The God of Wine

It strikes me as both fascinating and deeply culturally revealing that the Greeks and Romans had a God of Wine: Dionysus, to the Greeks, and Bacchus, to the Romans.

Definitely very passionate about grapes. Exhibit A, the bunch he wields like the tip of a spear in his left hand.

The long list of things Dionysus was the God of is astounding. Not only did his jurisdiction cover wine, but he also was the God of winemaking, grape cultivation, fertility, ritual madness, theater, and religious ecstasy. I find it incredibly intriguing that through Dionysus, Greeks and Romans associated wine with fertility, madness, theater, and religious ecstasy. Thematically, a sense of loss of agency and exaggeration courses through Dionysus's veins.

As one of the twelve Greek Olympians, Dionysus stood on the helm of celestial power, yet he was inherently an outsider. Dionysus was a demigod: half man, half god. The son of Zeus and a mere mortal woman.

The legend goes that Dionysus was born among mortals in order to be hidden from Hera, Zeus's envious wife. Dionysus cultivated grapes, invented wine, and went through Asia teaching mortals how to make wine. He is known as "the liberator" because his gift to mankind -- wine and joy -- liberated mortals from societal constraints.