Bacchus/Dionysus. Bacchus, also known as Dionysus in Greek mythology, is the god of wine, fertility, festivity, and ecstasy. He is typically portrayed as a beardless youth. This reflects his association with pleasure and indulgence. A famous example is Michelangelo's sculpture Bacchus, which captures the god's youthful beauty and sensuality. Bacchus is often shown holding a glass of wine or grapes, symbols of his dominion over cultivated plants, particularly the vine. He may also be depicted wearing a crown of ivy leaves, another plant associated with him. The thyrsus, a staff entwined with ivy and topped with a pine cone, is another of Bacchus's signature attributes. The thyrsus was used in Bacchic rituals and symbolized the wild frenzy of his cult. In his religion, identical with or closely related to Orphism, Dionysus was believed to have been born from the union of Zeus and Persephone, and to have himself represented a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus. Many believed that he had been born twice, having been killed and reborn as the son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. In the Eleusinian Mysteries he was identified with Iacchus, the son of Demeter. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. Though most accounts say he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner, evidence from the Mycenaean period of Greek history show that he is one of Greece's oldest attested gods. His attribute of foreignness as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults, as he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called the god that comes. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the main religious focus surrounding its consumption. Wine, as well as the vines and grapes that produce it, were seen as not only a gift of the god, but a symbolic incarnation of him on earth. However, rather than being a god of drunkenness, as he was often stereotyped in the post-Classical era, the religion of Dionysus centered on the correct consumption of wine, which could ease suffering and bring joy, as well as inspire divine madness distinct from drunkenness. Performance art and drama were also central to his religion, and its festivals were the initial driving force behind the development of theatre. The cult of Dionysus is also a cult of the souls; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead. He is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god. The dio-element has been associated since antiquity with Zeus.