Deucalion
The Greek Noah whose story seems to derive from the much earlier Sumerian tale of Ziusudra. The son of Prometheus and Clymene, he married Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus (Prometheus’s brother) and Pandora. When Zeus grew tired of the impiety of mankind he decided to cover the face of earth with a deluge. Forewarned of the coming Flood (a legend common to all Near Eastern peoples and awkwardly displaced to the high and mountainous region of central Greece), Deucalion constructed a vessel in which to ride out the storm. After nine days the waters subsided and the boat came to rest on the slopes of Mount Parnassus.
Wondering how earth would be repopu-lated, they consulted the Oracle of Themis. Deucalion and Pyrrha were told to throw the bones of their mother over their shoulders. At first unsure what this meant, Pyrrha deciphered that it was Mother Earth that was meant, and they cast stones over their shoulders at Opous. Those thrown by Deucalion became men, those thrown by Pyrrha became women. These new people were the Leleges.
Diana
Ancient Italian moon goddess of Etruscan origin, the virgin huntress and patroness of domestic animals. Initially a woodland goddess, she was rapidly assimilated with Artemis. The daughter of Jupiter and twin of Apollo, she had strong associations as a fertility deity and was invoked by women to aid both conception and childbirth. The lower classes and slaves regarded Diana as their protectress. In art she is usually portrayed as a huntress with bow and arrows accompanied by hunting dogs.
Diana of the Ephesians
An aspect of the goddess Diana who was worshipped as a deity in her own right at Ephesus in Asia Minor. Originally deriving from an early Greek earth goddess, she later became merged with the Roman goddess Diana, yet she always retained a quite separate identity in Ephesus. Her temple was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. See also: Ephesus
Dictaean Cave
Also: Dikt~aean, ~aion Cave
Cave on Dicte, a mountain in the east of the island of Crete, where according to Minoan tradition the baby Zeus was hidden from Cronos by his mother, Rhea. There he was tended by the she-goat Amalthea while the Curetes, priests of Rhea, clattered their weapons or shields together to drown out the baby’s cries.
In 1900 this cave, on the Lasithi Plateau near Tzermiadon, was explored by archaeologists who were possibly the first people to enter for almost 2,000 years. Inside they found votive offerings to Zeus that may date from the second millenium B.C., thus indicating that it was an important place of pilgrimage from middle Minoan times. See also: Amalthea
Dicte
Mountain lying on the eastern end of the island of Crete, the location of the Dictaean Cave where the infant Zeus was supposedly reared; hence called Dictaeus.
Dictynna
Also: Diktynna
Ancient virgin-huntress worshipped on Crete who may simply have been an aspect of Britomartis, though one of the legends surrounding Minos says that as he pursued the nymph Britomartis she leaped into the sea to escape him, whereupon she was deified by Artemis and given the name Dictynna. She was later assimilated into the character of Artemis, who was given the epithet Dictynna, even though the Minos story seems to suggest that her memory was kept alive as a separate deity. It is possible that Britomartis leaped into the sea somewhere near Diktynna on the northern coast of Crete, for this is the site of an important temple, and the similarity in name seems more than mere coincidence.
Dictys
The sailor who found Danae and Perseus, who had been cast adrift in a chest by Acrisius, after they washed up on Seriphos. He took them to the king, Polydectes, but later had to flee to the temple with Danae after Polydectes had sent Perseus off to slay Medusa, a ruse to enable him to take Danae as his wife. When Perseus returned and discovered the situation he killed Polydectes and his entire court by exposing the head of Medusa, then made Dictys king of Seriphos.
Dido
Greco-Romano-Phoenician Legendary Phoenician princess; the daughter of a Tyrian king who fled to Africa after the death of her husband, Sychaeus, and there reputedly founded the city of Carthage. Phoenician legend says that she committed suicide to avoid marrying a local prince or king of Libya, but later Roman tradition says otherwise; Virgil adapted her story to make her a contemporary of Aeneas.
