Dionysos the Demisexual

This week we are exploring Dionysos as a manifestation of demisexuality. 

While scholars have long discussed an asexuality represented in Dionysos, we can be a bit more specific when we detach from asexuality as an academic construct and consider the full asexual spectrum. 

Human rituals often represent this, but they are representing the same sexuality of satyrs and nymphs. Dionysos is surrounded by supernatural beings engaging in hypersexuality, while practically never taking part directly. These rituals are often based on mythical narratives. 

Pallene was a Thracian princess who engages in a hyper-sexualized wrestling match with Dionysos, yet actual sexual contact is not present in this scene. 

Dionysos' first love is their playmate Ampelos, the beautiful satyr. The two frolic in the forest for a time, before Ampelos tragically dies. Then the youth is transformed into the Grapevine. As a result, the Winegod and the Grapevine were together forever after.

Dionysos most famous marriage was to Ariadne. After she was abandoned by Theseus, Dionysos rescues and marries her. The two travel around together and have numerous children. When Ariadne also tragically dies, Dionysos brings her along to Olympus and sets her crown in the stars.

This dynamic is best understood on the spectrum of asexuality, more akin to demisexuality than an academically constructed asexuality. This understanding not only focuses our interpretation and understandings of these stories, it also allows us to better understand the Dionysiac ritual environment. 

