Feasts, Orgies and Lust: Bread and Dionysus in Ancient Greece

He is therefore a god of fertility as well as male sexuality. He is depicted as being endowed with an immense sexual potency and appetitehence its relationship with the orgy. Tradition has it that he used to chase through the forests after nymphs y girls in search of their sexual favours. As God lustfuland penis billy goat always erectHe played seductively on the syrinx, attracting the nymphs who danced naked around him, overflowing with sensuality and having fantastic orgies.

In the course of time, the god Pan became associated with the satyrs, with whom he undoubtedly has many similarities and to whom he seems to be related. The satyrs in culture are in effect all "slaves to their instincts". They share a taste for music, the orgy, on winethe sex and the animals".

 "He is both animal, shepherd and hunter and fisherman, and the divinity who protects livestock and wild animals. In addition to being the patron of animal reproduction, he was undoubtedly considered a joyful god because of the influence of his musical gifts". He was therefore undoubtedly a festive god. However, he had to be careful, for at the same time he became terrible if he happened to be awakened from his nap.

Local lust

Generally, hybrid beings in Greek culture do not fulfil the role of gods. They rather fulfil the role of intermediary beings, but Pan is an exception. He is a god in the strict sense: "immortal and the object of veneration in different regions of Greece. However, he is not entirely anthropomorphic, one of the main characteristics of the Greek gods".

It is interesting how this monstrous host character of the lust and the orgy.

This god of the lustThe culture of the gods, the fields and the music was originally worshipped by a pastoral nomadic culture. With the rise of the cities and the abandonment of nomadism, its influence was initially reserved for Arcadia. It is a mountainous and marginal region, "preserving political, linguistic and religious archaisms".

Pan is considered the most honourable of the gods in the rest of Greece. He has been regarded as "the living image of an Arcadian shepherd". Only in Arcadia do we find Pan in his pure state, free from the Dionysian influence, i.e. the god of wine and all his entourage. We must consider that Bread y DionisioThe two are separate and distinct characters. But why have they been linked?

From sexual god to god of war

It is from 490 BC that the status of the god changes, and he is no longer restricted to a limited sector of ancient Greece. He became a universal god of that culture and no longer a local one. In that year, following the Athenian victory at Marathon (battle of the Greeks against the Persians) and "thanks to a fit of panic among the enemy troops, Pan becomes the official deity of Athens and his cult spreads throughout the whole of the Helad" (throughout the Greek area). Pan is no longer just an Arcadian deity who safeguards herds from wild animals. He becomes a god who protects the Athenians from the barbarians".

He is no longer just a god of virility, lust and music, but also a god of war, uniting all of Greece. Despite being a god of war, this libidinous patron is by no means a warrior god, for he is never present on the battlefield but "devotes himself to preventing confrontation from taking place".

Now detached from the local particularity, this "ruler of a light muse" and "hybrid body combining several natures" becomes part of the retinue of that other god of great importance mentioned above, also related to sexuality, Dionysus. This linking of Pan with the god of wine and his Dionysian cult, with its orgies y debaucheryThe goat-footed god thus becomes part of the retinue of one of the most famous gods of ancient Greece.

On the lustful Dionysian feasts

But what was happening in the Dionysian Festivals And what were they about?

It is relevant to underline the sacred character of the parties y orgies in ancient Greece. At these festivals the citizens would ride through the polis in a chariot bearing the image of Dionysos, the people behind them following him, singing, dancing, in a wild state of drunkenness. They killed a goat so that its blood would strengthen the earth (goats), hence the word "goat". tragedy and from comos which would be the manifestation of the chorus, derives the word comedy". 

We can find in these orgiastic Dionysian festivals the basis of ancient Greek theatre, and therefore the basis of Western theatre. For, "when the chorus sings and others answer, we already have dialogue and it is the dithyramb, here we already find the basis of theatre, people who act and people who observe. Before, someone read a story, only the character existed, now the actor represented the character".

Thus Dionysus is shaped as a god who incites to the representation of Greek myths and tragedies, inviting to a game of masks and chorus.

The very drunkenness that was being induced and celebrated in these parties y orgies in ancient Greece, tells us Nietzsche in his first major work "The birth of tragedy"The veil of the world of appearances, the world of the order of measure, and of the beauty characteristic of the god Apollo, was torn away. Behind the veils of the order of the world, the dissolution of the individual, of hierarchies and of the formality required by everyday life was glimpsed, under the effects of the drunkenness and the fusion of individuals in the orgies.  

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