Having left Troy at the end of the Trojan War, Aeneas arrived in Carthage. There Dido fell passionately in love with Aeneas, and Venus, the mother of Aeneas, persuaded Juno to allow them to marry. As Dido and Aeneas had already lain together in a cave, Dido regarded them already married, thus breaking a vow she made on the death of Sychaeus that she would never remarry. Divine retribution followed, for Jupiter told Aeneas he must depart. Planning to leave in secret, his plan was discovered; failing to persuade Aeneas to stay, Dido took her own life. As Aeneas put out to sea the smoke was already rising from her funeral pyre.
The two did meet on one other occasion, when Aeneas was being led down to the Underworld to consult his dead father, Anchises. Dido would have nothing to do with him and silently turned her back.
Didyma
Located in modern Turkey, Didyma boasted one of the most important oracular shrines of Apollo in the eastern part of the ancient Greek world, the equivalent of Delphi in the west. Today the temple of Apollo is still most impressive, having the tallest columns in the Greek world.
Dikt~aean, ~aion Cave
Variant of Dictaean Cave.
Diktynna
Possibly a variant of Dictynna, or the place after which that deity is named. Diktynna lies near the northernmost tip of Crete, Diktynaion, on the western end of the island, and is the site of a now thoroughly ruined, though very important, temple.
Diodorus the Sicilian
Greco-Roman Being among the chief sources of Etruscan myths and legends, the writings of this historical person (who flourished in the first century B.C.) join those of Livy, Virgil, and Dionysus of Halicarnassus. Born in Agyrium, Sicily (hence his name, which is more correctly Diodorus Siculus), he traveled to Asia and Europe and lived in Rome, where for 30 years he collected the information for his immense Bibliotheke Historike, a history of the world in 40 books from the creation to the Gallic Wars of Caesar. Of this work the first five books remain intact, the next five are lost, the next ten survive complete, and the remainder survive only in fragmentary form.
Diomed(es)
1. Savage king of the Bistones in Thrace; son of Ares and Cyrene, he kept mares that he fed on human flesh, they being the goal of Heracles’ eighth labor. After Heracles had repelled the attacking Bistones, he returned to where he had left the mares in the charge of Abderus to find that his friend had been eaten by them. Heracles then fed Diomedes to his own horses, after which they never ate human flesh again.
2. Son of Tydeus (king of Argos) and Deiphyle (the daughter of Adrastus); husband of Aegialeia. Taking part in the expedition of the Epigoni against Thebes, he played an important role in Homer’s Iliad, featuring in a great many of the notable events of the Trojan War.
Arriving from the Peloponnesos with 80 ships, he brought with him two fellow Epigoni: Sthenelus (son of Euryalus) and Capaneus the Argonaut. During the ten-year siege Diomedes wounded Aeneas but saw his quarry rescued by Aphrodite; he is also credited with having wounded the goddess as well as Ares. He then fought Glaucus, a Lycian prince who was second in command to Sarpedon, but when they remembered the friendship that had existed between their forefathers they gave up the fight and exchanged gifts.
In the company of Odysseus, Diomedes made a night raid on the Trojan lines. After killing the spy Dolon he killed Rhesus the Thracian and drove away his snow-white horse, for an oracle had warned that if they drank the water of the River Scamander and ate the grass of the Trojan Plain Troy would not fall. When Achilles killed Thersites, a kinsman of Diomedes, for mocking his remorse at killing Penthesilea, Diomedes threw the body of the slain Amazon queen into the River Scamander. He then accompanied Odysseus to Lemnos to fetch Philoctetes, who had been left there after Calchas had advised the Greeks that they required the bow and arrows of Heracles if they were ever to take Troy, and these were owned by Philoctetes. He then went with Odysseus and Phoenix to Scyros to let Neoptolemus join them. He was also said to have accompanied Odysseus in disguise into Troy to steal the Palladium, though some sources say Odysseus did this single-handedly.
After the end of the Trojan War, Diomedes returned home briefly. Finding that his wife, Aegialeia, had been unfaithful, he left for Aetolia to help his grandfather, Oeneus, and later settled in Daunia in Italy, where he married Euippe, the daughter of the king, Daunus. He was buried on one of the islands that have since been known as Diomedans, his companions being turned into gentle birds.
