Too often we think of Dionysus as “jolly Bacchus,” whom the Romans in particular portrayed as the god of drinking and sexual orgies. But he was far more, a god of the dark side of humanity, of passions and the life force, companion of the Mother, a dying and rising god of the year cycle, god of the mountain rather than the city, whose followers were mainly male satyrs and female maenads (“the mad women”), who dressed in animal skins, wreathed their hair with ivy, wielded thyrsoi (poles tipped with foliage), hunted their prey on the mountainside, tore it apart, and ate the flesh raw.