To be sure,
it should certainly prove instructive to listen to what philosophers, in the
course of developing their own answers to the puzzle of human existence, had
to say about the myths and traditions surrounding a deity that tended to incite
entire communities to celebrate the non-rational aspects of human nature. But
we need to be careful not to overestimate their pronouncements, bearing in
mind what they say may well serve ulterior purposes. And indeed, as we shall
see, Dionysos could be harnessed to provide powerful support for philosoph-
ical doctrines that, on a superficial level, had little or nothing to do with the
god. In other words, it appears that Dionysos could be and often was
instrumentalized for philosophical purposes, and in the course of this
instrumentalization, Dionysos  what else would one expect?  changes: he,
or rather his now fully rationalized representation, could become mellow,
benign, and politically correct; or it could become fraught with metaphysical
significance of the highest order, as for example in late antiquity, when the
revival of a particular Dionysian mythologem, that of the mirror of Dionysos,
provided the crucial spark of inspiration that helped to address one of the most
pressing questions of Neoplatonic anthropology.
4 A further complication arises from the fact that Heraclitus remark is mediated to us in
the text of another author, in this case Clement of Alexandria, who of course quoted
him for his own polemical purposes.
208 Christian Wildberg
Trying to discern the reflection of Dionysos in the mirror of philosophy is,
therefore, not a simple thing. It is obvious, moreover, that it would be quite
impossible to cover the entire 1200 years of philosophical writing in ancient
Greece and Rome, and to show comprehensively or in any great depth how
philosophers in antiquity responded intellectually to the cult of Dionysos, and
what reasons they had for their response. This is especially true since the
ancient philosophical response was by no means uniform; on the contrary,
each philosophical school, if not each philosopher, insofar as he dealt with
Dionysos at all, seems to have developed its own idiosyncratic interpretation of
Dionysos. That does of course not mean that every philosopher had a
considered interpretation at his fingertips: assuming that to write philosophically
upon the topic of concern is to write from a point of view of a professional
rationalist, who by definition has, or should have, no intrinsic commitments to
religious beliefs, mythical traditions, or local cult practices, one should also find
that the Greek rationalists had no deep philosophical interest in the cult and
worship of Dionysos (even if they may have had, for philosophical reasons,
considered views about Zeus, for example, as that god was intimately
associated with such important philosophical ideas as justice and power). And
sure enough, there are some who, as far as we can tell, did not have anything
noteworthy to say about Dionysos: there is no evidence, for example, that the
atomists and Anaxagoras, or Aristotle and the Stoics, committed any significant
time and effort to making sense of Dionysos. But there are some philosophers
in whose writings Dionysian elements play prominent and crucial roles. What
this paper aims to achieve is to focus on three such episodes in the broader
history of ancient philosophy, and to show in some detail how Heraclitus,
Plato, and Plotinus understood the significance of Dionysos, and how they
connected the deity with their own philosophical concerns.
II.
Let us proceed in chronological order and begin with Heraclitus. According to
Clement of Alexandria, the late 2nd-century Father of the Church, the
enigmatic sage from Ephesus made the following pronouncement (Protrepticus
2.34.5)  Kahn s translation, which I am not necessarily endorsing, was given
at the beginning of this paper; the Greek original reads as follows:
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 209
eQ l� cąq Diom}syi polp�m 1poioOmto ja� vlmeom �isla aQdo_oisim, !maid]stata
eUqcastai, vgs�m Jq\jkeitor, óutąr dł )_dgr ja� Di|musor, fteyi la_momtai ja�
kgma@fousim.5
eUqcastai Clement: eUqcast %m Schleiermacher; Wilamowitz, Glaube der Hellenen
(1932) II.209 n. 2 (= 207 n. 1 in the 2nd ed.) regards the verb as  verschrieben but
offers no cure.
On the surface, this fragment looks like, and has often been taken to be, a
piece of moral criticism of Dionysian ritual  one of those crucial and
memorable moments in the course of human intellectual history when reason
emancipates itself from the perversions of primitive religion. This, in any case,
is probably how our source, Clement of Alexandria, understood the saying, for
he quotes it immediately after recounting a fairly hair-raising piece of
mythology (Protrepticus 2.34.3  4). The story goes, Clement tells us, that
Dionysos wanted to descend to Hades6 but did not know how to get there; a
certain man by the name of Prosymnos offered to show him the way if, in
return, Dionysos offered himself to penetration. Not easily fooled, Dionysos
solemnly promises to comply, but only after he has gone to Hades and come
back, i. e. after Prosymnos directions will have been proven correct. Now, the
directions were correct, but when Dionysos returns, he discovers that his
demanding theo-erotic informer has passed away. (It is tempting to think that
Hades had a hand in this, but this is nowhere suggested.) In order not to appear
to be breaking his promise, Dionysos visits the place where Prosymnos was put
to rest; he breaks off a branch from a nearby fig tree, forms it into the shape of
a phallos and does what the deceased would have done to him had he still been
alive.7
Clement tells us that the vakko_ erected in cities throughout Greece serve
as  mystical reminders of just this episode (rp|lmgla toO p\hour to}tou
lustijąm),8 and when he quotes Heraclitus immediately following this claim,
he clearly wants to suggest that already some sensible pagans, such as
Heraclitus, condemned the obscenity of the public rituals of Dionysos, in
5 A fairly literal translation could be:  If it were not for Dionysos for whom they make
the procession and sing the sexual organ song  what is done (by them) is most
shameful, says Heraclitus; but Hades and Dionysos, for whom they go mad and
celebrate the wine festival, are the same.
6 Presumably in order to bring back his mother Semele, but that is not stated by
Clement.
7 In Claude Mond�sert s 1949 French translation of Clement, Dionysos himself comes
across as  plein de d�sirs impurs , but there is no indication of this in Clement s text.
8 Ker�nyi massages this remark about  mystical memorials into the somewhat fanciful
claim that  [a]ccording to one myth, Dionysos himself fashioned a phallus from fig
wood for use in a mystic rite connected with his return from the underworld : Ker�nyi
(1976b) 260.
210 Christian Wildberg
which citizens gathered in processions around huge phalloi.9 The worship of a
god like this can only be !maid]statom. Earlier in the Protrepticus  in a passage
that illustrates rather well that Clement s reports of the views of the pagan
philosophers are never innocent but always instruments of his own rhetoric 
Clement had already stated that (according to him) Heraclitus threatened those
who celebrate the mysteries in such unholy ways with punishment after
death.10
Framed in this way, Heraclitus would appear to be an Ephesian Pentheus,
taking issue with Bacchic revelry on account of its inherent shamelessness only
thinly concealed by the pretext of piety. The second part of the fragment
might then even seem to reinforce this impression: if Dionysos is the same as
Hades, the rituals in question better have a more dignified character
altogether!11
But this Clementine contextualization of Heraclitus, even if it is not
entirely misguided, does not seem to exhaust the fragment s meaning. We
have to remember, for example, that Heraclitus did not exactly condone
solemn funeral rituals either; according to his peculiar way of looking at
9 Cf. Clem. Protr. 2.34.5, where Clement understands Bacchic revelry not so much as the
result of intoxication (by wine) but rather as an activity brought about by the  most
disgraceful office of licentiousness (dią t�m 1pome_distom t/r !sekce_ar Reqovamt_am). 
We hear of such processions from Athenaeus who speaks (10, 445a  b) of some kind of
perpetual phallophoria on Rhodes, performed by one Antheas of Lindus (4th cent.). A
more detailed description of another ritual is given by Athenaeus in 14, 622b  d:  But
the phallophoroi do not use a mask, but binding on their heads a bonnet of tufted thyme
and holly they place on top of this a thick wreath of violets and ivy; wrapped in thick
mantles they come in [i.e. to the theater], some by the side-entrance, others by the
middle doors, marching in step and reciting:  To thee, Bacchus, we raise this glorifying
song, pouring forth a simple measure in varied melody  a song new and virginal, in no
wise used in earlier lays; no, undefiled is the hymn we consecrate. They would then
run forward and jeer at any one they picked out; they did this standing still, but the
man who carried the phallus-pole kept marching straight on, smeared with soot.
(trans. Gulick). These examples are instructive, but it is an open question how much
they tell us about the Bacchic ritual of 6th century Ionia familiar to Heraclitus.
10 See Clem. Protr. 22.1  2 (= fr. B 14 DK):  Mujtip|koir, l\coir, b\jwoir, k^mair,
l}stair, to}toir !peike? tą letą h\matom, to}toir lamte}etai tą pOq�  tą cąq
molif|lema jatą !mhq~pour lust^qia !mieqyst� luoOmta. On the genuineness of
these lines see the discussion in Kahn (1979) 262 with further references.
