The panther is perhaps Dionysos' favorite animal. It is almost universally depicted in his train, pulling his chariot, ferociously tearing apart his enemies such as Lykourgos, laying docilely at his feet, or as Philostratus tells us, "leaping as gracefully as the Bacchantes". (Imag. 1.19.4) The panther was even said to have a fondness for wine. (Oppian Cynegetica 3.80) Its intractable savagery was compared to that of Dionysos' own. (Athenaios 2.38e)
However, Dionysos was also connected with the lion, in whose guise he appears to frighten the pirates in the 7th Homeric Hymn and the daughters of Minyas. In this form, he fought in the battle against the Giants (Horace Carmina 2.19.23) and it was as a lion that the Theban women sought him in Euripides' Bacchae, "Appear as a bull, or as a many-headed dragon, or as a lion breathing fire!" (1017) In Roman times, both the lynx and tiger were added to his train.
There aren't many references linking Osiris to wild cats, though the Egyptians knew lion-Goddesses such as Sekhmet and Menhit. However, Osiris is depicted as having a lion-shaped sarcophagus at Dendera, and Plutarch linked him with this animal, "The Sun is consecrated to Osiris, and the lion is worshipped, and temples are ornamented with figures of this animal, because the Nile rises when the sun is in the constellation of the Lion." (On Isis and Osiris, 38) And in the Contendings of Heru and Set, Osiris is hailed as the "lion who hunts for himself," (1.14. 7)
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