I’ve come across this site a few times before, and once again it has yielded up some good information about Dionysus’ connections to Persephone, Demeter and Zeus. It’s all very complicated, with several different stories overlapping how they fit together, but it’s startng to become clearer to me. I gotta learn me some more about the Eleusinian mysteries, and this seems like a good site to do so. I’ll be back…

This page is also really good (although too short), called Demeter and Ceres: A cross cultural analysis. It claims Dionysus & Persephone as both children of Demeter, and being Equivalent to the Roman Liber & Liberia.

This other page isn’t particularly good, but this quote will be useful for my upcoming article:

The Maenads, (Bacchantes) were Dionysus’ female votaries who accompanied him when he traveled. Frenzied with wine they rushed through woods and over mountains uttering sharp cries, waving pine-cone-tipped wands (thyrsi). They danced and sang exultant songs, wearing fawn-skins over their robes. Nothing could stop them. They would tear to pieces the wild creatures they met and devour the bloody shreds of flesh.

The worship of Dionysus was centered in two ideas so far apart; of freedom and joy and of savage brutality; man’s blessing sometimes his ruin. The reason that Dionysus was so different at one time from another was because of the double nature of wine, his symbol. He was man’s benefactor and he was man’s destroyer.

It also says of Dionysus “Having more titles than any of the other deities, he was styled the ‘God of many names.’ (Bromios, Lyaeos, Dithyrambos, Bakchos, and Liber.)” But there are definitely more besides that too. I should compile a list of all his names sometime.