11 Criticism of the mystery cults is also implied in fragment B 14 DK:  The mysteries
current among men initiate them into impiety (trans. Kahn). However, it seems
almost impossible to isolate, in this instance, any genuine Heraclitean material from
Clement s diatribe. In his commentary on fr. B 14 DK, Kahn (1979) 263 interprets the
evidence to warrant the claim that  Heraclitus is not an aristocrat or conservative in
religious matters. He is a radical, an uncompromising rationalist, whose negative
critique of the tradition is more extreme than that of Plato a century later. This view
has been forcefully challenged by C. Osborne (1997) and Adom
nas (1999).
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 211
things, the bodies of the dead are worthless rubbish more easily disposable than
dung.12 So what is the meaning of this fragment about Dionysos and Hades?13
Admittedly, Heraclitus seems to have found some harsh words for
established religious practice in the polis, harsher words than Xenophanes
found earlier, or Socrates and Plato would find later.14 However, the intended
point of this particular saying might well have been a different one.15 The key
to the riddle lies in paying attention to detail, in this case a considerable textual
difficulty. The fragment is commonly translated as a counterfactual of the
present:  If it were not for Dionysos [& ], their action would be shameless.
However, in the text as it reads in the manuscripts, the perfect praeteritum
eUqcastai without %m does not look like possible syntax for a counterfactual
apodosis; and so, Friedrich Schleiermacher once proposed an emendation that
would be almost universally accepted by later editors: eUqcast %m (for the
pluperfect eUqcasto %m).16 But it is difficult not to agree with Wilamowitz who
found Schleiermacher s attempt to cure the passage quite dissatisfactory,
12 Cf. fr. B 96 DK = Plut. Quest. conv. 4.4.3: m]juer cąq jopq_ym 1jbkgt|teqoi.
13 Although initially developed quite independently, the following interpretation of the
fragment turns out to agree largely with a paper published by Albin Lesky in 1936. In
it, Lesky opposed W.F. Otto s use of Heraclitus in support of a (to Lesky s mind
problematic) chthonic interpretation of Dionysos. Lesky s careful argument was in turn
dismissed by Otto s admirer Karl Ker�nyi; see Ker�nyi (1976b) 240 n. 158:  In
opposition to the false interpretation of these lines [i.e. Heraclitus fr. 15] given by A.
Lesky in  Dionysos und Hades see G.A. Privitera,  I rapporti di Dioniso con Posidone
in etą micenea, p. 203.
14 See esp. fr. B 5 DK:  They are purified in vain with blood, as if someone who stepped
in mud should try to wash himself off with mud. Anyone who noticed him would
think he is mad. And they pray to these images as if they were chatting with houses, not
recognizing what gods or even heroes are like (Kahn). Here, Heraclitus ridicules the
ritual of blood purification and the common practice, still alive today, of praying to
statues.
15 It is worth pointing out how W.K.C. Guthrie (1962) 475 f. tried to make sense of
Heraclitus intention. His understanding of the true meaning of the fragment is that
Heraclitus  criticizes Dionysiac religion, though with an important qualification . The
qualification is that Heraclitus criticizes those who worship Dionysos without knowing
what they are doing. He apparently reads the last part of the fragment  as a hint that the
acts performed are only reprehensible when the performers do not understand the
significance of what they are doing. [& ] The upshot is that Heraclitus was not hostile
to initiations and Dionysiac orgia as such, but deplored the fact that they were carried
out without any understanding of their true significance. This made their performance
wrong and impious, reducing phallic rites to mere obscenity.  In what follows, I
agree with Guthrie that this fragment is no testimony to Heraclitus hostility towards
Dionysos.
16 Kahn (1979) 80 does not follow Schleiermacher in inserting an %m so as to turn the
apodosis into a counterfactual, but he still translates:  [& ] their action would be most
shameless.
212 Christian Wildberg
exclaiming in a footnote in Glaube der Hellenen:  Wie kann man sich bei dem
Nachsatze beruhigen, wie ihn Schleiermacher gegeben hat .17
Apart from the extreme unlikelihood that Heraclitus wrote eUqcast %m
after ignoring two other instances of hiatus in �isla aQdo_oisim and
!maid]stata eUqcastai,18 the sense the fragment acquires after Schleierma-
cher s emendation seems rather lame:  The procession of Dionysos would be
obscene, if it were not conducted as a procession in honor of the god; but
since it is so conducted, it is not obscene. That is precisely what any attendant
of Dionysos might have said, and we don t need a man of the caliber of
Heraclitus to point it out to us. Clement had an obvious interest in this saying
because of its moralizing ring, and precisely because of this it is not impossible
to imagine that Clement quoted Heraclitus quite freely and, in consequence,
may have distorted the syntax.19 However, even though the syntax is suspect,
it is not entirely without parallel. As Albin Lesky pointed out ([1936] 25 f.), a
similar construction occurs in Aeschylus Agamemnon 866  868: Klytemnestra
tells the chorus of the rumors that pained her during her husband s absence:
ja� tqaul\tym lłm eQ t|sym 1t}cwamem / !m�q fd , ór pqąr oWjom Ąwete}eto /
v\tir, t]tqgtai dijt}ou pk]y k]ceim. In Sommerstein s translation:  [& ] if this
man [Agamemnon] met with as many wounds as was said in the reports that
were channeled into our house, he s got more holes in him to count than a net
has. If the apodosis were constructed with a past tense verb supplemented by
%m to convey objective non-reality, the clause would lose its character as a
sinister foreboding of Agamemnon s fate: in Klytemnestra s mind, Agamem-
non is already slain in the way suggested by this metaphor.20 In a similar way, if
17 Wilamowitz (1931  1932) II.209 n. 2 (= 207 n. 1 in the 2nd ed.). Lesky (1936) 25
agrees with Wilamowitz that Schleiermacher s attempted emendation is unacceptable
and makes the further point, against Wilamowitz, that the text is actually sound, see
below.
18 Elision of the vowel before words of the stem aQd- is common enough in prose and
poetry, before 1qc- and eQqc- it occurs, when it occurs, mostly in cases of preceding
demonstrative (e. g. taOt eUqcashe, etc.), but cf. Soph. OT 1368: %qist eQqcasl]ma.
There is no parallel for eUqcast %m in the entire extant Greek literature. Both Stahl
(1907) 409 and Lesky (1936) 26 think that the transmitted text, although unusual, is
sound and correction superfluous; cf. also, following the transmitted text, Bollack/
Wismann (1972) 95.
19 Heraclitus does not seem to have used counterfactual statements all that often; only
three other instances are attributed to him, and none of them pose any syntactical
problem, see fr. 23; 40; 99. Wilamowitz expressed serious doubts not only about
Schleiermacher s conjecture, but also about the syntactical integrity of the entire
quotation, see Wilamowitz (1931  1932) II.209; rejected by Lesky (1936) 24 f.
20 Other examples in Stahl (1907) 409. The general explanation given for non-canonical
constructions of counterfactual conditionals is that the reality of the apodosis is
maintained independently of the unreality of the protasis; cf. Stahl (1907) 409 and
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 213
the Clementine transmission of the text can be trusted, what Heraclitus
probably intended was not a regular counterfactual, but some kind of assertion
of a sic et non. The sense of his adage, I submit, might well have been:  What
the attendants of Dionysos do is, as a matter of fact, obscene, but since it is
done in the context of a religious procession, it is at the same time, again as a
matter of fact, not obscene.
This shift of nuance conveys a rather different point than the one it had on
the traditional interpretation. Now the Dionysos-fragment accords less with
Heraclitean criticisms of contemporary morals or religion and more with a
series of other pronouncements that try to accustom readers with two closely
related and fundamental Heraclitean tenets, namely that of the importance of
perspective and that of the unity of opposites (see e. g. fr. 13; 51; 57; 59  62; 67;
80; 88; 111; 126). According to these doctrines, insight into the logos reveals
the fundamental interdependence of anything with its opposite: it is impossible
for a thing, state of affairs, or activity to exist without the simultaneous
implication of the opposite thing, state of affairs, or activity. And when one
looks at the same subject matter from a different perspective, this dialectic
tends to reveal itself, precisely because the opposites belong together and form
a hidden harmony. Heraclitus had illustrated these crucial pieces of doctrine in
a number of different ways, drawing on different but equally familiar contexts
of human experience, such as nature, society, or techne: for example, he
pointed out that day is inextricably linked with night, summer with winter,
 up with  down ; likewise, there is no musical harmony without the tension of
the strings of a lyre, no peace without war, no satiety without hunger
(coincidentia oppositorum). Although polar opposites, they belong, in an
important sense, together, and are aspects of a higher-order unity that could
not exist without their opposition. Moreover, things look entirely differently
from different perspectives: the sea is wholesome to some creatures as it is
harmful to others; pigs prefer mud over clear water, and so on. In our
fragment 15, Heraclitus now makes exactly the same point, only this time he
appeals to a context of religious experience and ritual. Rather than boorishly
condemning Bacchic ritual as immoral, he points out that it presents itself to
the philosophical mind as inherently ambivalent. There is no such thing as a
Bacchic ritual that is not at once pious and immoral, constituted as it is by a
harmony of opposites that makes itself felt even on the level of language: the
ritual procession of phalloi involves pious %islata that are at the same time
!maid]stata.21 And so it is, mutatis mutandis, with everything else in Heraclitus
world. The point of the fragment, therefore, is not to condemn, as Clement
Lesky (1936) 26:  In dieser Gestaltung des Hauptsatzes irrealer Perioden wird sein
Inhalt unabh�ngig von der im Vordersatz gegebenen Bedingung als Realit�t gesetzt.
