DIONYSUS
ZEUS' divine child
relishes the happy life
He loves Peace who sheds happiness
Peace who nurses admirable youths
And gave of the rich and poor
He hates those who do not do their best
day and wondrous night
to live happily.
Early Cultivations of the wine
According to Theopompus the dark wine originated among the Chians and they first learnt how to plant and tend vines from Oenopion, son fo DIONYSUS. (Athen. 1.26b)
DIONYSUS was welcomed by Icarius, king of deme Icaria of Attica, who received from him a branch of a vine and learned the process of making wine. (Apollod. 3.14.7)
The same author declares that the king of Calydon Oeneus was the first to receive a vine-plant from. DIONYSUS (1.8.1)
According to Hyginus (Astron. 2.2) DIONYSUS relied to Icarius the cultivation of the vine and the preparation of the wine.Icarius planted the vine and he did care about it as long as it grew up. One day a goat (τράγος) entered the vine yard and ate all the new leaves. Icarius was afflicted and was very angry to see such a disaster. He first killed the goat and after with its hide he constructed a skin-bag which he inflated and fastened it. Then he throw it among some friends which he obliged to danse round the skin-bag. So Eratosthene has writen, that for the first time, near Icarius, men danced in round by a goat.
The physician
Philomides
says that when the vine had been brought by DIONYSUS from the Red Sea into
Greece most men perversely turned to unmeasured enjoyment of it, and drank it
unmixed; some, in their insame perversity, became delirious, others became like
corpses in their stupor. But once upon a time, when some men were drinking at
the seashore, a rain-storm fell upon them and broke up the pasty, but filled up
the bowl, which still had a little wine left in it.
After the weather cleared they returned to the same place, and tasting the
mixture of wine and water they found pleasant and painless enjoyment. When the
unmixed wine is poured during the dinner the Greeks call upon the name of the
good Divinity, doing honour to the divinity who discovered the wine; he was
Dionysus. But with the first cup of mixed wine given after the dinner they call
upon ZEUS the Saviour, because they assume that he, as the originator of
rain-storms, was the author of the painless mixture desired from the mingling of
wine and rain. (Athen. 15.675)
Hecataeus of Miletus declares that the vine was discovered in Aetolia and he
adds:
Orestheus,
son of Deucalion, went to Aetolia to assume the kingship and a bitch of his gave
birth to a stalk. He ordered that it be buried, and from it sprang a vine with
many clusters. For this reason he called his own son Phytius ("Vine-grower").
When his son Oineus was born, he was named after the vines. For the ancient
Greeks, Athenaeus completed, called grape - vines «oinai». (Athen. 2.35β)
Theopompus from Chios relates that the vine was discovered in Olympia on the banks of the river Alpheius and there is a district in Elis, a mile away, in which at the festival of DIONYSUS the inhabitans shut up and seal three empty cauldrons, in the presence of visitors; later they open the cauldrons and find them full of wine.
Hellanicus maintains that the vine was discovered first in Plithine, a city of Egypt. (Athen. 1.34a)
The Greek mythology refers to same persons having the name of Staphylus :
1) The King of Aetolia Oeneus had many herds of goats. His shepherd was
Staphylus who carried every day the goats to the pasture.
One day watching a goat, which was late to join the herd and returned joyful,
noticed that the goat prefered to eat a certain plant.
Staphylus announced this fact to Oeneus who had the idea to take the juice of
the grapes of this plant. From then on the wine was discovered.
They gave the name of the King to the juice
oenos
and they called the fruit
Stafili.
2) According to the second tradition Staphylus was the son of Silinus. He was the one who discoverd the wine and mix it with the water. (Dict. Mythol. Pierre Grimal p.428)
3) The prevailled view is that Staphylus was the son of Ariane and DIONYSUS. He was born in the island of Lemmos. His brothers were Thoas Oenopion and Peparithos. (Apollod. Epitom. 1.9, Plutarch Theseus
http://www.greekwinemakers.com/
