ABSTRACT
Some of the most characteristic myths of the mature Dionysos are those in which he suffers persecution from mortals who refuse to acknowledge his divinity and try to suppress his rites when he first introduces them into their land. It hardly needs saying that those who venture to oppose him soon come to a bad end. One such myth is already recounted by Homer, who tells how LYKOURGOS, son of Dryas, once chased the nurses of Dionysos down from the sacred mountain of Nysa, striking them with an ox-goad and causing the god himself to plunge beneath the sea in terror. Dionysos was consoled, however, by the goddess Thetis, and Lykourgos paid a heavy price for his impious behaviour, for he was struck blind by Zeus ‘and lived not long thereafter, for he had become hateful to the deathless gods’.151 In subsequent accounts of this story, and in other myths of this kind, Dionysos is quite capable of looking after himself. According to Apollodorus, Dionysos took refuge beneath the sea when Lykourgos tried to expel him, and the Bacchants and Satyrs of his retinue were taken captive by his persecutor; but his followers were suddenly released thereafter (evidently through his miraculous intervention), and he drove Lykourgos mad. In his frenzy, Lykourgos killed his son Dryas in the belief that he was pruning a vine; and when his land was subsequently struck by a famine, his people caused his death at the bidding of an oracle by tying him up and exposing him on Mt Pangaion, where he was destroyed by horses. It is stated that this was the first occasion on which Dionysos was insulted and expelled by a mortal.152