21 Heraclitus clearly delighted in the alliteration of �isla aQdo_oisim !maid]stata.
214 Christian Wildberg
would have us believe, but to illuminate. Harmony of opposites is part of the
structure of reality in all its aspects, and any human being who is awake to the
world s logos ought to comprehend this.22
Notice how Heraclitus takes the claim of the interdependence of opposites
even a step further: Dionysos and Hades are the same, he states paradoxically.
If we understand  Hades as a metonym for  death and retain the sexual
connotation given to Dionysos in the first part of the fragment (Dionysos is the
reproductive male organ), the clear sense of this statement is that the two gods
are polar opposites of a concealed harmony ("qlom_g !vam^r) of reproduction
and demise. In that sense, and only in that sense, do the two gods belong
together to form a unity of opposites.23 Religious ritual recognizes different
deities, and has to recognize them; but in the final analysis of the logos, Hades
and Dionysos will turn out to be polar manifestations of the one all-
encompassing and ever changing divinity, just as everything else is:
God 24 day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, satiety-hunger. God changes
just as what mixed with spices is named according to the taste25 of each.
(fr. B 67 DK)
In conclusion of this discussion of Heraclitus, the interpretation of the
fragment B 15 proposed here suggests that we can safely dispose of the view
(first brought into circulation by Clement) that Heraclitus was in some
important way opposed to the cult of Dionysos as such.26 One would also
22 In interpreting the Dionysos-fragment in this way I find myself in broad agreement
with C. Osborne (1997) and Adom
nas (1999).
23 N.B. that what Heraclitus says here is a philosophical provocation, not a piece of
common knowledge at the time (so Ker�nyi [1976b] 240), nor some kind of hard
evidence (of the  chthonic Dionysos vel sim.) to be used by the religious historian. It is
impossible to go along with W.F. Otto when he writes (1965) 116 that Heraclitus
 comments must stand as one of the most important bits of evidence that have come
down to us. And:  For Heraclitus, Dionysos is the god of insane wildness [& ]. This
god, he says, is the same as Hades. What can keep us from believing him? [& ] His
aphorisms, however paradoxical they may sound, bear witness to the nature of things.
If the interpretations of Otto and Ker�nyi were right, Heraclitus remarks would hardly
be worthy of Heraclitus.
24 There is no form of the verb  to be in the Greek text. From a linguistic point of view,
supplying it is unproblematic, but the omission may well be significant. According to
Plato s Theaetetus (180a 183b), Heracliteans avoided any language that might suggest
stability, i. e. that something  is such-and-such, since everything is in flux.  The
interpretation of the entire fragment (preserved in Hippolytus, Refutatio 9.10.8) is quite
problematic; see the discussion in Kahn (1979) 276  281.
25 Just as in Anaxagoras fragment 4, Bdom^ here means  taste .
26 Rohde (18982) II.153 has a somewhat obscure note on the fragment; it might be taken
to accord with the interpretation offered here:  óutąr dł )_dgr ja� Di|musor: fr. 127
(und insofern, weil mit heraklitischer Philosophie vereinbar, sollen die Dionysosmys-
terien gelten d�rfen. Das muss der Sinn des Ausspruchs sein).
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 215
want to reject the interpretation  which has acquired the status of a
commonplace in the study of Greek religion  that this fragment bears witness
to the identity of Dionysos and Hades. What Heraclitus train of thought
suggests is rather the exact opposite of what is asserted on the level of
language: Hades and Dionysos are as a matter of fact exact polar opposites, one
the grim demon of death, the other the  archetype of indestructible life (to
borrow Ker�nyi s phrase). And in virtue of that fact, and that fact alone, do
they form a Heraclitean unity.27
Looking somewhat further afield at the general drift of Heraclitus
scattered pronouncements on religion,28 one gets indeed the impression that
he regarded religious thought and talk as the product of a sorely deficient ratio,
to which he offers his own dialectic as an antidote. But this did not prevent
him from using the god Dionysos and the rituals associated with him as
examples to drive home a particular Heraclitean point. And if we understand
Heraclitus in this way, as I think we must, the view of Dionysos that emerges
here is of a piece with the more familiar iconography of the figure of Dionysos
as a force of life-affirming transgression. To be sure, Dionysos descends to the
underworld, e. g., in Plutarch s Moralia (565  566; 1105), shaking hands with
Hades as on the famous Apulian volute krater. But his work is not that of
Hades; on the contrary, he is the transformer of the underworld, the one god
who can inspire even the inhabitants of Hades to a few moments of
celebration and joy.
III.
Apart from appropriating Dionysos for philosophical purposes, Heraclitus
remark also conveys, as we saw, the sense of an awareness of a disturbing
ambiguity inseparably connected to the deity. As we move forward in our
survey and into the literature of the 5th century, the period between Heraclitus
and Plato, Dionysos begins to appear in less ambiguous ways, and in novel
contexts. Allegory is on the rise, and religion is incorporated into a budding
scientific discourse about the human body. According to an entry in
Hesychius, Metrodorus of Lampsacus (the elder, who died in 464) assigned
gods (or at least their names) to human organs, apparently in order to provide a
general description of the latters nature and function. He referred to the liver
as  Demeter , and gall was  Apollo ;  Dionysos he assigned to the human
27 See also Seaford (2006a) 78  81.
28 See notes 11 and 14 above.
216 Christian Wildberg
spleen (fr. 61 A 4 DK).29 The Pythagorean Philolaus (ca. 480  385) classified
triangles by giving them different divine names, distinguishing four different
types and naming them, for reasons only known to himself, after Kronos,
Hades, Ares, and Dionysos.30 All of this may strike us as very obscure and
perhaps even tedious; but the underlying idea that the members of the Greek
pantheon could and should be understood allegorically was an important one.
The possibility to appropriate traditional religious symbols  outgrowths of an
ostensibly deficient ratio  and to recycle them in new and exciting  scientific
contexts must have been supremely satisfying, given that even today allegory
continues to serve generations of scholars of religion and the human psyche as
a rough-and-ready methodology.
Religious sentiments, too, were shifting. In the first quarter of the 5th
century, feelings of fear and despair at a time of crisis could still drive Greeks to
propitiate Dionysos with human sacrifice.31 At the end of the century, one
should like to think, such acts of religious barbarism were history. But not
everyone jumped on the bandwagon of the self-appointed high priests of 5th-
century enlightenment. Lest the chilling stories of how Dionysos arrived in
Greece be forgotten, when over-confidence in human counsel and control led
to the swift undoing of individuals, families and the social fabric of entire
cities, Euripides (485/4  406) wrote the Bacchae, first staged posthumously in
405. A treatment of this particular intellectual reaction to the cult of Dionysos
 one that set out to uphold the traditional iconography with its ambivalent
29 Metrodorus reserved the names of Homeric heroes for natural bodies: Agamemnon is,
allegorically speaking, the clear sky, Achilles the sun, Helen the earth, Paris Alexander
the air, and Hektor the moon. On Metrodorus see Diels-Kranz (1954) II.49 f.
30 According to Proclus (In Euclid. 167.6  11; cf. Diels-Kranz 44 A 14). The thought
clearly seems to prefigure Plato s assigning of triangles to the different elements,
because the way in which the gods are characterized is as follows: Kronos constitutes
the substance of wet and cold, Ares that of fire, Hades  holds together life on earth,
and Dionysos is the overseer of wet and warm generation, of which wine, being both
wet and hot, is the symbol. It is not clear how much of this is Proclus, how much
Philolaus.
31 Plutarch (Themistocles 13.2  3) recounts the gruesome story how, on the eve of the
battle of Salamis, the Greeks sacrificed three Persian prisoners of war (ostensibly the
sons of Xerxes sister) to Dionysos Carnivorous (Ąlgst0 Diom}s\):  Themistocles was
terrified, feeling that the word of the seer was monstrous and shocking; but the
multitude, who, as is wont to be the case in great struggles and severe crises, looked for
safety rather from unreasonable than from reasonable measures, invoked the god with
one voice, dragged the prisoners to the altar, and compelled the fulfillment of the
sacrifice, as the seer commanded (trans. Perrin). Plutarch s source, Phanias of Eresus, a
contemporary of Theophrastus and like him an important follower of Aristotle, is a
reliable one.
