ABSTRACT
For many centuries of European history Dionysos was thought of as the god of wine, or of the unrestrained joys of nature (as for instance in the Titian painting reproduced as Figure 7). But the unrestrained joys of nature are an urban vision. For most people in ancient societies life was a struggle to control nature. And so it was important to win the favour of what we call the powers of nature, what they imagined as deities. Prominent among such deities was Dionysos. To be sure, given his pervasive power, his activity was not confined to the vineyard. But just as the production of food is a precondition for all other human activities, so there is a sense in which Dionysos’ association with ‘nature’ is basic to the various activities to be described in this book, and so that is where we start.
