Love, and Other Drugs

Aphrodite: Calm and serene

Dionysus: wine drinking and debauched

Are these two deities more more complimentary or contrasting?

This posting follows along similar themes as the previous one as it will be examining the links between Aphrodite and Dionysus; one considered an example of a perfect Olympian deity and the other an out-casted god, or a god that ‘doesn’t fit’. Before participating in this course I would have thought that there were very few, if any, similarities between Aphrodite and Dionysus. However, the ‘Olympian, chthonian and beyond’ lecture (12/11/13) began my journey into discovering the complexities of Aphrodite’s character and her surprising connections to the chthonian world, therefore, throughout the ‘Gods that don’t fit’ lecture (26/11/13) which focused on Dionysus, my mind was more open to note the many similarities between these two seemingly dissimilar deities.

Aphrodite’s relationship with Dionysus begins with their births. As stated in the previous posting, according to Hesiod’s Theogony Aphrodite has a motherless birth, rising from the sea after her father Ouranos’ testicles were severed and had fallen into it (L.190-206). The conception of Dionysus was a more natural one than that of Aphrodite, with Zeus bedding his mortal mother Semele, however Semele was killed before her pregnancy was at full term after begging Zeus to show himself in his true form and being overwhelmed by the outcome. Zeus saved the foetus Dionysus and stitched him into his own thigh, where he carried him to full term and bore him (Apollodurus: 3.4.3), thus giving Dionysus a motherless birth too. From these two birth stories alone one may assume that Aphrodite would become the outcast god as she was born from an older race of Greek gods and was the result of a strange, motherless conception. Dionysus’ birth however, whilst unconventional, could lead one to assume that he would eventually take the title of a traditional Olympian god as he had a normal conception and was eventually born from the body of his father Zeus, much like another great Olympian, Athena (Hesiod: L.887-896).

Why then did these two gods gain quite the opposite standing amongst the pantheon?

Arguably, Dionysus became a god that ‘doesn’t fit’ when he grew to be associated with drunkenness, madness, excess, addiction, escape from reality and loss of control: or, to put it crudely, when he became a drug. Similarly, Aphrodite gained a position as one of the Olympian 12 through her reputation as a calming goddess who created harmony in bringing lovers together and calmed the stormy seas (Parker: p90). However, I would argue that these reputations illustrated by Parker’s admittedly crude use of ‘calming’ and ‘madness’ to describe the primary characteristic of Aphrodite and Dionysus respectively, do not allow one to see the similarities and relationship between these supposedly contrasting deities. Firstly, Aphrodite and Dionysus’ realms of power are interlinked, as Aphrodite has domain over all aspects of love and lust, but Dionysus has some specific dominion over “mindless sexual ecstasy” (Johnson and Ryan: p18). There is also an example of Anacreon praying to Dionysus to make the object of his desires more receptive to him through drunkenness (Anacreon: fr.357). Aphrodite could also provoke all of the aforementioned drug-like symptoms in the mortals she had dominion over, therefore, arguably she was as much of a drug as Dionysus himself.

In Plato’s Phaedrus Socrates explains that one who is in love, under the power of Aphrodite, has lost their mind and do not have their wits about them (Plato: 241). Anacreon describes how Polycrates, in a jealous rage, acts irrationally and cuts off his lover’s hair in an attempt to make him less desirable to others (Anacreon: fr.347), he then describes his own feelings towards the boy he desires “I love Cleobulus, I am mad for Cleobulus” (Anacreon: fr.359: emphasis added). There are many more examples of love and lust being likened with madness in Greek lyric and philosophy however the greatest unintentional comparison between the insanity felt by lovers and the drug sought by worshipers of Dionysus comes later in Plato’s Phaedrus where Socrates argues that madness and disillusionment from oneself is not necessarily a negative state of being. Socrates claims that “the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god”, he goes on to describe the madness as “wonderful” and not something to be ashamed of, he reasons that god-gifted madness can “provide relief from the greatest plagues of trouble…[and] relief from present hardships” (Plato: 244-45). The cathartic escape from oneself and ones troubles outlined by Plato is concerned with the madness induced by the gift of Aphrodite, but it could just as fittingly be describing the madness which consumed many followers of Dionysus.

Thus, if both deities were capable of provoking such intense madness amongst mortals, again I ask, why do we brand Dionysus as an outcast god, associated with dark madness whereas Aphrodite remains in high standing as the goddess of love and beauty? This question has many complex answers which I cannot do justice to in this short posting. However, one of the contributing factors could be the Christianised lens through which we often unconsciously view the ancient world. As touched upon in the last post on the Olympian/chthonian binary, Dionysus may have gained his reputation as a god who ‘doesn’t fit’ through his association with excessive wine drinking and women becoming drunk and mad, which goes against Christian nature. Whereas most references to madness through Aphrodite are usually men becoming mad with love, towards women; which was a lot more palatable to them, or towards boys; which were mostly ignored by the Christian/Western community until relatively recent years. Arguably, by which point the reputation of Dionysus as decadent and Aphrodite as respectable were already set into our minds. This is just one, simple analysis of the incredibly complex question of why we view two gods who have a surprising amount in common as so vastly different.

References

Anacreon, (2003) ‘Fragment 347’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Anacreon, (2003) ‘Fragment 357’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Anacreon, (2003) ‘Fragment 359’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Apollodorus, (1921) The Library, Frazer, J. G. (trans.) London: Harvard University Press, available at Perseus.tufts.edu

Hesiod (1973) ‘Theogony’ in Hesiod and Theognis, Baldick, R., Jones, C. A. and Radice, B. (eds.), Wender, D. (trans.) Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd.

Johnson, M. and Ryan, T., (2005) Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature, New York: Routledge

Parker, R., (2011) On Greek Religion, New York: Cornell University Press

Plato, (2003) ‘Phaedrus’ In Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Hubbard, T. K., (ed.) London: University of California Press

Note: The title of this posting is taken from the 2010 film of the same name