The belief that many Greek survivors of the Trojan War settled in Italy was probably current well before 300 B.C. Others said to have emigrated were Epeius, Philoctetes, and Odysseus, though the most notable as far as the Romans were concerned was Aeneas.
Dione
The consort of Zeus who was introduced into Greece c. 1200 B.C. by the invading Achaeans. Her worship was not widespread and did not penetrate as far south as Zeus’s shrine at Dodona in Epirus, where the oracular rustling of oak leaves was interpreted as the voice of the god. Here Zeus found other wives, and Dione remained a little-referenced deity, though Homer makes her the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus.
Astronomical: One of the satellites of Saturn, being the sixth closest to the planet of the eleven named between the orbits of Tethys and Rhea. Having a diameter of approximately 1,120 kilometers (700 miles), it lies at an average distance of 378,000 kilometers (236,250 miles) from the surface of the planet.
Dionysia
Name applied to festivals celebrated in ancient Greece, especially in Athens, in honor of the god Dionysos. These included the lesser Dionysia in December, which was chiefly a rural festival, and the greater Dionysia, which was celebrated at the end of March, when new plays were performed. Dionysiac festivals were, however, celebrated elsewhere in Greece, particularly in Corinth, Delphi, and Sicyon. The festival in Athens, founded by Pesistratus at about the same time as the Panathenaic Games, remained the most important.
Dionys(i)us I
Historical character living from 431 B.C. to 367 B.C. His tyrannical rule over his native city, Syracuse, ended in his making himself absolute ruler in 405 B.C.
After ferociously suppressing several revolts and having conquered some of the Greek colonies of Sicily, he started a running war with Carthage in 398 B.C. Successful at first, he suffered a series of setbacks until he took advantage of a plague within the Carthaginian fleet and gained a complete victory. In 392 B.C. the Carthaginians renewed hostilities but where soon defeated, after which Dionysius turned his attentions to lower Italy, capturing Rhegium in 387 B.C. From this time he exercised great influence over the Greek cities of lower Italy while his fleets swept the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Seas. In 383 B.C. and again in 368 B.C. he renewed his war against Carthage, wishing to drive the Carthaginian settlers out of Sicily, but he died the following year. He was succeeded by his son, Dionysius II.
In legend Dionysus I is connected with Damocles and Damon and Phintias.
Dionys~os, ~us
God of wine, vegetation, and the life-force and of ecstasy and anomie. Also called Bacchus by both the Greeks and Romans when his rites were less savage, the Romans additionally referred to him as Liber and added a female counterpart, Libera. Dionysos was not, at least in Homer’s time, one of the aristocratic Olympian deities but rather a deity worshipped by humble folk.
An extremely unclassical deity, he was probably brought into Greece from Thrace sometime during the eighth century B.C. by nomadic travelers. However, it is possible that Dionysos should really be regarded as one of the oldest Greek deities, for a single Linear B tablet from Pylos refers to di-wo-nu-so-jo, the genitive form of his name in Mycenaean Greek. The cult, which quickly spread through Macedonia and Thessaly to Boeotia, Delphi, Athens, and beyond, was characterized by a mystic frenzy when, intoxicated with wine, the votaries believed themselves to be at one with the god, who was sometimes called Bromius, "the Boisterous." Male votaries were known as Bacchoi, whereas female votaries were given several titles: generally Bacchae, Bacchantes, or Maenads; in Delphi and Athens they were Thyiads.
The immense popularity of the cult of Dionysos, especially among women, seems to indicate that among the recently civilized Greeks there was still a longing for a more impulsive, less-disciplined life valuing enthusiasm in favor of prudence. This led certain wise statesmen during the sixth century B.C. to introduce the cult among the other state religions, and Dyonisiac festivals were established at many of the great cultural centers of the time, especially at Corinth, Delphi, Sicyon, and Athens. At Delphi, where Dionysos has his tomb—thus placing him in the same vein as Heracles, who started life as a mortal before his apotheosis—the sepulcher of Dionysos was placed in close proximity to the tripod of the Pythia, and a temple, actually a theater, was built in his name at the highest point of the sacred precinct. From here the Thyiads climbed the "Bad Stair" up Mount Parnassos to celebrate their orgiastic rites. They wore fawn skins and crowns of ivy, brandished thyr-soi (the thyrsus was a staff carried by some during bacchic rites), and chanted "Euoi." They worked themselves into a state of ecstasy by dancing in torchlight to the music of kettledrums and flutes. In this state they were believed to be able to tear living creatures apart with their hands, suckle animals, and charm snakes. During the winter months, while Apollo was said to be away in the land of the Hyperboreans, Dionysos reigned supreme at Delphi.
