Dionysian

Lines of Flight / Becoming Animal

Initiatory Themes in a Dionysian-Themed Sarcophagus

Peter Mark Adams

A second to third century CE sarcophagus held in the Archaeological Museum,

Naples, depicts a tableau of Dionysian cult imagery with initiatory overtones. By

cross-referencing its iconography with that encountered in the frescoes of Pompeii’s

Villa dei Misteri1 we can perhaps elucidate its enigmatic imagery and help to answer

the question: do these two quite distinct artefacts shed any light on the essential

features of Bakkhic telete?

In attempting to answer such a question we need to recognise that the ‘mysteries’, the

so-called ‘rites of higher initiation’, are a cross-cultural feature of human activity

enjoying considerable time-depth; in other words, they are susceptible to ethnographic

comparison and elucidation since they share a common concern to leverage the

potentialities of ritual enactment, entheogenic and psycho-physical excitation to attain

a transient but super-ordinary state of awareness characterised by visions of the deities

in whose name(s) the rites are enacted. It is of the essence of such rites that these

visionary elements remain unknown to outsiders but form a consistent pattern

amongst the initiates, the epoptai (‘those who have seen’) for the purposes of

verifying the efficacy of the ritual.

Recognising and leveraging the additional interpretive richness that comes from the

crossover between the etic (scholarly or outsider) perspective; and the emic (insider or

practitioner) experience is essential to the elucidation of the ritual as it was intended

to function rather than viewing its iconography from a more passive art historical or

classical studies perspective.

The tableau features a more uninhibited – though metaphorical – depiction of the

world of Dionysian ritual split into two domains: the phenomenal, funerary world of

the deceased behind the parapetasma (the drapery or ‘curtain’ backdrop); and the

vital, nocturnal – though numinous – world of Bakkhic cultic activity in front. The

ability of the one torch-bearing – that’s to say ‘illumined’ – figure on the far right of

the scene to look over the separating wall and discern this separate reality and its

unchanging rites evidently relates to well-attested, long standing Orphic beliefs in the

essential continuity of the soul from life to life.

The openness of the depictions of cultic activity are compensated by the distancing

device of their being enacted by satyrs and satyresses – who were notoriously

over-sexualised – and whose overtly sexual behaviour is, therefore, only to be

expected. In this way the relief’s fidelity to actual cult practices is ‘defocused’,

allowing multiple, conflicting readings of its implied narratives. Aside from any role

in occluding sensitive aspects of Bakkhic telete, we will need to carefully consider the

rationale for invoking spirits of nature to enact these solemn rites; not least because
their depiction approximates the caricature and parody found, for example, on

Kabirion-ware from the site of the Kabiritic mysteries at Thebes. These ceramics,

which feature such archaic themes as the battle of the Cranes and Pygmies – first

evidenced in Homer’s Iliad2 – and a procession of the deities involved in the

mysteries are depicted in an amusing, cartoonish style that belies the seriousness, and

indeed, the sanctity, of the rites involved.3

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a certain sleight of hand is evidenced by this

transposition of the secret world of initiatory rites to another, entirely different sphere

of activity – whether depictions of nature spirits or caricatures of the main actors. In

any event, we still need to consider the possibility that some deeper understanding is

being conveyed by placing the sarcophagus’ cult action in the realm of nature spirits.
 The First Five Figures

Reading the first half of the tableau from left to right; against the backdrop of a

curtain suspended between a fig tree and a pine tree we discern the following figures:

a satyress with a herm; Pan; Ariadne; a dadouchos, the ‘torchbearer’ and a key figure

in the performance of the mysteries; and an inebriated Dionysos supported by two

figures.

