This volume examines the disruptive and transformative power of Dionysus, the twice-born god of wine, madness, and religious ecstasy. The text traces his origins as an outsider deity, born of a mortal woman and gestated in the thigh of Zeus, a myth that establishes his fundamental connection to both the divine and the chthonic.
The analysis focuses on the nature of his cult, which challenged the rigid social and political structures of the Greek polis through ecstatic rituals that dissolved individual identity and social hierarchy.
The volume investigates the recurring myths of his arrival and the violent resistance he provokes from established rulers, interpreting these conflicts as the necessary struggle between rational order and the irrepressible forces of nature and human emotion.
Finally, it connects the cathartic release of his rites to the development of Greek theater, showing how the god of chaos became the patron of its most structured artistic expression: tragedy.
