A really good article on this topic is "Jesus's Triumphal March to Crucifixon: The Sacred Way as Roman Procession" by Thomas Schmidt https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org ... his%20head.
2 Corinthians 2:14:Scholars have long recognized that the Evangelists do not simply report the events of Jesus' life. They select, arrange and modify material at their disposal to stress important themes—like the connection between Jesus and the Old Testament, the inclusion of gentiles in the kingdom and the nature of discipleship.
Mark's gospel was probably written for gentile Christians living in Rome. Could this audience have understood the various allusions to the Hebrew Bible worked into Mark’s narrative? On the other hand, Mark’s contemporaries might well have grasped a pattern of meaning that has gone unrecognized by modern Bible commentators: In Mark's gospel, the crucifixion procession is a kind of Roman triumphal march, with Jerusalem's Via Dolorosa replacing the Sacra Via of Rome. In this way, Mark presents Jesus' defeat and death, the moment of his greatest suffering and humiliation, as both literally and figuratively a triumph.
The triumph was a celebration in which victorious generals and emperors paraded through Rome, putting their accomplishments on display for the populace. It evolved from Etruscan and Greek ceremonies calling for an appearance, or epiphany, of Dionysus, the dying and rising god. In the Athenian New Year festival, Dionysus, portrayed in costume by the king, was carried into the city in a formal procession, which culminated in a cry for the epiphany of the god. A bull was then sacrificed, and the king appeared as the god...
It is in this relation between triumph and deity that the most profound connection with the Gospel of Mark emerges. Even prior to Mark’s gospel (before about 70 A.D.), Christ was understood as a triumphator. In 2 Corinthians 2:14–15, Paul proclaims:
"Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing."
Even the references to scent may evoke the image of first-century triumphs, which included the distribution of aromatic substances along the route of the procession to signify the preservation of the life of the triumphator and possibly the death of his captives, some of whom would be killed.4 Whether or not Paul extends the metaphor, there can be no mistaking his allusion to Christ as triumphator...
Contemporaneous accounts of Roman triumphs suggest that Mark’s description of Jesus’ clothing (“They clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him” [Mark 15:17]) follows a formula. In one source after another, the triumphator is introduced clad in a ceremonial purple robe and a crown. The wearing of purple was outlawed for anyone below equestrian rank. The only available robe of this kind for Jesus would belong to Pilate, but it is inconceivable that he would lend his garment to be spat on by soldiers. Along similarly practical lines, one wonders where in the courtyard of a palace thorns would be available to make a crown. Are we to imagine that the soldiers delayed their mockery while someone went to look for a thornbush? The strangeness of these details, their likeness to the ceremonial garb of a triumphator and their combination with other details of the narrative suggest purpose rather than coincidence...
As the soldiers lead Jesus along the Via Dolorosa, they compel an onlooker, Simon, to bear the cross. Simon is identified as from Cyrene (a Greek colony in North Africa) and as the father of Alexander and Rufus, who were probably known to Mark’s audience as church figures (Romans 16:13; 1 Timothy 1:20; 2 Timothy 4:14). The account of Simon’s requisition by the soldiers as cross-carrier may serve simply to suggest the wearying effect of a prolonged procession. But it may also suggest another formulaic element in a triumph. A consistent feature in the numerous monuments depicting triumphs is the sacrificial bull, led along dressed and crowned to signify its identity with the triumphator. But the bull is not alone. In nearly every one of these depictions, walking alongside the bull is an official who carries over his shoulder a double-bladed ax, the instrument of the victim’s death. The parallel might appear to be coincidental, but two remarkable details—Simon’s link to the community of faith via his sons and his having just arrived from out of town—suggest that Mark envisions his role as divinely planned. Like the official who bears the ax, Simon carries the instrument of the sacrifice’s—in this case Jesus’—death: the cross...
Before reaching Golgotha, the soldiers offer Jesus myrrhed wine, but he refuses to drink (Mark 15:23). Why the offer of this expensive delicacy, why the refusal, and why interject this seemingly trivial detail here? The supreme moment of the triumph is the moment of sacrifice, depicted in detail by numerous sculptors of the period. Just prior to the sacrifice of the bull, or in a few cases simultaneous with the sacrifice, the triumphator was offered a cup of wine, which he would refuse and then pour on the altar (or, more rarely, on the bull itself). The wine obviously signifies the precious blood of the victim, and the links between triumphator, wine and victim signify their connection—which is also confirmed by the similar dress worn by both the triumphator and the bull. In other words, the bull is the god who dies and appears as the victor in the person of the triumphator...