Transcript

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to Lambda, the LGBT and Antiquity Podcast, your home for all things LGBT in the ancient world. I'm your host, Dominica Raven, episode 16, Dionysus the Demisexual. Once there was a young woman named Pauline, a princess from Thrace. Her father, Scython, was a corrupt tyrant filled with an unnatural love for his own daughter, so he was determined to never allow her to marry anybody else. He posed challenge to any potential suitor. They had to fight and win a wrestling match with Pauline, and if they lost, they would be killed. So much like Jumpman in the original Donkey Kong game, Dionysus felt an urgent need to rescue Pauline from that monstrous gorilla. Now, Pauline was never the picture of heteronormative femininity. She was muscular and strong, trained more in the masculine pursuits of hunting and athletic competition than in traditional feminine pursuits. In traditional Greek fashion, Dionysus fought totally naked, but Pauline wore only a red band acting as a sports bra. Because Dionysus wanted to liberate her from her father's cruel and unnatural desires, they did not actually fight in the ring. Rather, Dionysus picked her up and cast her to the dust, then Pauline leapt back up and tackled Dionysus. Now the two thrusted and rolled their naked bodies around on the ground until they stopped, resting with Dionysus below Pauline. The two sensually embraced. Here the villainous King Scython leapt into the ring, urgently trying to prevent Dionysus from winning the contest, but, still dripping sweat from the fight, Dionysus effortlessly threw the thyrsus, a kind of magic wand wrapped in ivy and crowned with a pine cone, and killed Scython. Though everything about the wrestling match is exceedingly sensual, there is nothing explicitly sexual about this scene. There is an indication that later the two would lie together, but that is not the point of Dionysus wrestling with Paline. This week we are exploring Dionysus as a manifestation of demisexuality. While it is clear that Dionysus has a bisexual orientation, Dionysus' sexuality is often accentuated in the myths, stories, religious customs, and physical arts. Essentially, Dionysus is practically never shown having sex with anybody. This is somewhat unexpected when you look at the deity and consider the hypersexuality often on display around and near Dionysus. Satyrs and nymphs, human men and women, and even other deities are habitually shown engaging in coitus in the background of scenes where Dionysus is present. Remember when we talked about Dionysus' role in the creation of the four types of gendered expressions, the manly man, the feminine man, the manly woman, and the feminine woman? Dionysus at different points manifests all four, yet Dionysus never actually stops on any one of them. Dionysus might be able to move freely between these four gendered expressions, but doesn't actually stop and maintain any single one. This is also true of Dionysus' sexuality. Dionysus moves between bisexuality involving humans, nymphs, and satyrs, possibly indicating that like Zeus, Dionysus is actually a pansexual, but Dionysus never actually settles in on any one. Just as Dionysus is gender fluid, so is Dionysus' sexuality. Twentieth century American classicist Michael Jameson described Dionysus as an asexual who, quote, is represented to a surprising degree as detached and unconcerned with sex. Though Dionysus is often shown in art surrounded by erect satyrs pursuing and making love to nymphs, Dionysus is never actually shown partaking in any of the sexual frivolity of these scenes. Jameson also describes how even Dionysus' greatest mythical lover, Ariadne, is central to the mysteries, yet images of these two actually making love are few and far between. Thus, quote, in art and myth we have seen a god who is essentially detached from the erratic and passionate aspects of sex. Though religious festivals often feature sexual liberation with men and women pursuing lust, Dionysus is only involved when marrying the ceremonial queen of Athens at the cattle stall, called the Belcolian. Some celebrations even use the image of a phallus as a manifestation of Dionysus' own fertility, yet the phallic procession is almost always an all-woman affair. Dionysus lost their phallus either when the Titans tore Zagreus apart and Rhea Chibalae or Athena could not find that peace, or as payment to enter Hades and reclaim the soul of their mother Semele. Thus, Jameson concludes that Dionysus is asexual in ritual, myth, and art. He draws attention to the societal horror of powerful heteronormative authorities towards such a figure who transgresses gender and sexuality. Dionysus acts as a mediating guide to cross life's most important, societally constructed borders. When scholars such as Jameson describe Dionysus as an asexual, what they're really using is the academical system of asexuality. This is a model whereby somebody who is in a potentially suggestive or sensual situation, however, no sexual contact occurs. It is ubiquitous in literature history that in the Morquai eras, people would get right up to the point of describing something sexual without actually showing or describing the contact. When it comes to queer relationships, authors even go further, actively refuting anything sexual has occurred at all. When scholars describe Dionysus as asexual, what they're describing are the innumerable situations where Dionysus is engaged in sensuality without overt sexuality. They look at the art, history, and literature and actually see very few cases of Dionysus engaging with Coitus with anybody at all. Now, all around Dionysus there generally is sexuality going on, illustrated in art where you can clearly see Satyrs fooling around with nymphs in the background, and Dionysus remains aloof. There was actually a festival during the evening of the Cois Day in Athens, where this type of liaison was just part of the evening's programming. After a day full of rituals, an unusual celebration occurred in ancient Athens. Men dressed up as satyrs with masks and everything, and led young women through town carrying torches. When they get to where they're going, there will be sexual contact. This sequence could