Bacchus, known primarily as Dionysus, is the Greek god of wine including winemaking and the grape harvest. Some historians cite evidence that places worship of Bacchus as far back as BC and numerous cults sprung up in his honour over time, including in those Greek colonies that settled in Southern Italy.
The Roman Bacchanalia grew out of influence from these Southern groups, as well as the Greek-influenced Etruscans that occupied the region just north of Rome, and first appeared in Rome around BC.
Mystery cults required members to be initiated and were tolerated by Roman authorities which allowed the Bacchanalia to spread. The festivities, originally held three times per year during daylight hours and attended solely by women in Rome, quickly grew in intensity and frequency as an Etruscan version, held at night five times per month and attracting followers of both sexes, quickly became the norm.
Although artists of past centuries have largely depicted the events held in Bacchus' honour as joyous occasions, early Bacchanalia were in fact rife with violence and sexual abuse. Cult followers seem to have been drawn by the appeal of extreme hedonism - the drinking, feasting and orgies - only to be taken advantage of by cult priests that held followers to strict vows of secrecy of Bacchanalia happenings.
Those who divulged the cults' practices were promptly expelled or worse. In fact, it was an ex-cult member that led to the rapid repression of the mystery cults. A Bacchanalia follower and prostitute, worried for her upper-class clients who were becoming patrons of the cult, alerted politicians as to the cults' ceremonies. The Roman Senate issued a decree Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus in BC virtually banning the Bacchanalia as it had become considered a security threat due to its rapid spread and growing upper-class associations.
