Around 280 BC, Rome was one of the rising states, and a good part of southern Italy and the present-day Croatian coast were Greek in their customs and rituals. One of those cities was Tarentum, today’s Taranto, in the rich wine-producing region of Apulia in southern Italy.
As expected for a wine-producing region, the main deity of this city was the god of wine Dionysus, and a multi-day “festival” was held in his name, where the entire city would stop to taste this year’s wine and celebrate in honor of the god Dionysus. The problem for Tarentum occurred when certain young men from the city captured Roman ships and took Romans as slaves. Roman diplomats came to Tarentum to negotiate, but the Romans were not yet Hellenized as in later periods, so they did not pay much attention to the Dionysian festival, not realizing that the entire city was literally in celebration, from slaves to the highest nobles.
When the Roman diplomats arrived among the drunken Greeks to negotiate the return of their captives, all the city’s officials were so intoxicated with the excellent vintage that they ridiculed the Romans. One Greek noble even went so far as to defecate on the toga of one of the Roman diplomats as a joke.
The Roman diplomat did not find this amusing at all, and with that same soiled toga, he returned to the Senate, which was extremely stern and militant compared to the contemporary Greek culture. Ten years later, Tarentum was conquered and razed to the ground. It seems that the Romans of that time did not quite understand Greek customs and jokes, nor did they yet realize how much Apulian wine could drive a person to sometimes irrational decisions.
Of course, this story is an interesting footnote from the past, but it demonstrates well how Dionysus, and wine itself, were central to Greek culture and customs, so much so that even the most important state affairs took a back seat when the days of Dionysus were celebrated. Later, even the Romans adopted these Greek customs.
Among all the ancient gods of wine, one of the most prominent is definitely the Greek god Dionysus. This deity dominated throughout the centuries of Hellenistic and Roman culture and inspired numerous European artists during the Renaissance and classical periods of modern art.
Dionysus was a god with many names, as the Greeks called him, and one of the names used was Iacchus, which served as the basis for the later Roman version of this deity, Bacchus. He was traditionally considered the son of Zeus and Persephone, the goddess of the underworld. He was regarded as a wandering god and a vagabond, somewhat like the Tramp from “The Tramp and the Sons,” and in some texts, it is mentioned that he was a god who came from Thrace in present-day Turkey to ancient Greece.
However, historical texts reveal that Dionysus was one of the oldest Greek deities, and his oldest representation dates back to 1300 years before Christ, with ancient Minoan civilizations giving him many names from Dionysian myths. This demonstrates the centrality and longevity of this deity, which was popular among Greeks for over 1300 years.
However, of all the ancient Greek cities, this deity was most celebrated in Athens and in Greek colonies in southern Italy. These festivals celebrating Dionysus were called Anthesteria and lasted three days, marking the beginning of spring. Due to different weather conditions and calendars of that time, this fell under the beginning of the first or second month. The ancient Greeks stored their wine in ceramic vessels called pithoi, which were as tall as humans and wide enough to store large quantities of grains or liquids. Unlike us today, they did not use wooden barrels but hermetically sealed ceramic vessels in which they allowed the wine to do its magic.
The beginning of the three-day Dionysian festival began with a day called pithoigia, which literally means the opening of the vessels, when the vessels were opened, and the wine was tasted. Interestingly, even slaves were allowed to taste the wine, showing that wine was the great equalizer in our society because nobles realized that we are all quite similar when we get drunk.
The second day of this festival was called Choes, which literally means pouring or pouring in. People dressed cheerfully and often in costumes that imitated various characters from Dionysus’s entourage. These days were among the first in history where drinking games were recorded, with a competition held where the goal was to drink one’s cup as quickly as possible.
Also, the annual wine was poured over the graves of ancestors. But also important was the procession where a spiritual ritual was held, where the queen of the ritual, the basilinna, symbolically married the god. What exactly constituted this ritual is not known for sure, and there are some insinuations that it involved open sexual intercourse, although this is not confirmed.
The third and final day of these Dionysian days was called Chytroi, which literally means vessels. Namely, Dionysian days also had dark implications, and it was believed that the souls of the dead emerged during these days, probably because of the frequent drunken incidents that occurred. This last day symbolically provided a day to close these evil spirits, and no one was allowed to taste the food left to the spirits as a sacrifice. The celebration continued as well as certain games, but performances were banned.
Later, these festivals took on increasingly wild and debauched forms, as noted at the beginning of the text, and the rituals became less important and increasingly used as an alibi for unruly behavior. However, more on that in the text about the Roman version of this god.
Dionysus himself was an intriguing deity; he was often depicted as completely naked, with a crown of grapevines and a staff wrapped in ivy and grapevines. He was identified not only with wine but also with vegetation, fertility, theater, and celebration. He also had a dark side, representing ritual madness, unstoppable ecstasy, and death and rebirth.
It is interesting to mention that he also had a numerous entourage. The goddess Methe, Dionysus’s daughter, personified drunkenness, but the most interesting from Dionysus’s entourage is Acratopotes, the god of unmixed wine. The ancient Greeks often mixed wine, but this hero, celebrated in Athens, like all ancient heroes, drank only unmixed wine, no matter the vintage, just as we at Croatian Wineries prefer to taste wine. Who knows, maybe for the next carnival, we’ll dress up as Acratopotes to celebrate this first inspiration for unmixed wine.
In the next article, we will go through the Roman gods of wine and some interesting facts about them.