be thought of as involving the same type of ritual whereby the male citizen is playing the role of a satyr and the female that of the nymph. While some may interpret this as the satyr representing Dionysus, thus getting married symbolically to the nymph, this does not make the most sense, bearing in mind Dionysus' general asexuality. If we remember that Dionysus does not often partake in the overt sexuality going on all around between the nymph and the satyr, we interpret this ritual a little differently. Rather than seeing these women as getting married to Dionysus and these citizens as representing Dionysus directly, we can see them as carrying on a ritual lineage which started with the satyrs and the nymphs all around Dionysus. This is a ritual where sexual liberation is a valuable facet of Dionysaic worship, even if Dionysus does not partake directly. Now, just as when we talked about Zeus being misrepresented by both Christian and more buttoned-up conservative Roman authors as depravity, but it's actually something miraculous occurring, the same is true here. Because there is sensuality and sexual liberation associated with Dionysus, people really ran with it to make it seem like that is because of Dionysus. What Dionysus actually does is liberate human beings to explore their sexualities more fully. A similar kind of dynamic can be seen when we discuss how even today, outsiders far too often characterize much of queer culture only in terms of sexuality. Anytime two queer people meet up, it must be something duplicitous. Drag show means orgy after all. Two gays getting coffee means they're about to have sex immediately. This kind of misrepresentation resonates well with the way outsiders describe the queer experience today and in antiquity. The trouble with this discussion is that while Dionysus is not generally part of the frivolities, Dionysus actually does engage in sexuality. If we were to understand full asexuality as a round rejection of sexual experience, that is not who Dionysus is. Rather, Dionysus's sexual exploits are very few and far between. As we see in many stories, Dionysus is sensual, yes, and potentially sexually implicit, but only rarely is that sexuality made explicit. In some narratives we can chalk this up to the author's own conservative bias on the subject. However, many of the Greek and Roman authors who talk about Dionysus were not so conservative. An excellent example of this is Gnos of Panopolis, Dionysiaca, written in the 5th century A.D. Nonos was definitely not coy about Dionysus having intercourse, but Dionysus has intercourse explicitly only a handful of times in the story. It's implied, for example, that Dionysus and Opheltes were a couple during the Indian campaign. However, it's never explicitly stated the level of sexuality involved. It is implied that Dionysus and Pauline became married after the wrestling match, however, it's not explicitly stated at that time. Today we're going to discuss the two defining relationships in Nonos of Panopolis, where Dionysus actually does have sexual relations and explore what they mean for the demisexuality of Dionysus. Where other scholars have looked at Dionysus as lacking sexuality entirely, I think we can be a bit more specific about the role of sexuality in Dionysaic worship. Dionysus gets married a couple of times in the Dionysiaca. Let's discuss the first one first. The marriage of Ampelos. During the period when Dionysus is being raised as a tomboyish nymph by Rhea and Attis, they often explored the forests and streams, hunting and exploring the wild mountains of Phrygia. It was here that Dionysus first beheld Mpelos, a beautiful young satyr. Mpelos is described as having very soft, feminine-like features, with glistening hair falling from his head and eyes that shone like the light of the full moon. Dionysus first approaches Mpelos by asking questions about their ancestry. In this moment, Dionysus makes suggestions, which are actually flattering comparisons, about the possible parentage of Ampelos. Was it one of the graces or Aphrodite herself who gave birth to Ampelos? Could it have been Hermes or Apollo or even Eros who was your father? These types of comparisons are fairly common when a hero meets a future love interest. Curiously, after all of these comparisons to other beautiful figures, Dionysus suggests that Ampelos has the kind of androgynous beauty of Saline, the moon. Ampelos blushed at these compliments. The two became nigh inseparable after that. They consummated their friendship by playing music and dancing together in the mountains. They engaged in youthful sports, including hunting and athletics. In time, Dionysus even became somewhat jealous whenever they saw Ampelos engaging with another satyr or going hunting with old Silenos. Dionysus became afraid that perhaps some god would swoop in and take Ampelos away, or Ampelos might be assaulted by the earth-shaker Poseidon. Eventually, Dionysus asked Zeus to protect Ampelos so the satyr would not be taken away or injured. Then one fateful day Ampelos tries to ride a wild bull, a mighty mountain aurach. For a time he had an excellent ride through the mountains, but then the mighty bull bucked Ampelos off and trampled him to death. When Dionysus learned of this, they were absolutely devastated by the news. They laid out the body and anointed it with a traditional mortuary custom. Then Dionysus engages in a literary trope called a Goas. Dionysus makes it clear that this loss is personal as well as social. It wasn't just that Dionysus enjoyed playing with Ampelos, it's that Dionysus was planning to marry Mpelos. They lament that they were never able to carry Ampelos into their bridal chamber, and that their death cut short the life of joy that the two would have enjoyed otherwise. Ampelos' body is lamented as being beautiful even in death. Dionysus even considers trying to bribe Hades in exchange for returning Ampelos to life. Finally, Dionysus laments being an immortal god and therefore unable to die and thus join Mpelos in the underworld. While Dionysus was lamenting, the four seasons went to the house of Helios, where the tablets of Harmonia are kept. The tablets of Harmonia are a sort of cosmic index recounting all of the mortals