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 217
message  lies beyond the scope of this paper.32 It is worth pointing out,
however, that Euripides, in this play at any rate, not only eschewed the
contemporary trends by refusing to allegorize the meaning of Dionysos; he
also revealed himself, for the last time in his life, as a subtle and profound
reader of ancient myth, explaining to his audience, once and for all, the
fundamental duality of Dionysos as both the kindest but also the most
terrifying of the gods.33 The burden of the motif of Dionysos in late 5th-
century Athenian political discourse, and his association with crisis and
instability, is not only suggested by Euripides Bacchae but also by Aristophanes
spirited attempt to bring relief (in his Frogs, also staged in 405). The huge
success of these two plays near the century s end may well have had a retarding
effect on the forces of enlightenment in their effort to demystify and secularize,
especially since not just the theater but also the social and political reality of
Athens was replete with disturbing Dionysian signifiers. Not unlike Thebes,
the Athenian political establishment had ruined the affairs of the city, and a
certain Dionysian character by the name of Alcibiades was universally
identified as one of the culprits. For a long time, Athens had embraced the cult
of Dionysos more enthusiastically than any other city in Greece, celebrating
the god annually with elaborate processions and dramatic performances;34 yet
in spite of this, the god continued to cast a threatening shadow over the
community. Much like the Dionysos in Euripides play, this god of
unpredictable madness, ecstasy, and drunken revelry posed a conundrum
that needed to be addressed in a comprehensive manner.
IV.
These last remarks are important insofar as they draw attention to a cultural
background that should make another Athenian s reaction to Dionysos more
intelligible. This reaction could not have been more different from the
32 To the extent that Euripides is left out of consideration, the paper is methodologically
objectionable as it assumes the existence of a boundary within the ancient intellectual
world (between  philosophy and  literature ) that was most definitely not there, or at
least not initially: the distinction between philosophical, historical, poetical, and literary
concerns and genres is a modern one. Early thinkers were poets, and early poets were
thinkers, and all of them equally sought to bring their imagined pasts to bear on the
collective present.
33 Eur. Bacch. 859  861. On the fundamental ambivalence of Dionysos, see Versnel
(1990) 96  205.
34 Dionysos was celebrated in Athens during the winter months with four successive
festivals: Rural Dionysia, Lenaia, Anthesteria, and City Dionysia. For a reconstruction
of the nature and character of each of these festivals see Parker (2005) 290  326.
218 Christian Wildberg
treatment the god received at the hands of Euripides only half a century
earlier. As we turn to the fourth century, we encounter the work of Plato, the
most powerful and creative rationalist in antiquity. The problem of how to
respond, as a political philosopher, to the challenge of Bacchic ritual seems to
have been on Plato s mind to a much greater degree than commonly
recognized. Once one begins to look for them in Plato s work, Dionysian
motifs turn up in numerous and highly significant contexts. One could say that
Plato s treatment of Dionysos is a continuation of Athens enormous cultural
effort, in the 5th century, to domesticate the cult of Dionysos,35 a
domestication that was in its scope far more elaborate, ambitious, and
consequential than the supposed domestication of the Erinyes after the
acquittal of Orestes dramatized by Aeschylus.
To begin with, we may rehearse the well-known observation that in spite
of all the Socratic display of rationality and sobriety, the hero of Plato s
philosophical dialogues is a figure amply invested with Dionysian attributes.
The main evidence for this assertion comes from the Symposium, a
conversation that takes place under the ritual auspices of the god.36 The
relevant passages are so well known that it may suffice to recall them only in
outline: in the last part of the dialogue, the gathering is disturbed by the noisy
arrival of a group of drunken revelers in the entourage of Alcibiades,
professional destabilizer of the polis, hard-core symposiast, and seducer of
women. In this dialogue at least, Alcibiades acts like a human incarnation of
Dionysos; with his arrival one gets the impression that Dionysos himself is
taking over the party.37 Alcibiades sets out to cajole everyone into some heavy
drinking, but the presence of Socrates, whom he had not noticed at first, stops
him in his tracks (213b  c). When Eryximachus, the doctor, assigns him the
task of continuing the interrupted series of speeches in praise of Eros,
35 On Dionysian imagery in Athens in the 5th century, see Carpenter (1997).
36 This is the reason why Agathon says at the beginning (Pl. Symp. 175e) that he will
invoke Dionysos as judge (dijast^r) over a matter that does not normally fall under the
purview of the god (i. e. the question, briefly disputed between him and Socrates, how
wisdom can be transferred from one person to another). The dialogue s topic is, of
course, the god Eros, and Dionysos is barely mentioned explicitly, except in another
short episode (176a  d) that foreshadows Plato s treatment of symposia in the Laws:
after dinner and before the serious drinking and talking is supposed to begin, three
highly significant things happen: first, an offering is made to Dionysos with song in the
god s honor (176a); next, the renowned doctor Eryximachus reminds everyone that
alcohol abuse is a liability (wakepąm to?r !mhq~poir B l]hg 1st_m, 176d); and third, the
female flute player is sent out of the room (176e).
37 Alcibiades also interrupts a conversation in the Protagoras (347b), but the more
suggestive parallel is of course Aristophanes Frogs: just as Dionysos is searching for
Euripides in Hades and rediscovers Aeschylus, so Alcibiades is searching for Agathon
and rediscovers Socrates.
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 219
Alcibiades eulogizes with drunken abandon and in the most flattering terms 
not the god, nor the tragic poet he came to see, but Socrates!38 We hear that
Socrates not only looks like the satyr Marsyas, he also is, like him, a most
daring flute player, only much better in that he does not even need an
instrument to mesmerize his audience. He does it with the power and beauty
of his speech alone (215b  d). When you listen to Socrates, your heart begins
to palpitate more heavily than the hearts of dancing corybants (215d  e); he
stings and transforms everyone who encounters him with the mania and
bakcheia of philosophy (218b). But Socrates not only talks more, and talks more
sense than anyone else, he also drinks more than anyone (cf. also 214a and
220a). In short, he is comparable to no other man, only to a silenos or satyr
(221c  222a).
None of Alcibiades assertions are disputed or retracted in the dialogue;39
on the contrary, they seem to be confirmed by it. At the end of the night and
many a krater later, Socrates is the last man standing, in full possession of his
wits and ready to spend the following day as if nothing at all had happened the
night before.40 Plato praises Socrates through the character of Alcibiades/
Dionysos as some kind of  �ber-Korybant who is not only uncannily immune
to the liberating intoxication of wine but rather himself a source of inspiration,
intoxication, and transformation.
The question why exactly Plato chose to invest the man who, in the
western tradition, was to become the paragon of reason with lavish Dionysian
symbolism is a problem that does not yield to an easy answer. Any attempt to
tackle the issue by speculating about the factual satyr-like character of the
historical Socrates is both hopeless and beside the point. More promising is the
suggestion that the peculiar characterization somehow responds to the
demands of the genre of symposiastic literature, but that is not wholly
satisfactory either, especially if one considers further evidence, e. g. in the Crito
discussed below. In any case, Plato s implied suggestion seems to be that a life
lived to the dictates of reason will be as liberating as any symposiastic revelry or
Bacchic ritual, or even more so. Socrates is immune to the power of Dionysos
(and to common Eros) precisely because he is already free, a figure of sage
authenticity that can neither be destabilized nor seduced. And in turn, it is just
this self-assured stability of character, coupled with an air of intellectual
38 The reason Alcibiades proffers for praising Socrates rather than Eros is that Socrates,
according to him, typically resorts to violence if not he himself but any other god or
man is praised in his presence (214d). This entirely fictitious reason is reminiscent of
Dionysos obsession with appropriate recognition by the polis community, and his
violent reaction when it fails to comply.
39 Socrates was invited to intervene if he thought Alcibiades deviated from the truth,
214e.
40 Confirming what Alcibiades had said about him 220a.
220 Christian Wildberg
superiority which comes across as irony, that turned Socrates at once into a
public nuisance (the  gad-fly of the Athenians) and an irresistible attraction to
scores of young spectators. One cannot fail to notice that the effects of
Socrates irony and intellectual superiority are not unlike the disturbing irony
and superiority displayed by the divine chorus leader in Euripides Bacchae,
Dionysos himself.41
Two further points are worth making in this connection: first, the
characterization of Socrates personality in terms of Bacchic imagery is most
prominent in the Symposium, but it is not confined to that dialogue.42 There is
an exceedingly striking passage at the end of the Crito (54 d), at the moment
when Socrates irrevocably accepts the time and circumstance of his imminent
death.43 Socrates has just finished impersonating the  Laws of Athens as they
successfully persuade him not to do anything that will undermine their
authority and damage his own reputation. In a highly perplexing passage, Plato
abruptly resorts to the vocabulary of Bacchic ritual:44
You know, my dear friend Crito: this is what I seem to be hearing, just as the
corybants seem to be hearing flutes, and the sound of these arguments is buzzing in my
ears so that I am unable to hear any other arguments. Be assured that if you
continue to disagree with what I now think, you will waste your words. [& ]
Leave it, then, Crito, and let us act in this way, for that is the way the god leads us.
