When Ulysses described Dionysus as having "olive skin", did you mean he was color green?

E.H. Lupton Haha, no. Of course olives are green--actually, I think olives come in a lot of colors depending on ripeness and variety (and how much evil is in them, I assume; I don't really like olives). In English, "olive skin" is a way of describing people who have tan or brown skin with a sort of greenish undertone to it--that is, people who look like their ancestors lived in the Mediterranean, southern Europe, Northern Africa, and a few other regions.

Sam looks like that in part because, as you note, he's also Dionysus, who is Greek. He also looks like that because the Greeks thought of Dionysus as a god who had come to Greece from somewhere else, although archeological evidence suggests he's actually from Greece and had been there for a long time. Similarly, to the average Wisconsinite, Sam will look vaguely foreign, although his family has lived in Wisconsin for a long time.

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