Sex saturates the Dionysian world-view. The Samians worshiped Dionysos Enorkes "the Betesticled" or "In the Balls". (Hesychius s.v. Enorkes) And at Sicyon the God's lustiness was honored by the title Dionysos Khoiropsalas "Cunt-Plucker". (Polemon Historicus, FHG 3.135.42) We see this side of the God manifest in the uncomplicated and unapologetic phallicism of his male companions, the satyrs. Hesiod calls the satyrs a "race of lazy, good-for-nothings," (Catalogue of Women Fragment 123) and in Attic vase-paintings they are almost always depicted in a state sexual arousal, frollicking in phallic dances to the accompaniment of pipes and drums, chasing after nymphs, or attempting (unsuccessfully) to initiate romantic liasons with the female votaries of Dionysos. Their eroticism is exaggerated, comical, and rarely finds satisfaction. Nor does their sexuality necessarily need the presence of women for arousal - satyrs are depicted as resorting to masturbation, strange contrivances, bestiality, etc. for release - and sometimes they are simply there with their large, erect members (as opposed to traditional Greek aesthetics which seemed to prefer small, unerect penises) as if the act of sex was an afterthought. It is horniness for the sake of horniness, reveling in the presence and excitement of the phallus, in the thrill and chase and wild exuberance of sensuality, a celebration of the body, of pleasure, in and of itself, whether it ever reaches completion in the act of coitus.
The phallus is ubiquitous in the worship of Dionysos. According to Plutarch, the things carried in the earliest rites of Dionysos were: "A wine jar, a vine, a basket of figs, and then the phallus," (Moralia 527D) According to Aristophanes, Phales, the phallus personified, was the "friend and constant companion" of Dionysos, and accompanied him in processions and sacred dances. (Acharnians 263) Herodotus says that Melampos, who supposedly introduced Dionysos' worship into Greece, instituted phallic processions in his honor. (2.49) At Methymna on Lesbos there was a cult of Dionysos Phallen in which a wooden trunk with a face on it was carried in procession. (Pasuanias 10.19.3) Each colony sent a phallus regularly to the Athenian Dionysia, and at Delos large wooden phalloi were carried in processions. And Herakleitos speaks of the phallic songs which would be shameful if they were not sung in honor of Dionysos. (Fragment 15) We even have a fragment of one of those songs from the Delian poet Semos, who sings of Dionysos, "Give way, make room for the God! For it is his will to stride exuberantly erect through the middle."
Dionysos's sexual rapaciousness is well attested in mythology. His most famous lover was the Cretan princess Ariadne, with whom he had numerous children - at one count, almost twelve of them. (Homer Iliad 18.590-92, Apollodorus 1.9.17) But she was by no means his only lover. By Aphrodite he was said to have sired Priapos (Pausanias 9.31.2), by Nikaia, Telete (Dionysiaca 16.392), by Aura, Iakkhos (Dionysiaca 48.887), by Koronis, the Younger Charities (Dionysiaca 15.87), by Althaia, Deianeira (Apollodorus 1.64), by Physkoa, Narkaios (Pausanias 5.16.6). Additionally, he was said to have wooed Beroe, after whom the city in Lebanon was named (Dionysiaca 42.1f) and Pallene, who had wrestled and slain all previous suitors. Nor were his amorous encounters limited only to women - Dionysos was also said to have loved the young satyr Ampelos (Ovid Fasti 3.407), the sentry to the underworld Prosymnos (Clement of Alexandria Protreceptic 2.34.5) and the poet Phanocles even wrote, "Bacchus on hills the fair Adonis saw, and ravished him, and reaped a wondrous joy."
Orgiastic rites were frequently attributed to Dionysos. For instance, Livy recounts the allegations of the Roman Senate in their suppression of the Bacchanalia as follows, "When wine had inflamed their feelings, and night and the mingling of the sexes and of different ages had extinguished all power of moral judgment, all sorts of corruption began to be practiced, since each person had ready to hand the chance of gratifying the particular desire to which he was naturally inclined... [N]o sort of crime, no kind of immorality, was left unattempted. There were more obscenities practiced between men than between men and women." (Roman History 39.8, 13) In the Akharnians, Aristophanes has Dikaiopolis jokingly refer to his daughter's involvement in Dionysian revels, "Happy he who shall be your possessor and embrace you so firmly at dawn that you fart like a weasel." The chorus of Sophocles' Oedipus the King (1105-9) wonders if the King may have been conceived during a Dionysian orgy on mount Helicon, and Plutarch asserts that Alexander the Great was likely conceived during one of Queen Olympias' Bacchic orgies, for which she had a great fondness, where the God appeared in the form of a giant snake. (Alexander 2-3) And Augustine speaks of a high degree of licentiousness carried on at Dionysos' festivals. (The City of God 7.21) In Euripides' Bacchae, Dionysos is said to "have the charm of Aphrodite in his eyes" (236), and Pentheus suspects that the maenads "prefer Aphrodite to Bacchus in their rites" (215), although the messenger who has come back from observing the rites of the maenads flatly denies any such allegation, saying that they worship "in all modesty. They weren't as you described-all drunk on wine or on the music of their flutes, hunting for Aphrodite in the woods alone." (685-87)
Sexuality is just as important in the realm of Osiris. He is called, "the Lord of the Phallus and the ravisher of women" (The Book of the Dead, CLXVIII, 15) and "the mummy with a long member," in which form he is frequently depicted in funerary art. The phallus was even carried in processions to honor Osiris, according to Plutarch. "Moreover, when they celebrate the festival of the Pamylia which, as has been said, is of a phallic nature, they expose and carry about a statue of which the male member is triple; for the God is the Source, and every source, by its fecundity, multiplies what proceeds from it." (On Isis and Osiris, 36) In the Pyramid Texts, it is said, "Your sister Isis comes to you rejoicing for love of you. You have placed her on your phallus and your seed issues into her." (Utt. 366, sect 632) Nor was it just Isis with whom Osiris was said to have erotic encounters. Plutarch recounts a secret liaison that Osiris had with his sister Nephthys, "Isis found that Osiris had loved and been intimate with her sister while mistaking her for herself, and saw a proof of this in the garland of melilot which he had left with Nephthys." (On Isis and Osiris) This scene is hinted at in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, where we find the following line, "I have discovered a secret: Yes, Nephthys is having intercourse with Osiris." (PGM 4.100-02) It is often suggested that this myth was a later invention, perhaps inspired by Greek stories of infidelities among the Gods - however, in the 183rd Chapter of the Book of the Dead a quarrel between Nephthys and Isis is recorded, which clearly predates the Greek presence in Egypt, and for which there is no other mythological explanation.
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