ABSTRACT
The wild behaviour of thiasuses of women, who were usually cloistered in the women's quarters of their homes, helped to give the cult of Dionysus a unique position on the margins of the city's official ceremonies. Whether people examines Dionysus origins, the episodes of his childhood, his physical appearance, his character, his place in society, the symbolic use he has been put to over the course of history or the interpretations of the mythologists, he continually evades us. Christian attacks were all the fiercer because, through the medium of the myth, Orphism gave the cult of Dionysus the theology that it lacked: in the Dionysiac mysteries ritual practices were more important than dogma. Thus, despite the efforts of critics to prove an exhaustive definition of the personality of Dionysus that takes account of all his complexity and diversity, the god still eludes us; he shatters the definitions with which they seek to enchain him.
