- His parents were Zeus and Semele, a mortal woman. This makes Dionysus unique among the twelve Olympian gods as he is the only one to have a parent who was mortal. It didn't end well for Semele, who faced the wrath of Zeus's wife Hera when she got pregnant. She died as a result of Hera's jealous rage. Zeus saved his baby by sewing the foetus into his thigh until it was ready to be born.
- Hera's jealous rage didn't end there. She had the Titans rip the baby to pieces, but his grandmother, Rhea, rescued the pieces and put them back together. Dionysus was then raised by mountain nymphs. When Hera found out he was still alive, she drove him mad, which resulted in him wandering the world and teaching humanity how to make wine. However, even Hera accepted him in the end, when he recovered his sanity and joined the gods in Olympia.
- In art, Dionysus is usually pictured as a young man with long dark hair, less athletic than most Olympian gods. He wears a crown of Ivy, animal skins or a purple robe. He carries a staff made of fennel, called a thyrsus which has a pine cone on the end, and a magical cup of wine which is always full.
- He had a number of superpowers which included making vines grow and turning himself into a bull or a Lion. He also had the power to drive mortals insane. He could also bring the dead back to life, which he did for his mother, Semele. It was Dionysus who granted King Midas the power to turn everything he touched into Gold.
- The names Dennis and Denise are derived from Dionysus.
- He wasn't only the god of wine. He was the god of wine-making and the Grape harvest, and also of revelry, ecstacy, fertility and theatre.
- He was said to lead a fun loving, wild life and had a band of female followers called the Maenads, who had loose morals and were often drunk.
- While this would suggest he probably wasn't the marrying kind, he did marry - his wife was Ariadne, a princess from Crete - and they had six children.
- There were two main festivals celebrating Dionysus. One was the Dionysia, the oldest of the two, celebrated around the time of the Winter Solstice, and probably began as a celebration of the wine harvest. It consisted of a procession in which people carried jars of wine, loaves of bread and phalluses, followed by dramatic performances and competitions. Later on, a different festival was held in urban areas in the spring. This also included a procession which would be led by people carrying a statue of Dionysus and leading bulls, which would be sacrificed to the god. The drama contest would feature a number of categories and the entrants would be celebrity dramatists.
- The ancient Greeks believed that when people got drunk, Dionysus entered them, which explained why people could have widely different personalities when under the influence.
Golden Thread
Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.
Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.
Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.
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