Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a biennial(1057) festival at which the sufferings and death of Dionysus were represented in every detail.(1058) Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was enacted at the rites,(1059) and it even appears that a general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the thought of the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus.(1060)
A different form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead.(1061) The local Argive tradition was that he descended through the Alcyonian lake; and his return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the warder of the dead.(1062) Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to bring the season with him.(1063) Deities of vegetation, who are supposed to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived.(1064)
A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as “cow-born,” “bull,” “bull-shaped,” “bull-faced,” “bull-browed,” “bull-horned,” “horn-bearing,” “two-horned,” “horned.”(1065) He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull.(1066) His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape,(1067) or with bull horns;(1068) and he was painted with horns.(1069) Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity.(1070) On one statuette he appears clad in a bull’s hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind.(1071) At his festivals Dionysus was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull’s-foot. They sang, “Come here, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull’s-foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!”(1072) According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans;(1073) and the Cretans, in representing the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth.(1074) Indeed, the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites.(1075) The practice of representing the god in bull form or with some of the features of a bull, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and the legend that it was in bull form that he had been torn in pieces—all these facts taken together leave no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.