All of this is shorthand for a long process of ritual development, but for our purposes the formulaic element is clear. At the crucial moment of a triumph, the moment of sacrifice, expensive wine is poured out. Significantly, the very next words in Mark’s account are “and they crucified him.” This again suggests a close association between wine and sacrifice. In an earlier scene in Mark’s narrative, the Last Supper, Jesus himself makes the connection between the drinking of wine, sacrifice and triumphant renewal: “He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God’” (Mark 14:24–25)...
To summarize Mark’s narrative as now decoded: The praetorian guard gathers early in the morning to proclaim the triumphator. They dress him in the purple triumphal garb and place a crown of laurel on his head. The soldiers shout in acclamation of his lordship (“Hail, King of the Jews” [Mark 15:18]) and perform acts of homage to him. They accompany him through the streets of the city. The sacrifice walks alongside a person who carries the implement of the victim’s death. The procession ascends to the place of the (death’s) head, where the sacrifice is to take place. The triumphator is offered ceremonial wine. He does not drink it but pours it out on the altar at the moment of sacrifice. Then, at the moment of being lifted up before the people, at the moment of the sacrifice, the triumphator is again acclaimed as lord (“The King of the Jews” [Mark 15:26]), and his viceregents appear with him in confirmation of his glory. The epiphany of the triumphator is accompanied by divine portents (“The curtain of the Temple was torn in two” [Mark 15:38]), confirming that he is one with the gods.
1-2 Corinthians (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Craig S. Keener:But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.
Mark A Commentary (Fortress Press, 2007), Adela Yarbro Collins:In 2:14–16, Paul depicts the ministry of himself and his colleagues by employing the images of triumphal processions and the sacral use of incense, perhaps at such processions (cf. Josephus War 7.72), although the image is also biblical (e.g., Ps 141:2; Phil 4:18). Christ, not himself, is central in his ministry, in contrast with the activity of charlatans (2:17; cf. 4:2). In contrast to the Roman Republic, under the Empire, only the emperor celebrated triumphs.
The Gospel to the Romans: the setting and rhetoric of Mark's Gospel (Brill, 2003), Brian J. Incigneri:Although Mark does not explicitly quote Zechariah 9, the narrative of Jesus’ entry has several points of contact with that text. So some argue that the whole scene has been created as a fulfillment of the older passage read as prophecy. Others infer from the accounts about messianic pretenders and prophetic leaders in Josephus’s works that, if the incident described here had actually occurred, the Romans would have intervened immediately. In the second half of the twentieth century, many scholars disagreed with Wrede and argued that Jesus was executed as a messianic pretender or a “would-be ‘king of the Jews.’” The Markan portrayal of Jesus’ entry fits this charge and can explain why Jesus was so executed. If Zechariah 9 was known to the evangelists, it was probably known to Jesus as well. Jesus could well have arranged his entry so that it recalled Zechariah 9 for all those present.
The Purpose of Mark's Gospel: An Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda (Mohr Siebeck, 2008), Adam Winn:Mark seems to have deliberately reminded his readers of that spectacle in his depiction of Jesus as king. T. E. Schmidt has argued, building on the work of Versnel, that Mark modelled his crucifixion procession in a way that evokes the traditional pattern of a Roman triumph, although he does not seem to have considered whether Mark specifically alluded to the triumph of Vespasian and Titus. It has long been recognised that the purple robe and crown of thorns in Mark’s account portrays Jesus as king in a contrast to the Roman emperor. Schmidt, however, points out a number of other connections to the typical Roman triumph, including the gathering of the whole guard, the name Golgotha as a pointer to the Capitol (meaning ‘head’ = capita), and the time of day. He proposes that, in 15:20, the purple robe alludes to the robe worn by the emperor in the triumph, and that Mark’s ‘triumph’ depicts Jesus as the true triumphator.
