Six questions about Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, answered

Every wine lover meets Bacchus sooner or later: on a label, in a museum, in a word like “bacchanal”. Here are the six questions people ask about him most, answered simply.

1. Who was Bacchus?

The short answer: Bacchus was the Roman god of wine, the vine, festivity and release. He came to Rome from Greece, where he was Dionysus. One of his old titles, Lyaeus, means “the one who sets free”. In art he is usually a young man crowned with vine or ivy leaves, cup in hand, sometimes a little unsteady on his feet.

2. Is Bacchus the same as Dionysus?

Mostly, yes. Bacchus is the Roman name for Dionysus; Bakchos was already one of his Greek names. But Rome had an older wine god of its own, Liber, or Liber Pater, “the free father”, and over time Liber and Bacchus became one god. Liber's festival, the Liberalia, fell on 17 March, and around 493 BC Rome dedicated a temple on the Aventine Hill to Ceres, Liber and Libera. The Etruscans had their own wine god too: Fufluns. More in the Etruscans and wine.

3. What did Bacchus stand for?

• Wine and the vine: the harvest, the press and the cup.
• Freedom and ecstasy: music, dance, letting go of everyday rules.
• Theatre: in Athens, the great tragedies and comedies were first performed at festivals of Dionysus.
• Life returning: the vine is cut back to almost nothing each winter and grows again each spring. His story is often read the same way.

His symbols: a crown of vine or ivy leaves; a two-handled cup, the kantharos; the thyrsus, a staff wound with ivy and topped with a pine cone; and a panther or leopard at his side. His followers were satyrs, the bacchantes (also called maenads), and old Silenus, his tutor, usually on a donkey.

4. What are his most famous myths?

• Born twice. His mother Semele, a mortal princess of Thebes, asked to see Jupiter (Zeus) in his true form and was burned up by it. Jupiter saved the unborn child and sewed him into his own thigh until he was ready to be born.
• The pirates. Pirates kidnapped him, thinking he was a prince they could ransom. Wine began to flow across the deck, a vine climbed the mast, and the terrified sailors leapt overboard and became dolphins. The story is told in a Homeric Hymn and by Ovid.
• Ariadne. Abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos, Ariadne was found by Bacchus, who married her. Her crown became a constellation.
• King Midas. Midas looked after Silenus and was offered a wish as a reward. He asked that everything he touched turn to gold, and soon he couldn't eat or drink. Bacchus told him to wash in the river Pactolus to be rid of the gift.
• King Pentheus. In Euripides' play The Bacchae, the king of Thebes refuses to honour the new god and is torn apart by the god's followers, his own mother among them. Not every Bacchus story is a party.

5. What were the Bacchanalia, and why were they banned?

The Bacchanalia were secret rites in honour of Bacchus that spread through Italy. In 186 BC the Roman Senate cracked down: a decree banned them across Roman Italy, except where the Senate itself gave permission. A bronze copy of the decree was found in Calabria in 1640, and the historian Livy tells the whole dramatic story. The scandal still echoes in English, where a bacchanal means a wild party.

The lighter side of that story is in Bacchus, the original winefluencer.

6. Where can you meet Bacchus today?

• Baalbek, Lebanon: the so-called Temple of Bacchus is one of the best-preserved Roman temples, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984.
• Florence: Michelangelo's marble Bacchus in the Bargello museum, and Caravaggio's painted Bacchus in the Uffizi. See Bacchus in sculpture and Bacchus in art.
• London: Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, in the National Gallery, shows the god leaping from his chariot towards her.
• In your glass: Bacchus is also a white grape, a German crossing that is now one of the most planted in England.

Why does he still matter to wine people? Because he is wine's oldest reminder that a glass is about people, not points: the table, the music, the story. Sell the feeling, not the score. Bacchus would agree.

Questions people ask