ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Dionysus Bacchius was the god of bakchoi, and ecstatic behaviour of humans preceded the concept of the god of ecstasy. The clue to Bacchic mania is in the realisation that the destructive and beneficial effects of ecstatic possession intermingle, and it seems that in antiquity this was intuitively grasped, reflected in myth, and presented on the stage by Euripides in the Bacchae. The iconographic evidence attests to the familiarity of Attic painters and the general public in other places with bakcheia, and maenadism in particular, during the sixth century at the latest, and reflects contemporary ideas on the various aspects of the Dionysiac mania. In the ecstatic cult of Dionysus, gender asymmetry is quite obvious, but its diverse modalities and extent are still controversial. In ancient Greece, widely spread and genuine psychological motivations brought about ecstatic phenomena that were subsequently associated with the cult of Dionysus, who began to be called Bacchius.