Versnel emphasises that the triumphator was considered an exceptional bearer of dynamis, and that the Roman triumph had its roots in the arrival of the sotèr, the man or god who had saved people from distress. The arrival of the sotèr was celebrated as “the parousia of a god,” and he was seen to be the bearer of good fortune, bringing peace and prosperity. Josephus says that the cities of the East celebrated with festivals the euangelion of Vespasian’s acclamation as the new emperor ( JW 4.618).48 But, for Mark, the euangelion of Jesus Christ (1:1) is a very different announcement of ‘good news’—one that leads to wild beasts and crucifixion.
We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul's Soteriology (Walter de Gruyter, 2012), M. David Litwa:Schmidt also sees the parallels between the costume the Roman soldiers placed on Jesus and the royal dress the triumphator wore. The triumphator was regularly adorned with a purple robe and a crown, both of which adorn Jesus in Mark 15. The color of Jesus' robe is evidence that Mark has intentionally created this parallel. In the Roman world, purple garments were both rare and expensive. Schmidt notes that no one below the rank of equestrian was even allowed to wear purple. It is unlikely that the owner of a purple robe would allow a common criminal to wear it. It is noteworthy that in the Matthean redaction, this historical difficulty has been removed by changing the color of the robe from purple to scarlet (Matt 27:28). The crown of thorns that Jesus wore is akin to the laurel crown that was often worn by the triumphator. Here we find two striking similarities between Jesus and the triumphator - a purple robe and a crown (thorny vs. laurel) - with evidence that the former similarity is a Markan creation...
Another significant piece of Flavian propaganda was the triumph of Vespasian and Titus in 71 C.E. Though its official purpose was to celebrate the Roman victory over the Jews, it also illustrated the new emperor's great power and glory. Josephus gives a vivid description of the triumph. He reports that the entire military, arranged in companies and divisions, came out to the site of the triumph while it was still night. At day break, Vespasian and Titus came out from the temple of Isis wearing purple imperial robes and laurel crowns.
Dionysos (Routledge, 2006), Richard Seaford:In the celebration of the Mysteries of Demeter in 291, an ithyphallic hymn was composed in Demetrius’ honor for public and private performance... The text of the hymn preserves some interesting details on why some Athenians considered Demetrius worthy of deification... Most striking for our purposes is the emphasis on Demetrius’ physical presence in the hymn, in contrast to the absence of the other Gods. Demetrius is portrayed as the living God... Demetrius’ appearance in Athens is an epiphany. This epiphanic immanence is at least one of the factors that made Demetrius worthy of divine honors, for “the greatest … of the Gods are present.” Demetrius is the son of specific deities (Poseidon and Aphrodite) and bears the divine quality of joviality.
Equally important to note is Demetrius’ power. “First, dearest one,” the Athenians ask, “create peace, for you are Lord.” The power expected here is power to do good: to defeat the Aetolian-Theban alliance and restore the honor of Athens at Delphi. Demetrius is already a God in Athens, so the Athenians ask for a manifestation of his divinity through benefaction—topple the Aetolians and retake Delphi. The God who will triumph over his enemies is the rightful “Lord” (religiously and politically) of Greece.
Besides obvious associations of an ithyphallic hymn with Dionysus, Angelos Chaniotis has pointed out further associations of Demetrius with Dionysus. As mentioned above, Demetrius had freed the city of Athens from the tyrant Lachares in 295, and had entered the city during the festival of Dionysus. In this act, Demetrius conformed himself to Dionysus Eleuthereus, an epithet taken to mean “Dionysus of freedom.” When Demetrius returned to Athens in 291, he was, like Dionysus, coming from the sea. As he entered the city, he not only received the ithyphallic hymn, but also an official xenismos, or adventus ritual customarily performed for the Gods Dionysus and Demeter. The ritual included the burning of incense, the crowning of altars, and the pouring of libations. The privilege of such a divine reception had been officially decreed for Demetrius four years earlier (Plut., Dem. 34). During the Dionysia every spring, Demetrius had rights to these rites, because he was arriving at his own festival (the “Dionysia and Demetria”)...
The procession depicted various scenes from the life of Dionysus in the form of gigantic and richly decorated floats. The scenes climaxed with depictions of Dionysus’ eastern triumph. A snippet from the description of Callixeinus (preserved in Athen., Deipn. 5.196a-203b) will give some taste of the national importance of Dionysus, and the extravagant attempt of the Ptolemies to conform themselves to his myth.
