Andrew Dalby ‘The Story of Bacchus’

A review of The Story of Bacchus by Andrew Dalby, originally published in the JACT Review.
This is an unusual book, piecing together the ‘life’ of the god Bacchus from the scattered hints in ancient sources, many familiar, some much less so. There are nine chapters, notes (with references to the main sources used) and some further reading. I was not predisposed to recommend it – it does not seem an obvious candidate for school/university libraries. Yet I enjoyed reading it.
The book follows the narrative of Bacchus’ life, from his birth under disputed circumstances, through his childhood and adolescence, to the stories of his more mature years and his arrival on Olympus as a god. The stories are well told, with some direct quotation, but more often a judicious and selective paraphrase of the multiple sources, with acknowledgements of the discrepancies and inconsistencies inevitable in Greek myth. There is some limited discussion of the reasons for the divergences: for example, Bacchus/Dionysus’ role in mystery cult may explain some of the omissions in pagan sources, while the relish with which the more transgressive elements in his life and worship are described by some later authors may be explained by their fervent desire to expose the crudities of pagan beliefs from a Christian perspective.
The 18 colour illustrations, placed oddly at the front of the book, show something of the iconography of the god: strangely there is but one more recent work, the Bacchus and Ariadne by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. They are not integrated into the book and seem to be an afterthought.
There is no great apparatus of theoretical approaches to the meaning of ancient myth. This is, after all, a life and proceeds with a narrative. It is fun to read, covers the ground and explains something of the fascination the Greeks felt for the god and his gifts to men.