Description
Large Bust of Antinous disguised as god Dionysus Bacchus. After the ancient Roman statue of Antinous as Dionysus (also known as Bacchus), god of wine.
Antinous was Roman Emperor Hadrian’s favorite. Hadrian ruled the Roman Empire between 117 – 138 AD. When Antinous died in Egypt in 130 AD under mysterious circumstances, Hadrian announced that Antinous was to become a god, named a city in Egypt after Antinous, and sculptures of Antinous were put up across the Roman Empire.
Antinous is often shown as one of the Greek or Roman gods, just like in this sculpture, where he is represented as the god Dionysus (or Bacchus for the Romans). You can identify him as Dionysus the god of wine, theatre and parties as he is wearing a wreath around his head made of Ivy and grapes.
This sculpture was discovered in the 1700s in the ruins of Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli, just north of Rome, in Italy. More than twenty images of Antinous have been discovered in Hadrian’s home.
In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos (associated with Roman Liber), is the god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology. The geographical origins of his cult were unknown, but almost all myths depicted him as having “foreign” (i.e. non-Greek) origins. He was also known as Bacchus and the frenzy he induces, bakcheia. He is the patron deity of agriculture and the theatre. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one’s normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine.The divine mission of Dionysus was to mingle the music of the aulos and to bring an end to care and worry. Scholars have discussed Dionysus’ relationship to the “cult of the souls” and his ability to preside over communication between the living and the dead. In Greek mythology Dionysus is made to be a son of Zeus and Semele; other versions of the myth contend that he is a son of Zeus and Persephone. He is described as being womanly or “man-womanish”. The name Dionysos is of uncertain significance; its -nysos element may well be non-Greek in origin, but its dio- element has been associated since antiquity with Zeus (genitive Dios). Nysa, for Greek writers, is either the nymph who nursed him, or the mountain where he was attended by several nymphs (the Nysiads), who fed him and made him immortal as directed by Hermes. The retinue of Dionysus was called the Thiasus and comprised chiefly Maenads.