After a rich display of elaborate floats portraying scenes from Dionysus’ life, there was rolled in:
"another four-wheeled cart, which contained the ‘Return of Dionysus from India’, an eighteen foot statue of Dionysus, having a purple cloak and a golden crown of ivy and vine, lay upon an elephant. He held in his hands a golden thyrsus-lance, and his feet were shod with felt slippers embroidered with gold. In front of him on the neck of the elephant there sat a young Satyr seven feet tall, wreathed with a golden crown of pine, signaling with a golden goat-horn in his right hand. The elephant had gold trappings and a golden ivy crown about its neck"...
By reenacting this scene from the life of the God, Ptolemy II conformed himself to the myth and character of the conquering Dionysus. This point was made evident as the procession went on.
So both Jesus and Dionysus are portrayed as being rejected but also triumphing over those who reject them. The historical Jesus was killed but his followers believe that someday he will return in triumph to defeat his enemies. Revelation contains themes of a deity or king coming in triumph.Epiphany occurs when deity (or its manifestations) is perceived by one or more of the senses. It will include for instance even the arrival of a statue of a deity in a procession, in so far as the onlookers imagine themselves to be seeing the deity. Of all Greek deities it is Dionysos who most tends to manifest himself among humankind, and to do so in various forms (Chapter 2). Plato calls him (along with the Muses and Apollo) a suneortastas, ‘companion of the festival’ (Laws 653d)... The miraculous appearance of ivy or vine, or of wine, may seem to indicate his presence, or even his embodiment in what appears. He may be thought to be present within his worshippers (Chapter 8). Although there is ‘no god more present (praesentior)’ than Dionysos (Ovid Metamorphoses 3.658–9), he may be invisible to those who do not accept him (Euripides Bacchae 500–2)... Epiphanies tend to occur in certain contexts. Two such contexts are ritual and crisis. An example of a ritual epiphany is the advent of Dionysos (impersonated, or as his statue) in a procession at an annual festival, for instance at the Anthesteria...
Ritual is the manifestation of traditional stereotypical action in the face of potential disorder or of (as in a crisis) actual disorder. The absorbing manifestation (dramatisation) of order in ritual may, even if only symbolic, be a model and a focus for reversing the debilitating disintegration of the group or indeed of the individual. This mysterious saving power of ritual to create coherence, to inspire the centre against disintegration, is easily imagined as issuing from the central presence (epiphany) of a single all-powerful individual, a deity bringing salvation. In some crises ritual is used to create a saving epiphany, and in some crises the danger (or human powerlessness) is such that an epiphany occurs without the performance of ritual.
In other words the two main contexts of epiphany – ritual and crisis – interpenetrate. In both of them epiphany may occur in response to invocation. Even the annual processional epiphany may evoke crisis: for example, the advent of Dionysos in a ship-cart at the Anthesteria seems to have evoked the epiphany of Dionysos when he was captured by pirates (Chapter 2). The processional epiphany may also be deployed and adapted to resolve an unpredictable situation of crisis... Much later, the people of Ephesos called Mark Antony ‘Dionysos’ as they escorted him into their city (Plutarch, Life of Antony 24)... In Bacchae the chorus’ reference to themselves as conducting (katagousai) Dionysos from the Phrygian mountains into the streets of Greece evokes the Katagogia, the processional entry of Dionysos into a city. Dionysos has already, in the prologue, emphasised his intention to manifest himself as a god to all the Thebans (47–8), and in the course of the drama makes further epiphanies. Bacchae gives us unique access to various kinds of Dionysiac epiphany (as it does to other aspects of Dionysiac cult).
The processional epiphany of Dionysos tended to celebrate the mythical first arrival of the god, and these myths often contain an episode of resistance to his arrival, as for example did the Theban myth dramatised in Bacchae... The social disintegration that results from the neglect of communal cult is often expressed in myth as disease. And Dionysos is often envisaged as purifier or healer, as in the passage of Sophokles quoted in the final sentence of this book. His healing power consists in the social unity achieved by communal ritual and by his status as an outsider. As we saw of Dionysos Aisymnetes at Patrai (Chapter 3), the alien quality of a deity who arrives from elsewhere may serve to fascinate and unite the community...
