Sources

The body of visual evidence available for a study of Dionysos in fifth century Athens is much richer than the contemporary textual sources; it has the added advantages of being quite datable and of not suffering corruptions at the hands of careless copyists. The god himself appears on more than 900 surviving fifth-century Attic vases, something over 3.5 per cent of the known total, which is more than any other god; he figures prominently in the sculpture from the east pediment, east frieze, and east metopes of the Parthenon; and he was the subject of monumental paintings in Athens of which we have written accounts. Yet, in spite of the volume of the evidence, its authenticity, and its datability, remarkably little effective use has been made of it in attempts to understand the nature and place of Dionysos in Athens. This study is intended to be a partial response to the question, what can surviving visual sources reveal about fifth-century Attic perceptions of Dionysos?

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