H. METZGER.
"Dionysos chthonien. d'après les monuments figurés de la période classique"
BCH, 1944-1945
Based on Attic black-figure and red-figure vase paintings, the author studies:
Dionysos, deity of nascent vegetation, a male figure emerging from the earth (a parallel theme to that of Kore's Anodos). As early as the end of the 6th century, on an Attic black-figure lekythos published here for the first time, a bearded head emerges from the ground while a Silenus and a Maenad engage in unspecified rites: the author sees this not as a scene of satyr drama, but as evidence of popular belief in the return of a deity favoring nascent vegetation. In the 6th century (Hope crater), the same scene will take on a more symbolic and allegorical character.
Dionysos, underworld deity. Monuments from the classical period identify Dionysos with Hades-Pluto; associated with Kore, he forms with her an infernal couple. Study of three Attic vases from the end of the 5th and beginning of the 4th centuries leads the author to opt for a religious interpretation: Heracles bringing back Dionysos, an underworld deity, Heracles in search of Dionysian felicity. He concludes that from at least the 4th century, popular belief attributes to Dionysos the properties of an underworld deity, dispenser of abundance and mistress of the dead.
Dionysos, Eleusinian deity. The author describes the figurative monuments associating Dionysos with Eleusinian themes (from the end of the 6th century, but especially in the 4th century) and believes he can trace a progressive evolution: Dionysos initiated, then presiding over initiations, then paired with Kore or Demeter, therefore associated with the agrarian deities of Eleusis (hydries in the style of Kertch). Similarly, and still in the 4th century (theme of the birth of the divine child on Kertch vases), the child Dionysos is attributed in Eleusinian belief with the characteristics of the child Ploutos; Brimos is perhaps Dionysos: the effect of popular syncretism, consecrated by art. The advances in the Dionysian repertoire in the 4th century are related to this penetration of Dionysos into the Eleusinian religion: the Dionysian thiase then takes on a symbolic value of immortality in the afterlife.