[my italics]
One wonders which god precisely Plato thought was leading Socrates at this
fateful moment when he consented to offer himself as sacrificial victim to the
greater cause of philosophy. In the Apology, Socrates had aligned himself with
 the god in Delphi (20e), and it is quite natural to assume that this is the deity
he is referring here too, i. e. Apollo. But the immediate context of this last
remark introduces a fair amount of ambiguity, which is highlighted by the fact
that Dionysos too was closely associated with the Delphic sanctuary.45 In any
41 On Socrates as overpowering ironist, see Nehamas (1998) 70  98.
42 It is perhaps noteworthy in passing that Plato mentions Dionysos briefly in the Phaedrus
265b as one of the four madness-inspiring gods.
43 On the passage see Linforth (1946) 136 f. Linforth carefully examines all the evidence
to be found in Plato and elsewhere on  corybantic rites ; one of the main points of this
rich paper is to repudiate the thesis, first proposed by Scaliger and developed by
Rohde, that the Greeks recognized a  Corybantic disease that consisted in  exhibiting
the symptoms of delirium and the uncontrollable desire to dance (150).
44 {SY.} TaOta, ż v_ke 2ta?qe Jq_tym, ew Ushi fti 1c� doj_ !jo}eim, Śspeq oR
joqubamti_mter t_m aqk_m dojoOsim !jo}eim, ja� 1m 1lo� avtg BAw�to}tym t_m k|cym
bolbe? ja� poie? l� d}mashai t_m %kkym !jo}eim� !kką Ushi, fsa ce tą mOm 1lo�
dojoOmta, 1ąm k]c,r paqą taOta, l\tgm 1qe?r. flyr l]mtoi eU ti oUei pk]om poi^seim,
k]ce. {JQ.} )kk , ż S~jqater, oqj 5wy k]ceim. {SY.} =a to_mum, ż Jq_tym, ja�
pq\ttylem ta}t,, 1peid� ta}t, b heąr rvgce?tai.
45 See Ivanov (2011), chapter 2.
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 221
case, the  Laws of Athens successfully dissuade him from fleeing the prison,
and it is their arguments that cause such a buzz and clamor, so much so that
Socrates is unable to listen to any other point of view. Plato positions Socrates
at a curiously paradoxical intersection of Dionysianism and rationality, turning
him again, just as in the Symposium, into a corybant of reason.46
The second point that needs to be made is this: if I am not mistaken, the
motif of the  Bacchic Socrates is entirely absent from any other biographical
tradition of Socrates that survives; there is no hint of it in Aristophanes, nor in
Xenophon, nor in Diogenes Laertius. Socrates the corybant of reason is a
Platonic invention, that is to say, an original interpretation of the historical
person Plato knew. One cannot but admire Plato s choice of imagery, given
that Socrates and his circle of interlocutors were about to be torn asunder by
the Athenian executioner, and given that this event, the death of Socrates, was
to lead to the perennial resurrection of Socrates in the philosophical
imagination of western intellectual history. One thing seems clear: Plato
would not have evoked Bacchic imagery when he dramatized the moment
that sealed the fate of his mentor if he had not shared his city s long-standing
fascination with the power of Dionysos, and had not assumed a position of
critical distance to it.
V.
We see the criticism emerge more clearly in Plato s final work, the Laws. In
casting Socrates as a figure invested with the iconography of Dionysos, Plato
was subtly but surely also reshaping the 5th-century iconographies of Dionysos,
and in the Laws we encounter the result of this process. Virtually the entire
first two books of this monumental dialogue on governance are devoted to a
discussion of the possible usefulness of drinking for the ideal polis.
The first thing to note is that Plato appears to have refined his views on
alcohol consumption considerably over time. In the Republic, his concern
seems to have been with the abuse of alcohol, and he was quick to condemn it,
at least as far as the guardians are concerned.47 In the Laws, the Spartan
46 Note that when Plato (in the Phaedo, 69c) famously cites the dictum maqhgjov|qoi lłm
pokko_, b\jwoi d] te paOqoi, he continues with the suggestion that the  few being
referred to are the true philosophers: oxtoi d eQs�m jatą t�m 1l�m d|nam oqj %kkoi C oR
pevikosovgj|ter aqh_r.
47 See Republic 3, 398e:  Drunkenness, softness, and idleness are also most inappropriate
for our guardians.  How could they not be?  What, then, are the soft musical modes
suitable for drinking parties? [& ] Could you ever use these to make people warriors? 
Never. Also: Republic 3, 403e4  6:  We said that our prospective guardians must
avoid drunkenness, for it is less appropriate for a guardian to be drunk and not know
222 Christian Wildberg
Megillus professes himself sympathetic to a culture of abstinence,48 but not so
the Athenian, Plato s mouthpiece. In the course of the discussion of this  not
unimportant custom (oq sl_jqom 1pit^deula, 637d4) the conclusion is
reached that the consumption of wine  that welcome gift of the god against
dreadful old age  may in fact have important moral and political functions.49
Plato s doctrine is that weaknesses of character show up more readily under the
influence of alcohol; in consequence, it becomes quite easy to gauge a person
and his50 susceptibility to vice if and when he is intoxicated (649b  650b).51
Rather than preaching abstinence, the Athenian draws the conclusion that
alcohol consumption should be an important part of the education of the
mature citizen. At annual wine festivals, citizens can playfully put each other to
the test, and periodical intoxication provides one with opportunities to
develop one s character through exercises of suppressing certain unwanted
emotions stirred by intoxication.52 Far from being  most shameful , as may
have been suggested by Heraclitus, or dangerous (the view of the Republic), the
cult of Dionysos, properly understood and administered, is now just the very
opposite: an entirely beneficial civic activity, the best way to  produce
reverence (aQd~r) in the soul, and health and strength in the body ! In order to
give this radically new view of a civilized Dionysos sufficient plausibility, Plato
reduces him to a god of wine;53 he is of course aware of the darker Orphic
iconography and ritual, but those aspects of the deity are artfully removed from
the readers view.54 Witness the following passage, Laws 2, 672a  d:
where on earth he is than it is for anyone else.  Even sleep in a state of drunkenness
(l]hgr, 571c5) is said to be condemnable, because wine can arouse the lowest instincts
of the soul.
48 Cf. Laws 1, 636e  637b.
49 Laws 2, 666a  b:  So how shall we encourage them to be enthusiastic about singing?
[& ] When (a citizen) reaches his thirties, he should regale himself at the common meals
and invoke the gods; in particular, he should summon Dionysos to what is at once
play-time and the prayer time of the old, which the god gave to mankind as a cure
against the austerity (aqstgq|tgr) of age. This is the gift he gave us to make us young
again [& ] .
50 Wine consumption by women is not something Plato contemplates in this context.
51 Plato s thought in this instance does not seem to be original. Alcaeus asserted that wine
is a mirror of mankind (fr. 104 Diehl = fr. 333 Voigt) and a fragment attributed to
Aeschylus states that wine is a mirror of the soul (fr. 393 TrGF III).
52 On the catharsis of emotions in the Laws see Belfiore (1986).
53 Already in the Cratylus (406c), Plato had (playfully?) derived the name  Dionysos from
 Didoinysos ,  wine-giver , and the word  wine (oWmor) from  thinking to have a mind :
f te cąq Di|musor eUg #m b tąm  Dido_musor 1m paidił jako}lemor,
oWmor d , fti 5weim poie? t_m pim|mtym tor pokkor oqj 5womtar,
 oQ|mour dijai|tat #m jako}lemor.
54 See also Linforth (1946) 160 f. on the absence of corybantic rites in the discussions of
music and dance in both the Republic and the Laws.
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 223
So let us not abuse the gift of Dionysus any longer in the old unqualified terms,
saying that it is bad and does not deserve to be received into the state. One could
enlarge on this benefit even more.  What is the benefit?  There is a story and
rumor which says that Dionysus was robbed of his wits by his stepmother Hera,
and that he gets his revenge by stimulating us to Bacchic frenzies and all that mad
dancing that results. This story, however, I leave to those who see no danger in speaking of
the gods in such terms. [& ] According to the common story wine was given to men
as a means of taking vengeance on us  it was intended to drive us insane. But our
interpretation is entirely the opposite: the gift was intended to be a medicine, and
to produce reverence (aQd~r) in the soul, and health and strength in the body.
(transl. Saunders) [my italics]
Furthermore noteworthy in this connection is that the first two books of the
Laws, just as the passage just cited, contain numerous explicit references to
Dionysos,55 which is in keeping with the entire treatise s general foreground-
ing of religious language, ritual prescriptions and theological doctrine. In
distinction to the Republic, Plato is clearly legislating here the terms and
conditions of religious worship; in the case of ritual drinking, those citizens
that are allowed and indeed encouraged to cultivate it are not simply defined
by age and gender, but are addressed as a cult community, viz. the  Chorus of
Dionysos , as distinct from the Choruses of the Muses and of Apollo, which
are the cult communities of younger generations. Plato casts his newly adopted
 alcohol policy in ostentatiously religious language, which suggests that the
focus of his concern did not simply aim at the use and abuse of alcohol in the
city, but also at the appropriation and domestication of the entire cult of
Dionysos. The god receives from Plato a new and more uniform mask, with
the god s iconography narrowed down to only one of its aspects. In the course
of this focalization Plato thinks he is able to integrate Dionysos fully into the
life of the polis, and it is quite obvious that a religious reform of this kind had
to be framed in religious language and encompass regulations that rely on the
language of religious ritual.