In Athens the Dionysia was founded by Pesistratus at about the time he instigated the Panathenaic Games; a theater was built in the name of Dionysos, where worshippers performed the first primitive dramas. These plays were also performed at the other festival to Dionysos established in Athens, the Lenaea. They developed into the form of drama known today as tragedy, Dionysos often being celebrated in tragic choruses. At Eleusis, Dionysos was sometimes identified, as Bacchus, with the Iacchus of the Eleusinian Mysteries. His role as a god of life and rebirth makes him an ideal participant.
In the fifth century B.C., following the completion of the Parthenon, the new god replaced Hestia as one of the Olympian deities, thus giving the gods a clear majority over the goddesses, indicating a society that was becoming increasingly patriarchal. Legend says that Dionysos was the son of Semele (the daughter of the king of Thebes) and Zeus, who visited the girl in the guise of a mortal. When six months pregnant Semele was visited by the jealous Hera, disguised as an old woman, and she persuaded Semele to ask her mysterious lover to appear to her in his true form. Unwillingly Zeus consented to this request, and Semele was consumed by the fire of his thunderbolt. The unborn Dionysos was removed from the corpse and the fetus sewn up in Zeus’s thigh, to be born three months later. An alternative, Orphic version makes him the child of Zeus and Persephone, who coupled in the form of snakes.
Dionysos had a traumatic start to his life. He was first entrusted to Athamas and Ino of Boeotia, who raised him, disguised as a girl, in the women’s quarters. Hera, however, was not deceived and punished Athamas by sending him mad so that he killed his own son. Hermes then took Dionysos to Mount Nysa, where the nymphs raised him, feeding him with honey, and where he was said to have invented wine. Zeus later placed the images of these nymphs in the heavens as the Hyades for their faithful service.
Grown to manhood, Dionysos was not safe, for Hera, still jealous of her husband’s philandering, ordered the Titans to seize him, tear him into little pieces, and boil them in a cauldron. During his battle with the Titans, who may not be the Titans of classical mythology but rather a race of pre-men, Dionysos was said to have ridden the ass Assellus Borealis while Silenus rode Assellus Australis. Both became constellations. His grandmother, Rhea, restored him to life, and Zeus, in an attempt to hide him from Hera, turned him into a ram. However, Hera saw through the disguise, sent him mad, and condemned him to wander earth forever. This portion of the life of Dionysos is later in conception, belonging rather to Orphic religious belief.
Wandering over the face of earth Dionysos was not alone, for he was accompanied by his libidinous tutor, Silenus, and an assorted company of satyrs, centaurs, Priapi, Sileni, nymphs, Pans, and Maenads. He traveled through Egypt, where he established the Oracle of Ammon, Syria, and Asia as far as India—where the Pillars of Dionysos were a landmark for the legendary Alexander the Great, overcoming military opposition and teaching the art of making wine, founding numerous cities, and laying down laws. He returned to Europe through Phrygia, where he encountered King Midas (giving that fated king the power to turn everything he touched into gold), and entered Thrace.
He was particularly vicious toward any who opposed the introduction of his rites to their city, a feature of his mythology that may reflect some genuine historical resistance to the spread of his cult—or at least acknowledge that the frenzied worship so typical of his worship was difficult to contain within the bounds of civic society.
Having entered Thrace, his worship was opposed by Lycurgus, king of the Edones; sent mad by Rhea, he mutilated his own son and was sent blind, later cutting off his own leg, mistaking it for a tree. His people, the Edones, sentenced him to be torn to death between two horses.
