Bacchus is the liberator, the joy-bringer, the mirth-maker, and he shatters our frigid paradigms of religion when they become nothing more than being nice and respectable and socially responsible: “Bacchus and the Maenads—his fierce, madcap girls—and Silenus were still with them. . . . Everyone was awake, everyone was laughing, flutes were playing, cymbals clashing. Animals . . . were crowding upon them from every direction.”4