The upshot of the Platonic domestication of the cult of Dionysos is that
the quintessential Bacchic revelers are, surprisingly, no longer women of
reputable social standing in their twenties and thirties56 but male citizens in
their forties and fifties; instead of roaming the mountain slopes and valleys one
now stays in the polis; instead of making phallophoric processions one now
reclines comfortably on soft couches in andrones, drinks in restrained measure
and interrupts this civilized activity with the occasional dance step or song.
55 The name of the god, for example, is invoked some 16 times, along with innumerable
other implicit or oblique references, whereas in the Republic the name  Dionysos does
not occur at all in the relevant sense; only in his discussion of the lovers of sights and
sounds (Rep. 5, 475d) does Plato refer once and in passing to festivals of Dionysos.
56 Or, as the evidence suggests, thiasoi of mixed gender, which routinely raised suspicion
of immorality.
224 Christian Wildberg
The outdoors have become the indoors, and the god venerated there has lost
most of his seductive power and destabilizing potential; the Dionysos who
once destroyed Thebes has himself become a political institution  a pillar of
society. Plato of course knew the ancient myths of the destructive force of
Dionysos as well as anybody (see the text quoted above), but he censures them
as dangerous. It is quite certain that he was reluctant to grant them any
valence.57
VI.
And neither, it seems, did his readers. It may be a matter of dispute whether
Plato s transformation of the cult of Dionysos is merely reflecting a socio-
religious trend or actually setting one.58 The fact of the matter is that in
subsequent centuries the intellectual discourse is remarkably silent about the
menacing destabilizer of the polis we encounter in Euripides Bacchae. If
Dionysos is mentioned at all, and especially by philosophers, the name of the
god is almost invariably used symbolically, though no longer of inner organs
and their function:  Dionysos is now a standard synonym for  wine , just as
 Aphrodite is a synonym for  sex and  Ares for  war .59 The Corpus
Aristotelicum refers to Dionysos in just this sense, and this sense only;60 the
fragments of the Stoics have nothing to contribute to our understanding of
Dionysianism,61 and the same holds for Epicurus and his Roman disciple
57 The Platonic domestication and political integration of the cult of Dionysos is of a
piece with Plato s general revision of theology. In Republic Book 2, he fully developed
the idea that the gods are good, arguing that the concept of a deity, properly
understood, necessarily includes its goodness; on the problem of Plato s theology see
Bordt (2006).
58 Evidence for government-controlled Dionysian mysteries in Egypt is found in the so-
called Edict of Ptolemy IV Philopator, who ruled from 221 to 205 B.C.; cf. Seaford
(2006a) 58. In Hellenistic Athens, actors and musicians were organized in associations
under the protection of Dionysos; on the so-called oR peq� tąm Di|musom tewm?tai see
Aneziri (2003).
59 See e. g. Aristotle, Politics 2, 1269b27  31: 5oije cąq b luhokoc^sar pq_tor oqj
!k|cyr sufeOnai tąm -qgm pqąr t�m )vqod_tgm� C cąqpqąr t�m t_m !qq]mym blik_am C
pqąr t�m t_m cumaij_m va_momtai jatoj~wiloi p\mter oR toioOtoi.
60 Unless the discussion concerns some historical point about temples or festivals of
Dionysos. Cf. Bonitz Index Aristotelicus p. 199 a 56  59 and, for example, Problemata
953b30  32: ja� dią toOto f te oWmor !vqodisiastijor !peqc\fetai, ja� aqh_r
Di|musor ja� )vqod_tg k]comtai let !kk^kym eWmai.
61 The 1st-century C.E. Stoic philosopher Cornutus wrote a compendium of Greek
deities in which Dionysos is consistently and exclusively interpreted as the god of wine
and intoxication: for example, one of Dionysos attributes is a thyrsos because drunk
people need a stick to support themselves, etc. See Nesselrath (2009) 100  107 and
Busch/Zangenberg (2010) 135  141.
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 225
Lucretius; given the atomists minimal sensibility for religious matters in
general, this is hardly surprising.62
Talk about Dionysos enjoys a revival of sorts in the Second Sophistic.
Lucian knows how to spin tall tales about Dionysos as the tipsy dandy who,
with a mere handful of dancing woman, conquers entire armies of elephant
cavalry (see his Dionysos). In one of his stories, Zeus tries to figure out how to
attract more women; Eros gives him the advice to dress up like Dionysos: such
is the attractiveness of the fellow (Dialogues of the Gods 6). When we encounter
Lucian s Dionysos directly, he is an effeminate giggler who exchanges jokes
with Apollo, like the one about the other day, when Priapos tried to seduce
him (Dialogues of the Gods 2). Lucian of course knows what he is doing:  What
does this Dionysos have to do with Dionysos? he asks rather aptly at one
point.63  Nothing would be our answer; Lucian s frivolous stories merely
betray the fact that by the 2nd century C.E. the terrifying archaic iconography
of Dionysos had completely lost its grip on the collective imagination.
VII.
But Dionysos was to change his shape in the ancient philosophical tradition
one more time. In the antiquity s final centuries, the handful of remaining
pagans, highly educated Platonists who understood themselves as guardians of
a millennium of intellectual history, probed the ancestral myths for their
hidden significance and meaning in order better to preserve and defend the
beliefs enshrined in their waning culture. One such myth acquired particular
importance for them: the ancient and presumably Orphic account of the
primordial sparagmos, according to which the Titans, on Hera s bidding,
attacked and devoured the infant Dionysos-Zagreus.64 The story is usually only
hinted at in our ancient sources as it was regarded as a mysterium one did not
talk about. The story went roughly like this: to carry out their sinister plot, the
Titans distract the infant Dionysos with a mirror (and some other children s
62 Dionysos is not mentioned in the little of what remains of Epicurus vast literary
output. In Lucretius, Dionysos is referred to as Bacchus (twice 2.656 and 3.221), as
Liber (5.14), or as Euthius Euan (5.743). Except for the passage in 5.14, where Liber is
said to have been the discoverer of wine, the reference is a symbolic one, to alcoholic
beverage.
63 Lucian, Dionysos 5.1: )kką t_ pqąr tąm Di|musom b Di|musor oxtor; eUpoi tir %m.
64 Zagreus, the son of Zeus and Persephone, was possibly an ancient Cretan deity that was
later, presumably in Orphic circles, identified with Dionysos: see Ivanov (2011),
chapter 9. On the difficulty to trace all aspects of the myth back to 5th-century Orphism
see Edmonds (1999). For our purposes, the question of the historical pedigree of the
Neoplatonists version of the myth is of no consequence.
226 Christian Wildberg
toys); as Dionysos becomes engrossed with the toy and, presumably, his own
image in it, the Titans tear him into pieces, cook them and eat them.65 Only
Dionysos heart is saved, and this in turn enables Dionysos eventual
resurrection with the help of Zeus. But before that, Zeus avenges the death
of his son with a mighty thunderbolt, thoroughly destroying the Titans, but
from the smoldering soot of the Dionysos-satiated Titans, strangely, the
human race emerges.
The anthropological message of this sinister myth is that we humans are
born of a Titanic nature, treacherous and violent, yet our bodies harbor also a
spark of divine lineage: a fragment of Dionysos. Unlike any other animal, our
corporeal nature is dual, both Titanic and Olympian, both brutish and
sublime.66 In late antiquity, this startling myth enjoyed something of a revival,
and several accounts of it have come down to us in philosophical contexts.67
For example, in his commentary on Plato s Phaedo, the 6th-century
Alexandrian Platonist Olympiodorus68 is discussing the passage 61c  62c
where Socrates develops the thesis that philosophy is a preparation for death;
in that context, Socrates mentions certain ineffable accounts (!p|qqgta),
according to which it is unlawful to take one s own life. Olympiodorus
explains what he thinks these !p|qqgta referred to are, so as to render Plato s
 mythical argument against suicide intelligible to his audience:
65 The myth is most fully, and beautifully, told by the 4th-century Christian writer Julius
Firmicus Maternus, On the Errors of Pagan Religions 6.1  5. Shorter versions, or parts
thereof, can be found in many different contexts; see e. g. Nonnos, 6.169  205;
Plotinus, Enn. 4.3 [27] 12; Callimachus, fr. 374; Proclus, In Tim. 1.173.1  6;
2.197.24  27; In Alcibiad. 344.31; Damascius, De princip. 94; Plutarch, De esu carn.