who were transformed into other bodies, often gaining immortality along the way. After they consult this document, they learn that Mpelos is destined to become the grapevine. The seasons rush back to Dionysus with the happy news that Mpelos will not perish but become their eternal companion. They find that Dionysus is up in the mountains in a wild grief. They have enchanted the woods and the trees and rivers themselves, and the whole forest is mourning with Dionysus. When the seasons deliver this news, Dionysus beholds the miracle as Mpelos' body is transformed into the grapevine. Adding to the miracle, there is wine practically ready to go minutes after the first grapes ever existed. In this way we see the future archetype for wine in general. When people are mourning the death of their loved ones, wine can help alleviate the suffering. So in this story, Dionysus turns mourning the death of Ampelos into eternal life. Ampelos is not simply a grapevine growing in Phrygia somewhere. Ampelos is the spirit of the grapevine. Thus Ampelos has become a plant manifested in corporal form. Dionysus may not get married to Ampelos in the conventional sense, however, the two will be together forever. In this way, Dionysus turns death into life. The marriage of Ariadne. The story of Dionysus and Ariadne is one of a deep, profound emotional connection. Ariadne was a Cretan princess and a daughter of King Minos. Technically, this makes Ariadne the half-sister to the half-man, half-bull, Minotar. Poseidon once courted Minos' wife Pasiphae. After she refused to sleep with him, Poseidon cursed her with a mad obsession for a bull. Thus the Minotauros, bull of Minos, was born. The story goes that King Minos was so ashamed of the disgraceful bastard child, he tried to hide the monster. First, King Minos had the remarkable craftsman Daedalus build the beguiling labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur, who was already attacking Crete and killing some citizens. Then, Minos tried to appease the gods by having Athenian youths brought as tribute to the Minotaur. This system of human sacrifice occurred for many years until at last the Athenian culture hero Theseus hatched a plan to slay the Minotaur. Ariadne actually helped Theseus by explaining how to use a thread to navigate the confusing terrain of the labyrinth. Now, by helping Theseus slay the Minotaur and end the ghastly tribute, Ariadne was actually betraying her father and her own brother. So Ariadne had to flee Crete with Theseus. So the two sail heroically off into the sunset on Theseus' ships. Ariadne had helped Theseus win the battle and bring home the other Athenian children safe and sound. She was literally the reason Theseus was still alive, and yet Theseus does not repay the favor. Instead, for reasons that vary by the source, Theseus abandons Ariadne on a little island called Dea, just off the shore of Crete. Ariadne is devastated, lonely, and hopeless. She paces the seashore, searching for any sign that Theseus is returning to her, but Theseus did not make a mistake by leaving her behind. Theseus marooned her for all the help she gave him. Dionysus actually heard the lamentation from Ariadne and was enraptured by her mournful song. They made for Dea and comforted her. Dionysus says to forget Theseus. Now Dionysus will comfort her as her lover. The two grew close, and Ariadne was overjoyed to have Dionysus in her life. In time all memory of Theseus was cast into the sea. After some time together, they had a remarkable wedding. They were married outside in the forest with garlands of flowers growing naturally from tree to tree all around the ceremony. The muses came and sang the bridal hymn, and the local nymphs were all in attendance. For a bridal chamber, Dionysus threw up a curtain of blooming flowers, and they lay together in a fountain. The two of them traveled the whole of Greece side by side. They had innumerable children together. Much like Heracles, many future kings and ruling dynasties throughout the Mediterranean would claim to be the direct descendants of Dionysus. By being direct descendants of this divine union between a god and a human heroine, they made a claim of their own legitimacy to the throne. In any case, after she was abandoned by Theseus, this happy marriage to Dionysus was remarkable and peaceful time in Ariadne's life, but it was not to last. Upon reaching the region of Argos, the eastern portion of the Pelponesian peninsula, Dionysus was challenged to a duel with Perseus. In some versions of the story, Perseus throws Dionysus into a lake, apparently killing Dionysus before the wine god miraculously returns from death. In Nonos version, however, the two fight a battle. Perseus uses his Gorgon head to turn Ariadne to stone. At this, Dionysus goes super saiyan and is about to raise the whole of Argos to ash. Then Hermes appears and reminds them that Perseus is their half-brother, both children of Zeus, and it would be a grievous sin to kill close kin like that. So the two make peace and Dionysus heals everyone injured during the fight. But Ariadne is already dead, so Dionysus makes her immortal. Ariadne's ghost comes to Dionysus one night and asks if she is to become a forgotten love, a romantic conquest like the type Zeus is so famous for. Was their romance just a meaningless fling? No, no, it wasn't. When Dionysus ascends to Olympus, they bring Ariadne with to be the eternal bride of Bacchus in the sky. The memory of their marriage is still visible forever in the summer sky in the constellation Corona Borealis, the northern crown. So with Ariadne we can see another story where those dear to Bacchus are made immortal. The very idea that Bacchus had abandoned Ariadne after death was enough to make the god of jollity lament at the way she remembered her own fate. Now we think of the story of Ariadne as one of a mortal becoming an immortal and joining the gods in the heavens. So as these two stories illustrate, those dear to Dionysus will not perish, but gain everlasting life. This is a key feature of Dionysaic worship. The people Dionysus loves are not destroyed by death, rather, Dionysus takes them up to the heavens or metamorphoses them into an eternal companion, just as Just as Dionysus has