The Triumph of Dionysos

Convivial processions, from antiquity to the present day

John Boardman

Dionysos carried the blessing of wine to the whole world, and his triumphant return from India became a popular subject for the arts of Greece and Rome in many media. It became associated with Alexander the Great’s comparable victories and later served as a message of immortality for any mortal prince. The iconography survived the ancient world into Renaissance and neo-Classical arts, and may even have contributed to the practices of modern circus parades with their wild animals, maenad-snake-charmers and clown-satyrs: an unusual, indeed unique, survival.

John Boardman is Emeritus Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on various aspects of Greek art and archaeology, and on the archaeology of Greeks in the East and Asia. He has worked in the Beazley Archive (Classical Art Research Centre) since his retirement in 1994.