Bacchae also gives us a sense of Dionysos as a deity who is, as we noted earlier, somehow closer to humanity than any other deity. His mother was a mere mortal, the daughter of Kadmos. Throughout most of the drama he has the form of a human being, interacting with other human beings but detectable as a god only by his devotees... Later, however, his apparently powerless submission (in the Homeric Hymn to the pirates, in Bacchae to king Pentheus) is transformed into its opposite by epiphany, an emotive transformation that is in some respects comparable to the release of Paul and Silas from prison in the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 9)...
Dionysos is chased away or imprisoned by mere mortals, or just disappears (e.g. Plutarch Moralia 717a), but returns in triumph: he is often associated with victory (e.g. kallinikos at Bacchae 1147, 1161). Indeed, the Greek word for triumph, thriambos, first occurs in an invocation of Dionysos (Pratinas 708 PMG), and is also a title of Dionysos (as well as a song). In later texts the practice of the triumphal procession is said to have originated with Dionysos (Diodorus 3.65.8; Arrian Anabasis 6.28.2; etc.). His entry into the community is not just an arrival. It is associated with his victory over disappearance or rejection or capture, with the unity of the community (envisaged as its ‘purification’ from disease), and/or with the arrival of spring.
Soon after Jesus's triumphal procession, he is eventually arrested and then put to death. During his arrest and crucifixion, he is mocked by being given a purple robe and crown of thorns as a sort of inversion of social status. Purple robes were only worn by the rich. There may have been inversion of social status during Roman triumphs. There's some evidence that mystery cult initiation rituals involved mockery/insults, being blindfolded, flagellation, and experiencing suffering or a traumatic experience before symbolically dying and being reborn. This is similar to the experiences of Jesus.
Mark:
It's interesting that the Roman triumphator goes down a road called "Via Sacra" or the "Sacred Way. This was also the name of the road that the Eleusinian initiates would walk on to get to the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone. Apparently, during this journey down the "Sacred Way", initiates would be ritually mocked. There may have also been mockery involved in the Roman triumphs.[14]: All of them condemned him as deserving death. 65 Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!” The guards also took him and beat him...
[15]: So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them, and after flogging Jesus he handed him over to be crucified... Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and after twisting some thorns into a crown they put it on him. And they began saluting him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him...
In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves... Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.
It's also interesting that the Roman triumph involved the sacrifice of a bull and the bull may have been associated with the king. The Eleusinian initiates would have to carry a sacrificial piglet on their journey to the sanctuary. Some scholars have pointed out a possible identification between the initiate and the piglet they had to sacrifice seeing as initiation involved a symbolic death and rebirth. In the Dionysus mysteries, Dionysus was often associated with animals, especially a bull. There's some evidence that Dionysus and his initiates were also associated with sacrificial animals. In the Bacchae, King Pentheus's mother sees him as a bull and then he's torn to pieces like Dionysus (though not brought back to life like Dionysus because he rejected Dionysus). Eventually his mother realizes that she killed her son instead of a bull. Scholars have pointed out the theme of the pharmakos/scape-goat ritual in the stories of Pentheus's and Jesus's deaths. Wine was associated with the blood of Dionysus and Jesus. In the mysteries of Mithras, the sacrificial bull is depicted with grape clusters sprouting out of its blood.
"The Return of Hephaistos, Dionysiac Processional Ritual and the Creation of a Visual Narrative", Guy Hedreen, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 124 (2004), pp. 38-64:
"Making Mysteries. From the Untergang der Mysterien to Imperial Mysteries – Social Discourse in Religion and the Study of Religion", Gerhard van den Heever in Religion & Theology 12/3–4 (2005):The return of Hephaistos to Olympos, as a myth, concerns the establishment of a balance of power among the Olympian gods. Many visual representations of the myth in Archaic and Classical Greek art give visible form to the same theme, but they do so in a manner entirely distinct from the manner in which it is expressed in literary narratives of the tale. In this paper, I argue that vase-painters incorporated elements of Dionysiac processional ritual into representations of the return of Hephaistos in order to articulate visually the principal theme of the myth. The vase-painters structured the myth along the lines of epiphanic processions in which Dionysos was escorted into the city of Athens... To judge from the aetiological myths associated with them, the epiphanic processions symbolized the triumph of Dionysos over, and his belated acceptance by, those who denied his status as a god. By structuring the visual representations of the return of Hephaistos along the lines of such Dionysiac processions artists conveyed visually the idea that the myth also concerned the triumph of a god over those who rejected him, and his acceptance among the Olympians...