Passing through Thrace, Dionysos worship entered Boeotia. In Thebes it was again resisted, this time by King Pentheus. A similar fate awaited this king: He was spotted while spying on the Maenads, who tore him to pieces, thinking he was a wild beast. Among the Maenads who killed Pentheus were Agave, his mother, and her two sisters. This legend forms the basis of Bacchae by Euripides, which still remains the single fullest source of the rites of Dionysos. His female votaries were said to race across the mountains in an ecstatic, drunken frenzy, seizing small wild animals, which they tore apart before eating their raw flesh. In this way the Maenads sacramentally incorporated the power of the god himself, whom they addressed as Axia Taure, "glorious bull." The Maenads dressed in fawn skins and carried thyrsoi, vine branches topped with a fir cone and wreathed in ivy, a common attribute of Dionysos himself. In this play, a true masterpiece of Greek prose, Dionysos also demonstrates his power as the god of fruitful and miraculous transformation. Not only does he cause the ground to flow with milk and honey, possibly a reference to early Greek liquor, but he also appears in the form of a bull, hence Axia Taure, and breaks open the prison in which his votaries are held.
At Argos the daughters of Proteus were driven mad and, thinking themselves to be cows, ran naked through the countryside, tearing children to pieces and eating their flesh. This story is strikingly similar to that at Orchomenus, in which the three daughters of the king declined to dance with Dionysos who changed himself, in quick succession, into a lion, a bull, and a panther. The terror-stricken girls were never the same again.
Dionysos also visited the islands of the Adriatic. At Icaria he hired a ship to take him to Naxos, but the sailors, Tyrrhenian pirates, steered toward Asia intending to sell Dionysos into slavery. The god, however, turned himself into a lion and the oars of the vessel into serpents. Ivy grew around the ship and the sound of flutes was heard. The terrified pirates immediately leaped overboard and were turned into dolphins. Dionysos sailed on to Naxos or Dia and there discovered Ariadne, who had been deserted by Theseus. He married her at once. The island, one of the Cyclades, became an important center of his worship.
His worship at Argos was first refused, but since he had maddened the women the people admitted he was a god. Thus established as a god worshipped throughout the known world, Dionysos was then elevated to the rank of an Olympian deity, displacing Hestia.
Having been enthroned in Olympus, Dion-ysos descended to the realm of Hades to bring Semele, his mother, back from the Underworld. Descending through Lake Lerna, Dionysos asked the way from Prosymnus, who asked for sexual favors upon his return. Dionysos having reached the Underworld, Hades demanded a gift in return for the release of Semele, so Dionysos gave him one of his favorite plants, the myrtle, which thereafter became associated with mourning. Returning from the Underworld, Dionysos found that Prosymnus had died, so he planted a phallic stick on his tomb. Returning to Olympus, his mother, Semele, thereafter became known as Thyone.
Dionysos even features, albeit briefly, in the stories surrounding the Trojan War. The Greek fleet was provisioned by the three daughters of Anius, upon whom Dionysos had bestowed the power to produce corn, oil, and wine at will. Obviously supporting the Greek forces against Troy, Dionysos caused Tele-phus, king of Mysia, to stumble over a vine when he was in danger of defeating Achilles, thus turning the tide of that particular battle in Achilles’ favor, allowing the great hero to wound Telephus.
He had several notable children, among them Deianeira by Althaea.
Dionysos was worshipped as the god of the vital and intoxicating powers of nature, the god of wine, and also as a law-giver due to his associations with early civilization. He was also the god of tragic art, himself being represented as a young, handsome, athletic (though later somewhat effeminate) youth, sometimes depicted with horns and a crown of serpents, accompanied by a wild crowd of satyrs and Maenads, the latter in an orgiastic frenzy of wine and mystic exaltation. He carried cymbals, swords, and serpents, or the thyrsus, a rod wreathed in ivy and crowned with a fir cone, as well as the kantharos, a two-handled cup. Though men did become votaries of the god, his worship appealed most strongly to women, and many would spend entire nights in his worship, dancing and tearing wild animals to pieces. His sacred plants were the ivy, laurel, and asphodel; his animals the dolphin, serpent, tiger, lynx, panther, goat, and ass. Sacrifices to him usually consisted of a goat or an ass. Charming as a youth, Dionysos became the god of extremity and excess, especially sexual.