To steady herself, the satyress grips one of the horns of a priapic herm with her right

hand whilst she supports one leg on a small stool to facilitate the insertion of the

herm’s member into herself with her other hand. The herm has been modelled with a

distinct forward thrust to its hips, as though it is only too eager to assist. We can judge

the nature of the satyress’ activity from the branch of the tree immediately above her,

which is festooned with bunches of figs. The identification of the tree as a fig-tree –
and by implication the herm and its phallus as being made of the same material –

directs us to the aitia of Dionysos’ auto-sodomy undertaken with an olisboi (dildo)

fashioned from the wood of a fig-tree. This curious tale, his need to fulfill a sexual

favour promised to the shepherd, Prosymnos, in return for his showing Dionysos the

entrance to the underworld; from which he sought to obtain the release of his mother,

Semele. Upon returning Dionysos found that the shepherd had died and so fulfilled

his part of the bargain by an act of auto-sodomy over the shepherd’s grave. As noted -

disgustedly - by the Church Father nnnnnnnn, such acts evidently featured as part of

the rural Dionysia. The significance of this tradition in the context of Bakkhic telete,

however, is clear. The frescoes of the Villa dei Misteri clearly depict mushroom

shaped endings on the legs of each piece of furniture4 - a feature not replicated in any

Roman style furniture - and therefore clearly serving as an allusive reference to, and

confirmation of, the long-suspected employment of entheogens in initiatory contexts.

Given the clearly exuberant nature of the rites we can speculate, with a fair degree of

certainty, that the tale of Prosymnos supplies the aitia for both the festive enactment

of auto-sodomy as well as the rectal administration of a mushroom extract to the

initiate through the employment of an olisboi; the most likely candidate being

Amanita Muscaria. Its active ingredient, muscimol, induces the type of euphoria or

enthusiasmos that is associated with Bakkhic ecstasy. Its effects can be managed so as

to be relatively short-lived; a factor that clearly depends on its intrinsic strength and

the mode of its preparation. The ‘crux’ scene that covers the south-east corner of

Room 5 of the Villa dei Misteri suggests the enactment of just such an operation with

the figure of the whip-bearing daemon, Lyssa, symbolising the onset of ‘telestic

mania’5 consequent upon the effects of the drug. Rectal administration - a routine

medical procedure in that pre-hypodermic age - would have meant that the drug
by-passed the body’s filtering mechanisms to arrive in the shortest possible time and

at full-strength in the bloodstream. Just next to the footstool a larger hoof protrudes

from behind the curtain - though it is not easily established who this might belong to

we can read it as symbolic of the supernatural world of nature spirits.

In the next scene we see Pan – the ruler of all nature spirits (and no doubt aroused by

the action) – emerge from his temple. Pan had a long standing association with

Dionysos and was often depicted in his entourage; seemingly representing that aspect

of the god closest to the state of nature. As the god of shepherds,6 Pan and Dionysos

share the same symbolic device: the shepherd’s crook,7 that we find depicted on the

floor on the far right-hand side of the relief.

We next encounter a figure whose recumbent pose, one arm thrown over her head the

other extended, exactly accords with the classical model of the ‘sleeping Ariadne’.

The depiction of her with one arm raised over the head is a typically allusion to an

‘epiphanic moment’ - the direct revelation of the deity vouchsafed as part of Bakkhic

telete. Behind her in the gap between the curtains that frame this scene stands a tomb;

and we are tempted to read this arrangement as suggestive of the sarcophagus

inhabitant’s aspiration for immortalisation. Ariadne is depicted as though just

awakening into the deathless world that exists just beyond the ‘curtain’ separating the

mortal realm from the sensuous life of the immortals. In the spirit of the polysemy

inherent in such metaphors we see both the deceased Ariadne’s – and therefore the

Bakkhai’s – ‘awakening’ from the ‘sleep’ of life and becoming apathanatismos –

‘immortalised’ – as they enter into perpetual union with an immortal god.

Just beneath her head, laying on the ground, we can make out another Dionysian

symbol, the ‘Mirror of Dionysos’; as we have seen, a recurring motif in connection

with the Orphic metaphysical play with the notion of reality as illusion. Before the

start of the next group of figures we see two other characteristically Dionysian

symbols: a pine cone and an upraised torch.