1.7 (= Orphicorum Fragmenta 210); Onomacritus fr. 4 (= Orphicorum Fragmenta 210);
Diodorus Siculus 5.75.4; Olympiodorus, In Phaed. 1.2; Clement Protr. 2.15. Plato may
allude to this myth when he mentions an  unnamed crime in connection with
Orpheus (Cratylus 400c; Phaedo 62b). Other possible early allusions in Herodotus
(2.42; 61; 132; 170) and Isocrates (11.39).  See also Lobeck (1829) 564  568;
Harrison (1922) 478  571 = chapter 10.  Pausanias (8.37.5) links the myth to
Onomacritus:  The first to introduce Titans into poetry was Homer, representing
them as gods down in what is called Tartarus; the lines are in the passage about Hera s
oath. From Homer the name of the Titans was taken by Onomacritus, who in the
orgies he composed for Dionysos made the Titans the authors of the god s sufferings.
That the myth of the Titans attacking the child Dionysos is of Orphic origin is argued,
among others, by Guthrie (1952) 120 and West (1983) 166, and strongly denied by
Edmonds (1999).
66 For discussions of the Zagreus myth see for example Macchioro (1920); FestugiŁre
(1935); Linforth (1941) 307  364; Burkert (1977b); Ker�nyi (1976b) 262  272; West
(1983); Fol (1993); Sorel (1995) 64  87; Edmonds (1999); Taylor (2008) 95  98;
Edmonds (2009).
67 See above n. 65.
68 See Olympiodorus, In Phaed. 1.2  3.
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 227
We must not commit suicide  not because, as the text seems to say, we are in
some sort of bondage, viz. the body (for that is evident, and Plato would not have
called this  ineffable ); rather, we must not commit suicide because our body is
Dionysian. For we are part of him, if at any rate we are put together from the soot
of the Titans who had eaten the god s flesh.69
According to Olympiodorus understanding of the Orphic myth, suicide
would be sacrilege; since part of our body is Dionysian, taking one s own life
would amount to an impious re-enactment of the original sparagmos. It is
remarkable that as late as the 6th century, a pagan philosopher teaching a
predominantly Christian student body could invoke and interpret an Orphic
myth of great antiquity in order to sketch a pagan anthropology that
conformed, however distantly, with the new religion s belief in the sanctity of
life and the fundamental duality of our being.
But that does not answer the question what precisely attracted the
Neoplatonists to the gruesome anthropology of the Zagreus myth. How could
the disturbing amalgam of motifs such as the jealousy of Hera, the savage
murder of a defenseless child, ritual cannibalism, and the smoldering soot of
vanquished Titans have appealed to the superior sensibilities of a Platonist? As
in the case of so many questions concerning Neoplatonic philosophy, the
answer lies with Plotinus. As far as we can tell, it was he who revived the myth
and extracted from it psychological insights that were much more profound
than the Platonic injunction against suicide.
Plotinus was, of course, an idealist who gave ontological priority to
immaterial phenomena  such as the functions of our psyche  over the
material world of our bodily existence. For an idealist of this sort, it poses a
considerable problem to explain how the immaterial and cognitive aspects of
reality (traditionally referred to as  soul ,  intellect etc.) ever became involved
with matter to form living beings that are subject to the evils and travails of
embodiment. The problem is a particularly pressing one in the case of human
beings since we, unlike any other natural species, are embodiments not only of
animalistic forms of psychic activity but somehow share (and this is our
defining characteristic) in the power of higher forms of reason and under-
standing. So why are we here, and how did we get here? Plotinus was of
course well aware of common  explanations to the effect that man was created
by god, or by some gods (such as we find in Hesiod, Plato and the Bible). But
he intensely disliked the notion of divine craftsmen laboring and making
69 In Phaed. 1.3: oq de? owm 1n\ceim Bl�r 2auto}r, oqw fti, ór doje? k]ceim B k]nir, di|ti 5m
timi desl` 1slem t` s~lati (toOto cąq d/k|m 1sti, ja� oqj #m toOto !p|qqgtom
5kecem), !kk fti oq de? 1n\ceim Bl�r 2autor ór toO s~lator Bl_m DiomusiajoO emtor�
l]qor cąq aqtoO 1slem, eU ce 1j t/r aQh\kgr t_m Tit\mym sucje_leha ceusal]mym t_m
saqj_m to}tou.
228 Christian Wildberg
things.70 And he even more disliked (for good philosophical reasons, of course)
the view that human existence is a form of punishment for our souls ostensibly
evil disposition.71 Embodiment is neither evil, nor the result of evil, nor
entirely involuntary; nor (and this point was very important to Plotinus) is it
actually the case that our souls descend completely into the material world.72
So, what precisely is embodiment? His answer is that it is an event both
innocent and irresistible, yet one with enormous consequences  so enormous,
irresistible, and innocent as looking at oneself in a mirror. The crucial passage
is found in Ennead 4.3 (On Difficulties about the Soul 1), in a section in which he
discusses the question of how soul comes to be in a body (4.3.9 ff.). According
to Plotinus, there is a distinction to be made between the souls of the stars and
the souls of humans:
The heavenly bodies are gods because they do not depart ever from those
intelligible gods. [& ] They look towards intellect since their soul never looks
elsewhere than there. But the souls of men see their images as if in the mirror of Dionysos
and come to be on that level with a leap from above, but these too are not cut off from
their own principle, and from intellect.73 [my italics]
This brief simile contains, in a nutshell, Plotinus explanation of the fact of
human existence. Again, the central thesis is tied to the Zagreus myth, except
that in Plotinus the focus has shifted from the story s center, the Titans crime,
to one of its details, the mirror that helps to distract the infant Dionysos.74
Note also how the motif of the mirror is immediately connected with the
70 See e. g. Enn. 3.8 [30] 2; 2.9 [33] 10.
71 See e. g. Enn. 1.8 [51] 2.
72 For a concise summary of the Plotinian position on incarnation, see Steel (1978) 34 
38.  The general problem of embodiment in Neoplatonism is of course far more
intricate and complex than suggested there or in the following brief remarks of this
paper, which intend only to illuminate the initial incentive of the disembodied soul to
descend. For a fuller treatment of incarnation one would have to discuss, among
scattered remarks in Plotinus, the fascinating embryological treatise Ad Gaurum by
Porphyry, which sheds light on the Neoplatonic views on such questions as the
moment of embodiment (i. e. whether it occurs, at the time of birth or at the time of
conception, a debate that has far-reaching anthropological and astrological implica-
tions), the precise ways in which nature prepares bodies for higher animation, and the
processes of the soul s separation from the body (natural vs. philosophical death). Only
preliminary work in this direction has been carried out; see e. g. P�pin (1970),
Blumenthal (1971), Hadot (1976), Steel (1978).
73 Enn. 4.3 [27] 11.24  12.3: Heo� d] eQsim oxtoi t` !e� l� !postate?m 1je_mym, ja� t0 lłm
1naqw/r xuw0 pqosgqt/shai t0 oXom !pekho}s, xuw0, ta}t, d], �peq ja_ eQsi ja� d
k]comtai, pqąr moOm bk]peim oqdaloO xuw/r aqto?r C 1je? bkepo}sgr. )mhq~pym dł
xuwa� eUdyka aqt_m QdoOsai oXom Diom}sou 1m jat|ptq\ 1je? 1c]momto %myhem
bqlghe?sai, oqj !potlghe?sai oqd axtai t/r 2aut_m !qw/r te ja� moO.
74 On examples for representations of mirror scenes in ancient art, including mirrors of
Dionysos, see Taylor (2008).
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 229
characteristically Plotinian claim of the undescended soul: just as an image
appears in the mirror only if and when there is some external object, in the
same way our natural existence as animated bodies is only the image of
another, more stable psychic reality over and above the realm of nature. Now,
Plotinus suggestion is that our not yet embodied souls  see themselves in
matter as if in a mirror. Seduced by the delightful possibilities of the
phenomenal world and the part they might play in it, the souls  jump down
without deliberation.75 Gazing into the mirror of matter, spontaneous and
innocent desire makes our souls embark on the migration to this world: as
soon as our disembodied selves behold their image, they are already  here
while still remaining  there . Something quite innocent arose within them and
tore them asunder.
According to the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Zagreus myth, human
beings are, in a sense, images of Dionysos, fleeting and fragmented appearances
in his mirror. Or, to put it differently: fleeting and fragmented dispersions of
divine consciousness in the mirror of matter.76 Now, it might be tempting to
dismiss this mythico-philosophical anthropology as just another piece of
Neoplatonic humbug; but that would be pedestrian. The reason is that
Plotinus analysis contains a startling, and startlingly modern, insight into
human psychology. In Neoplatonism, processes that take place on a lower
level of reality are somehow prefigured on a higher level, and likewise every
macrocosmic-metaphysical claim, such as the one we are dealing with, must
have its counterpart in the guise of an image within the world of individual
being. The question therefore is, does Plotinus sweeping understanding of the
Zagreus myth throw any light on any phenomenon familiar to us on the level
of human psychology?