eternal loves in the stories, so does Dionysus love their mortal devotees. There are a curious set of manuscripts called the Bacchic Gold Tablets, which have occurred in mortuary contacts all over Greece and Italy. They're essentially small pieces of golden foil with usually poetic verses written upon them. Sometimes they include a map to help navigate the underworld, other times they include descriptions of a ritual, and sometimes they include nothing but the initiate's name, so they can remember it in the underworld. Human devotees of Dionysus, whether male or female, are looking for this same type of eternal connection. Because Dionysus does not abandon the ones that they love, the same holds true even from normal people. It's also worth noting that sometimes the language on the Bacchic tablets do not match those of the individual buried. Sometimes there appears to be aspects of gender nonconformity in these mortary settings. For example, sometimes a woman is buried and all the wordage says, I am the son of the earth and the sky. Other times the tablet refers to a male initiate, then switches to female verbiage, then back to male verbiage at the end. And sometimes the tablet implies that I am the daughter of the sky and my lineage is immortal, but that I am going to become a male bull or a male ram. None of these actually match the gender of the initiate buried within, so we do have an episode planned coming relatively soon to discuss this very topic. So we can see very visibly that Dionysus does form powerful, lasting, emotional, sexual attachments, but they are very few and far between. When they do occur, they are almost always eternal. Dionysus transforms their loves like Ampelos and Ariadne into immortal entities so they can remain together forever. This is an apt description of demisexuality. By describing Dionysus' sexuality in this way, instead of more conventional academic definitions of asexuality, we gain a more clear understanding of the way that Dionysus engaged with devotees. Images of figures like Mpelos or Ariadne allow us to see the very dynamic that these initiates were anticipating by their close and intimate connection to Dionysus. While it may take a bit longer for Dionysus to form that powerful intimate connection, once it's made, it lasts forever. Next week we are going to explore Hestia as a manifestation of true asexuality. Hestia is a Titan goddess, a sibling of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hera, but she is never wed. This is not a brief phase or a simple choice, and it does not appear to come from a rejection of social roles or societal norms. Additionally, unlike Athena and Artemis, it does not come with significant gender nonconformity or non-binary expressions. Rather, Hestia is contented to play the role of an asexual grandmother sitting at the hearth rather than embrace intimacy of any kind. There is no evidence that Hestia ever actually experienced any romantic attraction at all. We'll see you in two weeks. Nonos of Panopoulos is that Alexandrine scholar writing at some point in the 5th century A.D. His work includes a massive compendium of all the Dionysaic stories, including the story of Pauline, which is not found in a lot of other sources. Michael H. Jameson was a giant of 20th-century American classics. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford for decades. Throughout his career, he blended archaeology with literature and art to describe the ritual and historic environments of antiquity. The Asexuality of Dionysus is chapter two of a book called The Masks of Dionysus, edited by Thomas Carpenter and Christopher Farrioni, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1993, page range 44 through 64. The discussion of the Thesos, where men and women ritually play the satyr and the nymph, is from Kereny Dionysus, the archetypal image of indestructible life, originally published in German and translated by Ralf Mannheim in 1976, page range 313 through 315. He interprets the story as a ritual marriage of Dionysus. If we interpret Dionysus as demisexual, then this is a manifestation of the overt sexuality other people around Dionysus show. The story of Mpelos is found in Nonos Dionysia, book 10, verse 175, through book 12, verse 291. While the Dionysia is from the 5th century and thus much later in antiquity, there are versions of this story found in Ovid's Fasti from the era of Caesar Augustus in the first century, and Athenaeus, writing in the age of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Commodus in the second century. Generally speaking, the Goas is a literary trope going all the way back to Homer. It is essentially a literary version of the actual ritual mourning provided in mortuary contexts. Human mourning often followed the similar pattern of lamentation where household women anointed the body and lamented the death. In both ritual lamentation and the literary equivalent, women often expressed the social death, the loss of social relationships, and the implications for the family and community. The story of the Minotaur, Theseus and Ariadne, is a very common story throughout antiquity. The version presented here is mostly from Ovid's Metamorphosis in the first century AD, Book 8, verses 152 through 182. The story of Dionysus and Ariadne's marriage is from Nonos Dionysia, Book 47, verses 565 through 741. Many who worship Dionysus, even to this present day, find the story of Ariadne as a metaphor for the faith. They often describe feeling lost or abandoned, and then the joy and cathartic release of Dionysus' embrace. A fun piece of stone lore for any witchy listeners is that Nonos gives Dionysus a true diamond from India, which is the reason Dionysus was immune to the Gorgon's attack. Many ancient, medieval, and modern mystics note that true diamonds protect the bearer against injuries of the eye and from the eye, such as the evil eye. Diamonds also protect the bearer from iron, such as Perseus' war sickle. Nonos makes copious use of stone lore and mystic connotations all throughout. The Dionysiaca. Ariadne scolding Dionysus is from Nonos Dionysia, Book 48, verses 527 through 566. That's all for this week, folks. We'll see you in two weeks for our discussion of Hestia, the asexual.