Bacchic, Bacchical

[Lat. bacchic us.] Relating to Bacchus; used generally to denote jovial intoxication; drunken revelry. Bacchi'des, a general of Demetrius Soter, and governor of Me so pot am i a, who lived in the 2d Fig . 260.-B. HALIMIFOLIA. half of the second century B. C. He invaded Judæa, for the purpose of reinstating Alcimeus in the priesthood; and Judas Maccabeus having attacked him with inferior forces, perished in the contest; B. , however, was forced by Jonathan to quit Judæa. Bacchus, ( bak'kus .) [Lat.; Gr. Dionysos .] ( Myth .) The god of wine, born of a mortal mother, yet one of the immortal gods. The common story of the birth of Bacchus, his mother Semele's fatal wish, his imprisonment in the thigh of his father Jupiter, and the various adventures attributed to him, are too well known to need description; and it would take up more space than the nature of this work allows, to discu the inferences drawn from the old traditions by modern mythologists. These deductions, and especially the description of the mystical character of B. as distinguished from his worship as the god of wine, may be seen fully developed by Creuzer ( Symbolik , Theil III., pp. 83, 266; pp. 319-366,) whose theory, however, of the Indian origin of the Bacchic rites, though abundantly ingenious, does not appear to be established by sufficient external evidence. The southern coast of Thrace seems to have been the original seat of this religion, and it was thence introduced into Greece shortly after the colonization by the Æolians of the Asiatic coast of the Hellespont. The admi ion of the identity of Osiris and Dionysus by Plutarch and other mythological theorists, as well as Hero dot us's simple statement of the a ertions of the Egyptian priests to that effect, is no proof of the common origin of the worship of this divinity in Egypt and Greece; but there is no doubt that certain modifications of the Dionysiac rites took place after the commencement of the intercourse of the Ionians with the Egyptians. The worship of Bacchus is intimately connected with that of Demeter; under the name of lacchus he was worshipped along with that godde at Eleusis, (see DEMETER.) Virgil invokes them together ( Georgics , i. 5) as the lights of the universe. According to the Egyptians, they were the joint rulers of the world below, ( Herod . ii. 123.) Pindar calls Dionysus "the companion of Demeter," and in a cameo he is represented sitting by the godde in a chariot drawn by male and female centaurs. - On the form and dre of Bacchus almost all the ancient testimonies have been collected by F. G. Schön in an ingenious di ertation on the costume of the characters in the Bacche of Euripi des. From these it appears that he was represented as a young man with an effeminate face, long blonde hair, a fillet or an ivy crown on his head, a long purple robe, and a nebris, (deer-skin,) and with a thyrsus in his hand. Many of his numerous appellations may be seen in the Index to Wachsmuth , p. 570, and in Ovid Met . lib. iv. in it. His attendants were the Bacchantes, the Lennæ, the Naiades and Nymphs, the Thyades, the Mim all ones, the Tityri, Pan, Silenus, the Fauns, and the Satyrs. Bacchylides, a Greek lyric poet, a native of Julis, a town on the island of Cos. He was a cousin of the still more famous lyric poet Simon ides, with whom he remained for some time at the court of Hiero in Sicily. He travelled also in the Peloponnesus. He is said to have been a rival of Pindar. He flourished about 470 в. с. His fragments are given by Schneidwein and Bergh in their collection.