When a Greek celebrant ingested the fruit of the vine, she ingested the god himself. How else do we explain the concept of “enthusiasm” (derived from entheos (ἔνθεος), meaning “divine frenzy” or “god-possessed inspiration”), considered the “one quality … more than any other” that gave birth to tragedy?25 The British scholar Peter Hoyle best described how “at that moment of intense rapture,” Dionysus’s maenads, or female devotees, “became identified with the god himself.… They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers.”26