The myths surrounding Dionysos seem to be evidence of initial opposition to the use of wine for ritual purposes due to the frenzy it engendered. Wine was not invented by the Greeks but was probably first imported by them from Crete, where viniculture had probably spread from Mount Nysa in Libya. The original drink of the ancient Greeks was probably a kind of beer flavored with ivy and honey and as such can be partially equated with Ambrosia, the drink of the Olympian gods. The use of wine spread from Thrace to Athens and other civilized cities and appears to have followed the course of Dionysos’s wanderings, the spread of viniculture to India even being represented in the stories.
Silenus
Dionysus of Halicarnassus Greco-Roman Greek critic, historian, and rhetorician whose fragmentary works, along with those of Diodorus the Sicilian, Livy, and Virgil, are among the only remaining sources of Etruscan mythology. Flourishing in the first century B.C., he lived and worked in Rome from c. 30 B.C. His major work, in Greek, was Romaike Archaeologia, a history of Rome down to 264 B.C., a veritable mine of information about the constitution, religion, history, laws, and private lives of the ancient Romans. Out of its 20 volumes only the first nine survive complete.
Diosc~uri, ~ouroi Greco-Roman Generic term applied to the Heavenly Twins, Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux to the Romans), the twin sons of Zeus and Leda and the brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra. As was common in traditions of that era, Poly-deuces was said to have been fathered by Zeus and was thus immortal; Castor, the mortal child, was fathered by Tyndareus, Leda’s husband, the conceptions occurring almost simultaneously.
They were especially important deities in Sparta, where many things, including the kings, went in pairs. Here they were also known as the Anakes and were worshipped in the form of a wooden structure in the shape of a capital H. Also regarded as the protectors of sailors—to whom they appeared in the form of St. Elmo’s fire, for Poseidon gave them power over wind and wave—they have close links with other, earlier Indo-European deities, such as the Ashvins of Vedic and Hindu mythology.
They were regarded as the inventors of the war dance and the patrons of bards, also presiding over the Spartan Games. In art each was usually represented mounted on a magnificent white steed while armed with a spear and wearing an egg-shaped helmet—they were said to have been born from an egg—crowned with a star.
Classical mythology makes them the sons of Leda, Polydeuces and his sister, Helen, being fathered by Zeus, Castor and the other sister, Clytemnestra, by her husband Tyndareus. Thus the latter pair was mortal, although Helen also appears in her mythology as a mortal being. They were notable athletes, Castor a rider and Polydeuces a boxer, the latter’s prowess displayed during the voyage with the Argonauts, when he fought and defeated Amycus. They also took part in the epic hunt for the Calydonian Boar. They went to Attica after Theseus had carried off their sister, Helen, and rescued her after her hiding place had been revealed to them by Academus. They themselves, however, carried off the Leucippides, Phoebe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Leu-cippus (the brother of Tyndareus and king of Messenia). They were pursued by their cousins, Idas and Lynceus, sons of Aphareus, to whom the girls were already betrothed. Lynceus (lynx-eyed) spotted the twins hiding within a hollow oak on Mount Taygetus with his preternatural sight. Idas killed Castor with a spear and Polydeuces killed Lynceus. Idas then hurled a tombstone at Polydeuces, but Zeus intervened and killed Idas with one of his thunderbolts.
Such was the love Polydeuces felt for his brother that he pleaded with Zeus to restore him. Zeus compromised, allowing each to live on alternate days; finally the pair was translated to the heavens as the constellation Gemini.
Astronomical: For details of the constellation Gemini see the relevant entry.
Dirce
The wife of King Lycus of Thebes and a loyal Maenad, a votary of Dionysos. Amphion and Zethus had her dragged to her death behind her bull for her cruelty to their mother, Antiope. At the spot where her death occurred Dionysos caused a spring to rise. In historical times the spring named after her was located either on Mount Cithaeron or in Thebes. A slightly different version says that Amphion and Zethus tied Dirce to the horns of a wild bull, her dead body finally being thrown into a fountain in Thebes that thenceforth bore her name.
