History

L’article réfléchit sur la présence du serpent dans les rites bacchiques comme instrument chrétien de condamnation de Dionysos. D’une part est analysé le mythe des rapports incestueux et animaux de Zeus avec Déméter et Perséphone qui donneront naissance à Dionysos (Athenag. Suppl. XX 3) ; de l’autre, sont étudiées les modalités d’assimilation de Dionysos au Serpent biblique chez Firmicus Maternus et le processus de « diabolisation » du dieu païen (De err. XXI et XXVI).

Dionysus was a god with various emotions: his pitiless rage against his enemies was often accompanied by an apparent calm and an imperturbable smile. This set of behaviour and emotions, which characterizes the god's literary representations, has become, time by time, a subject matter both of literature and philosophy during the Roman Empire as well as of Christian apologetics in the first centuries. The interpretation of Dionysus' character and nature also led to explicate the value of his emotional states in different ways. From this, numerous reading typologies derive: from the – originally Platonic – attempt to contain the god's excesses, to the Christian intent to use these aspects for polemical scopes.

In the last book of the Exhortation to the Greeks, Clement of Alexandria revokes some images taken from Euripides’ Bacchae, in order to compose his appeal for conversion to Christianity. The present article analyses Clement’s intellectual move on the character of Tiresias the blind seer, and thereby sheds light on the ways the Christians selected and re-interpreted some Dionysian traditions.

Mon étude propose une analyse de la première strophe et de l’exode de la parodos des Phéniciennes d’Euripide, une tragédie qui met en scène un monde qui fait émerger la présence et le regard particulier des femmes thébaines, à la fois étrangères et consanguines, au travers d’un voyage, d’un itinéraire dépourvu de vraisemblance géographique et qui brouille le monde. Ce monde est à la fois construit et déconstruit par Euripide ; scénario d’un monde et son découpage particulier : le texte de l’image d’un monde est dessiné par le voyage et le mouvement du chœur des Phéniciennes.

Between the 18th and the 19th century Apollo and Dionysus have embodied the poles of an opposition, which has its roots in the intellectual and religious superstructures of the German culture, rather than in the evidence of the antiquity. In accordance to this, a necessity has been perceived to go back to examine the documents containing traces of the relationship between the two gods. On this basis, I will examine on the one hand, the remarks of two intellectuals of the imperial ages, such as Plutarch and Macrobius and, on the other hand, the historical sources from the 5th and 4th century B. C. and the Athenian Greek Theatre literary evidence. The proposed analysis aims at demonstrating that Apollo and Dionysus shared holy spaces, cult practices and mythical narrations, and that their relationship turned out to be based on encounter, sharing and, at times, even reversal of roles.

The article concentrates on the diffusion and the role of Euripides’ Bacchae in the Christian literature of the first centuries of our era. In this tragedy, Christian authors found some important representations of Bacchic rites, i. e. an interpretation of the meaning of the new god Dionysus for the whole human race. In the Church Fathers' writings, in particular those by Clement of Alexandria, as well as in Origen and Firmicus Maternus, the tragedy’s verses are not only used and quoted, but they are also the occasion to develop a new formation of the Dionysian elements from a Christian point of view.

L'équipe organisatrice: le crimtaLe Centre de recherche crimta (Centro di Ricerca Interdipartimentale Multimediale sul Teatro Antico) a été fondé en 2000 en collaboration avec les départements de sciences de l'Antiquité et d'informatique de l'Université de Pavie ...

"The article analyses the role played by the divinities in Euripides’ Ion. Both the gods on stage, like Hermes and Athena, who open and conclude the play, and the gods who do not appear on stage, such as Apollo and Dionysus, who are nonetheless continuously evoked by the characters of the drama and by the chorus, are here taken into consideration. In particular, an interpretation
of Dionysus’ role in Apollo’s net of deceit is considered, where Apollo tries to preserve his honour and to maintain the Athenian autochthony. This way, the ritual geography deriving from the choral songs is analysed."

This paper tackles the presence of written texts within Dionysiac rituality through the examination of various kinds of evidence (texts, engravings, images). The study then addresses a few questions regarding the contents of these written texts: are these texts concerned with ritual problems or mythical narratives? Were they designed to be used as props for rituals, as repertories of formulas or narratives or, rather, as commentaries of Dionysiac practices and narratives?

Firmicus Maternus wrote "De errore profanarum religionum" in a crucial period for the relationship between the traditional cults of the Roman empire and the Christian religion. The need for a definition of the religious identities led the Christian authors to build a new category to encompass, thoroughly, the cults and rituals of the Greek-roman world: in this context, Firmicus Maternus used for the first time the words "religio profana" to define them, with particular reference to the rituals coming from the East. This paper aims to unravel the reasons of such choice and analyse the comparative method used by Firmicus to demonstrate the diabolical origin of the “Oriental cults”.

In the context of the cohabitations of religions during the Roman Imperial Age, the rivalry between Christians and the traditional religions’ worshippers shows itself in the conflict of stories, rites and images: the category of trueness and falsehood were an instrument to refute the beliefs of the others. In this perspective, the article aims to analyse some Christian strategies of the II and III century (Justin, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria) created to represent Greek and Roman religions as a set of false stories deforming the true Christian beliefs.