75 Plotinus compares the impulse leading to embodiment to spontaneous jumping (of
children, presumably), or the desire of men for intercourse with a woman, or for heroic
action, none of which are deeds that require, and hardly ever involve, rational
deliberation (kocisl|r). Cf. Enn. 4.3 [27] 13.17  20:  The souls go neither willingly
nor because they are sent, nor is the voluntary element in their going like deliberate
choice, but like a natural spontaneous jumping or a passionate natural desire of sexual
union or as some men are moved unreasoningly to noble deeds. (]asi dł oute 2joOsai
oute pelvhe?sai� ou ce tą 2jo}siom toioOtom ór pqoek]shai, !kk ór tą pgd�m jatą
v}sim, C <ór> pqąr c\lym vusijąr pqohul_ar C [ór] pqąr pq\neir timłr jak_m oq
kocisl` jimo}lemoi.)  Diogenes Laertius (2.33) recounts the fascinating anecdote that
Socrates recommended the constant use of the mirror, but there is no suggestion that
this had anything to do with the myth of the mirror of Dionysos.
76 As Carolle Tresson puts it in a forthcoming study entitled L aporie ou l exp�rience
m�taphysique de la dualit� dans le Peri Arch�n de Damaskios:  Les Titans symbolisent les
principes d individuation et de division qui morcŁlent l intellect cosmique (Dionysos)
dans l espace et dans le temps.
230 Christian Wildberg
As far as I can see, Plotinus did not further articulate and explore the
implications of what it means to experience oneself as an image,77 but it is not
difficult to draw a connection between Plotinus anthropology and the work
of Jacques Lacan, in particular what he identified as the  mirror stage in the
development of the young child.78 Lacan (1977) 1 discovered that a  child, at
an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee in
instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize his own image in
a mirror . This distinctly human and early ability to recognize oneself in
something external and other, and the construction of one s identity in the
negotiation of the self and that other, remain, according to Lacan (ibid. 2), part
of the fundamental structure of human psychology, only partially overcome by
the acquisition of language.  This jubilant assumption of his specular image by
the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling
dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic
matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is
objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before
language restores to it, in the universal, its function as a subject .
Even though Lacan s psychoanalytical theory of the importance of the
mirror stage for human development goes well beyond the implications of the
Zagreus myth as drawn by the Neoplatonists, the former is clearly related to
latter in significant ways.79 In both cases, the recognition of oneself in and
identification with the other (i. e. the image) transforms an originary awareness
of authentic identity into an imagined, processed and acquired one. It is not
difficult to draw the further connection from here to the concerns of modern
cultural criticism lamenting the way in which human existence is increasingly
captivated by, and held hostage to, a plethora of social symbols and imagined
idols that together determine our confused and scattered identity, an identity
that, if had to be spelled out, would prompt a litany of cultural, religious, and
social roles and commitments, all of which are of our own collective making,
and all of which we consistently mistake for our own reality.80 Malcolm Bull
77 Not unreasonably so, given that he was more interested in vanquishing the limitations
of embodiment than exhaustively exploring their phenomenology.
78 See Lacan (1977) 1  7. The French title of the famous paper is Le stade du miroir comme
formateur de la fonction du Je. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 14th
International Psychoanalytical Congress in August 1936 and published in English in
1937.
79 Lacan was almost certainly acquainted with the motif of the mirror of Dionysos
through Erwin Rohde s Psyche, which had been published in French in 1928.
80 I am thinking in particular of the work of Marshall McLuhan, but see also Bracher
(1993).  The social and political danger inherent in the progress and proliferation of
media technology is thematized, with explicit reference of the Zagreus myth, in Ralph
Comer s detective story The Mirror of Dionysos (1969). One passage (ibid. 93) is
particularly revealing and deserves to be quoted in full:   So what, said Lawson.  Why
Dionysos in the Mirror of Philosophy: Heraclitus, Plato, and Plotinus 231
has published a suggestive essay on modern migration in which he sheds
fascinating light on the phenomenon of regional mobility, borrowing the
relevant terms of his analysis from the Plotinian-Lacanian psychology of the
seduction of the imaginary.81 What all these forms of modern cultural
criticism, however, fail to achieve (in distinction to the precepts of
Neoplatonism) is to show a way out, to show how human beings might
possibly liberate themselves from the slavery of the fabricated image. If the lens
and the screen, the magazine and the newspaper, television, film and the
hyper-reality of digital representation are indeed the modern mirrors of
Dionysos that constantly seduce us to look for ourselves in them while in fact
luring us further away from any genuine experience of the self in a state of
non-fragmented authenticity, we are forever condemned to relive the fate of
Dionysos-Zagreus.
Plotinus philosophy can be understood as a bold attempt to train the mind
to break the power of the image and to interrupt the perpetual diversion of our
consciousness into a state of alienation from the self. Plotinus famous last
injunction to his student Eustochius might have been spoken by Dionysos
himself:  Try to bring back the god in us to the divine in the All. 82
all this rigmarole about photographers?  Because photography is the dominant art form
of the present time. A cornucopia of images. And now, through electronics, a greater
influence for good and evil than all the books ever written. The camera lens is the
modern mirror of Dionysos and those, like you, who use it, are the new high priests.
Legend has it that the Titans were able to kill Zagreus by distracting his attention with
his own distorted image in a mirror. Perhaps that is what is happening to the world.
Perhaps there are those who want it to happen. Lawson smiled.  The medium or the
message. 
81 See Bull (2001) 23:  If we pick up the Plotinian imagery in Lacan s early texts, it alerts
us not just to the range of Lacan s sources, but to the value of the mirror stage as a
political myth comparable in potency to that of Hegel s master and slave. In certain
respects, it seems more relevant to the contemporary situation than Hegel s dialectic,
for it hinges on image rather than status, on movement rather than struggle, and on the
relation of the one and the many rather than a dyadic rivalry. Above all, it provides a
model for the dynamics of migration: the smooth reflective surface of the host region,
the lure of the image glimpsed within it, and the experience of alienation that
frequently results.
82 The text of this passage is not transmitted uniformly; some manuscripts read  Try to
bring back the god (or the divine) in you (pl.) to the divine in the All . On Plotinus last
words, see Sala (2002) and Most (2003).  In a suggestive passage, Pausanias (8.37.7)
talks about a remote sanctuary in Arcadia, where a mirror was used to show visitors to
the sanctuary not their own images but, as it were, their true nature, reversing, in a
manner of speaking, the entrapment of their consciousness. Whenever pilgrims looked
into this mirror, they beheld not their own image, but the image of the higher reality of
the sanctuary s deities:  On the right as you go out of the temple there is a mirror fitted
into the wall. If one looks into this mirror, one will see oneself at first either very dimly
or not at all  yet it is possible to see clearly the images of the gods on their throne. 
The narrative is part of Pausanias description of the Despoina sanctuary in Lycosura,
232 Christian Wildberg
VIII.
For Heraclitus, Dionysos is the antipode of Hades; yet in virtue of the doctrine
of the unity of opposites, Dionysos also is, in a Heraclitean sense, the same as
Hades. Venerating Dionysos is at the same time shameless and pious,
depending on which way one looks at the matter. Heraclitus pronouncements
on Dionysos are as cryptic and illuminating as the rest of his thoughts; still, we
can safely credit him with inventing an entire industry, that of thinking about
Dionysos philosophically and of attempting to decipher the god s significance
in the larger scheme of human affairs, both social and psychological. Over the
centuries, philosophers continued to grapple with the reality of the trans-
gressive cult of Dionysos and the meaning of the myths that surrounded him.
Already in antiquity, attempts were made to understand the god in a
straightforward and symbolic way, but they were not very influential. Of
greater concern seems to have been the question how to integrate a subversive
and destabilizing deity into the cultural landscape of the polis. For some
reason, it was Athens were the necessity to contain and integrate Dionysos was
felt with unparalleled urgency. In the wake of the Athenian domestication of
Dionysos for the Greek world, the iconography of Dionysos gradually changes
into that of the Greco-Roman Bacchus, a jolly fellow who presides over the
enjoyment of wine, women, and song. Philosophers of that period rightfully
harbored little or no intellectual interest in this figure. But in late antiquity,
when the rise of Christianity rekindled interest in a deeper understanding of
the human condition, of human destiny and the possibilities of salvation, the
old Orphic myth of Dionysos-Zagreus served philosophers as a rich and
incisive metaphor. The insight they arrived at was not that Dionysos is Hades,
but rather, and no less paradoxical, that Dionysos is what we are, and that,
individually and as a species, our human consciousness shares with him the fate
of being torn asunder by the entrancing promise and conceit of the imaginary
in space and time.
west of Megalopolis. For the topography and reconstruction of the sanctuary, see
Papachatzi (1980) 331  41.


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