The next scene introduces the inebriated Dionysos supported by two silenoi (their ears

clearly identifying them as nature spirits) and with a krater or wine jug in one hand

and a symposia wreath in the other. To his right and left two figures bear a torch and a

thyrsos, respectively, arranged to form an arch over the deity. As we previously noted,

Dionysos’ ‘inebriation’ is open to multiple levels of interpretation and is therefore left,

somewhat ambiguously, to the wit of the observer to interpret.

 The Remaining Six Figures

The following scene introduces three cultists: a woman bearing a liknon on her head;

a dancing nymph playing hand cymbals; and a small boy, who traditionally read out

the liturgy at rites of initiation, though in this case he is not clad in traditional

Dionysian footwear. He does, however, cradle a whip in one hand and a torch in the

other. The whip – which features so prominently in the hand of the daemon in the

Villa’s frescoes – is here shown to be a standard feature of Dionysian iconography.8

In the final scene a priapic satyr’s erect member points towards the buttocks of a

satyress who is kneeling before him and supporting herself on another Dionysian

herm. Under the bust the column has been draped in a pelt, the characteristic

fawn-skin or nebris worn by initiates. Above her a figure, clearly still in the

phenomenal world on the other side of the curtain, holds a torch over the scene
illuminating it – a clear reference to the efficacy of these rites in bridging the two

worlds, if only temporarily. Beneath, we can make out two further Dionysian symbols:

a shepherd’s crook and pan pipes. Behind the herm, suspended on a loped branch of

the tree are what appear to be a pair of long handled mirrors, another characteristically

Dionysian symbol related to the aitia of his murder by the Titans. Their appearance at

the end of the ritual sequence, hung upon a loped off tree branch, reinforces their

essential metaphoric function: the reminder that the phenomenal world is merely a

mirror image of the higher reality depicted here; that by our becoming enthralled with

a mere reflection, we are drawn, ineluctably, into attachment to its insubstantial,

transitory and unreliable plasticity.

In its totality the tableau features characteristically Dionysian cult action and most of

the associated cult symbolism. On one level, its transposition to the world of nature

spirits re-creates the mythical world of Dionysos’ upbringing on Mount Nysa; but it

also points towards the nature of the transformation that overtakes initiates into the

Bakkhic mysteries – a transformation that can characterised by the Deleuzian phrase,

‘becoming-animal’.

Becoming-animal can be construed as a ‘line of flight’ away from a hierarchy of

consensually established (‘arborescent’) meanings – with all the numbing conformity

of conceptualisation and outlook that that implies – and towards a ‘rhizomatic’ state

of being exhibiting no centralised authority or relations. To leave the world of

chronological time and conditional awareness in favour of an eternal now, the

kairological moment, is to inhabit – if only briefly – the world of the ‘nomadic’ reality

inhabited by the nature spirits that defies all characterisation (and all categories); and

which represents the, “achievement of non-identity, which for Deleuze and Guattari is

the condition of freedom.”9 It was ever the central accomplishment of rites of higher
initiation, in all times and places, to allow the mystai to experience, “the point of

intersection of the timeless. With time ... "10 It is the centrality of this quest for the

zero degree of freedom – liberation that can only be found beyond the limitations of

the persona and of all its conceptualising constraints – that has ever acted as the

supreme inducement for generations of mystae to undertake the perilous quest in order

to complete the ten thousand year arc of the soul’s line of flight.

1
Adams, P.M. (2019). Mystai: Dancing Out the Mysteries of Dionysos.
2 Homer. Iliad. Book 3. Li.1-9.

3 Ibid. Schachter, A. (2003): 130-131.

4 Ibid. Adams, P.M. (2019).

5 Plato.

6 Nonnus. Dionysiaca. 43.214.

7 Schuddeboom, F. (2009). Greek Religious Terminology: Telete & Orgia : a Revised and Expanded
English Edition of the Studies by Zijderveld and Van Der Burg: 219 note 43; 230 note 63.

8 Ibid. Schuddeboom, F. (2009): 230 note 63.

9 Bruns, G.L. (2007). Becoming-Animal (Some Simple Ways). New Literary History. Volume 38,
Number 4, Autumn 2007: 703-720.

10 Eliot, TS. (1941). Dry Salvages.