Victorian Bacchant Cameo Brooch
Run, run, Bacchae, bringing the roaring god, Dionysus, son of a god, out of the Phrygian mountains to the spacious streets of Hellas.
- 'Bacchae', Euripides
A fantastic 19th century shell cameo brooch depicting a Bacchant, a follower of the Greco-Roman god of Bacchus/Dionysus. "Bacchus is basically a god of vegetation in general, and in particular of the vine, the grape, and the making and drinking of wine. But his person and his teaching eventually embrace very much more. The best source for the profound meaning of his worship and its most universal implications is found in Euripides' Bacchae (The Bacchic Women)"* Of whom this is one. "Whatever one makes of the playwright's depiction of the rites in a literal sense, the sublimity and terror of the spiritual message are inescapable and timeless."
The brooch exquisite, the 18 carat gold mount features an overlapping double halo border with Etruscan-style applied ropework around the setting. The cameo itself is expertly carved from bull's mouth shell with breathtaking detail: the Bacchant (aka Maenad) gazes, entranced, into the middle distance with grape vines, leaves and bunches in her long, flowing hair, and a leopard skin cloak draped over one shoulder. It dates from the mid Victorian period, circa 1850.
So what happens in the play? First, a brief origin story for Dionysus is needed. Dionysus was a latecomer to the established Olympian pantheon, and likely also a latecomer to ancient Greek religious tradition (confusingly the Greeks also referred to him as Bacchus, as did the Romans). He was the son of Zeus and Semele; the two got together with Zeus disguised as a mortal, but when Hera found out (she always found out) she decided to get even (she always gets even), appearing to Semele disguised as a (mortal) old woman. Hera convinced Semele to ask her lover to appear to her in the full magnificence of his divinity. Which she did, but it didn't go well: Zeus, the Sky-Father, in his full immortal splendour burned the mortal Semele to a cinder with a huge bolt of lightning. The unborn Dionysus, however, was a god and survived the fire of Zeus's lightning flash, so Zeus picked up his son from the ashes and stitched him into his thigh to be born again at the proper time.
Euripides tells the story of Dionysus travelling from his homeland in Phrygia to Greece. Specifically to the city of Thebes, his mother's city where the current king - his cousin, Pentheus - has been shit-talking Semele's version of events with regard to Zeus being the father of her child. "The play opens with Dionysus himself, who has come in anger to Thebes, and the magnitude and power of his very godhead have been challenged and repudiated; the sisters of Semele claim (and Pentheus agrees) that she became pregnant because she slept with a mortal and that Cadmus [her father, the old king] was responsible for the story that Zeus was the father of her child; as a result Zeus killed her with a blast of lightning."
So in Dionysus' own words (from the play) he travelled across "the sunny plateaus of Persia, the walled towns of Bactria, the grim land of the Medes, rich Arabia, and the entire coast of Asia Minor, where Hellenes and non-Hellenes live together in teeming cities with beautiful towers. And having lead my Bacchic dance and established my mysteries in these places, I have come to this city of the Hellenes first.
"I have raised the Bacchic cry and clothed my followers in the fawnskin and put into their hands the thyrsus - my ivy-covered shaft - here in Thebes first of all Greece, because my mother's sisters claim (as least of all they should) that I, Dionysus, was not begotten of Zeus but that Semele became pregnant by some mortal man and through the clever instigations of Cadmus laid the blame on Zeus; they gloatingly proclaim that Zeus because of her deception struck her dead.
"And so these same sisters I have stung with madness, driving them from their homes, and they inhabit Mt. Cithaeron, bereft of sense; I have compelled them to take up the symbols of my rituals, and all the women of Thebes - the entire female population - I have driven from their homes in frenzy. Together with the daughters of Cadmus they sit out in the open air on rocks under the evergreens. For although it does not wish to, this city must learn full well that it is still not completely schooled in my Bacchic mysteries and I must defend the reputation of my mother Semele by showing myself to mortals as the god whom she bore to Zeus...
"O you women whom I have taken as companions of my journey from foreign lands, leaving the Lydian mountain Tmolus far behind, come raise the tambourines, invented by the great mother Rhea, and by me, and native to the land of Phrygia. Come and surround the royal palace of Pentheus and beat out your din so that the city of Cadmus may see. I will go to my Bacchae on the slopes of Cithaeron, where they are, and join with them in their dances."
*Quotations from Classical Mythology; Fifth Edition by Mark P.O. Morford and Robert J. Lenardon (1995)
Era: Victorian, circa 1850
Size: 5.9cm by 5.0cm
Stone: Bull's Mouth Shell
Marks: None, tested as 18ct gold
Condition: Great antique condition, light wear consistent with age
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Gemstones are tested by an accredited gemmologist (Cert GA, Gemmological Association of Great Britain).
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