Ares attempted to bring Hephaistos back by force but failed, having been driven away by fire. Dionysos alone was able to persuade Hephaistos to return to Olympos, by making smith-god drunk. In return for mediating the crisis successfully, Dionysos was made one of the Olympian gods. The myth describes the achievement of a stable balance of power on Olympos as a series of reversals among the gods: Hera throws Hephaistos out of heaven, Hephaistos incapacitates her, the gods are foiled by his cunning workmanship, Ares is turned by the smith-god. The crisis is averted and harmony established through the permanent readmission of the marginalized Hephaistos and the acceptance of the new, unconventional outsider, Dionysos, in the pantheon. Stability is achieved by incorporating different forms of divinity into the pantheon instead of trying to exclude them...
There is also considerable evidence in early Greek art as well as poetry for one of the fundamental premises of the myth as interpreted above, namely, the image of Dionysos and Hephaistos as marginal or outsider deities... In early sixth-century Athenian representations of the celebrity-studded wedding party for Peleus and Thetis, Hephaistos is differentiated from the rest of the Olympian gods by his mode of transportation - he rides sidesaddle on a mule while most of them ride in horsedrawn chariots - and is relegated to the back of the pack... To effect the return of this god, once ostracized but suddenly essential, the Olympian gods must rely on another god from outside their usual society. In epic poetry, Dionysos plays no role in the politics of Olympos. He is also a weakling, chased into the sea by a mere mortal, and protected by babysitters (Horn. //.6.130-7). Because Zeus sired Dionysos on a mortal, Semele, his divinity was frequently questioned (compare Hymn. Horn. Dionysos), and he was persecuted by Zeus's lawful wife Hera, who drove the wine-god mad (Eur. Cycl. 3). In the visual representations of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, Dionysos too does not ride in chariots like mainstream gods and goddesses, but goes on foot, like lesser or non-Olympian deities...
In the vase-paintings, there are several readily identifiable characteristics of terrestrial processions, not just those in honour of Dionysos; but there are also characteristics that are closely comparable to rituals unique to or closely associated with the wine-god. To take up the general processional characteristics first, gods have more effective modes of transportation than a donkey, especially the clever god Hephaistos. In the Iliad (18.372-421), Hephaistos fashions rolling tripods and is assisted in his movements around his workshop and home by golden automatic girls. On two late sixth-century red-figure cups, Hephaistos rides in a special winged chariot surely of his own devising. Why is he not travelling by means of his own invention in the return to Olympos? When Hephaistos' mount is juxtaposed to other divine vehicles, the donkey reflects the smith-god's status vis-d-vis the other gods. But in the return of Hephaistos, the donkey makes it possible to conceive of the journey to Olympos as a slow-moving terrestrial religious procession... In addition to those readily apparent characteristics of processions, the iconography of the journey to Olympos is closely comparable to processional rituals unique to the worship of Dionysos at Athens. As I propose to show, the return of Hephaistos is structured like so-called epiphanic processions in honour of Dionysos at Athens in which the god is conveyed bodily, triumphantly, into the city by his worshippers for his festival...
The epiphany procession not only provides visual parallels for the iconography of the return but also, more importantly, symbolizes the very themes that appear to be important in the myth. The processions are associated with aetiological myths that, like the myth of the return of Hephaistos, describe the rejection of a god and his subsequent triumph over those who discounted his divinity...the vase-painters represented a single event in the story and incorporated into the representations visual motifs that carried connotations of the themes important in the myth, namely, rejection of a deity, inversion of norms and triumphant re-entry of the spurned god...
Several cities in Asia Minor, for example, celebrated a festival of Dionysos known as the Katagogia, the 'bringing in' of the god. In this section of the paper, I argue that the visual narrative of the return of Hephaistos to Olympos is structured essentially along the lines of an epiphanic procession. The similarities between the iconography and the ritual (so far as it can be reconstructed) go beyond superficial visual resemblance (both include groups of people or demigods on foot escorting a deity): as a symbolic act, the ritual 'bringing in' of Dionysos is comparable to the plot of the myth of Hephaistos' return because both are characterized by the themes of initial rejection of a god and his subsequent triumph. Two Athenian festivals of Dionysos featured processions in which Dionysos was brought into the city...
Both aetiological myths associated with Athenian epiphanic processions of Dionysos are characterized by the same idea, that the god Dionysos triumphs over non-believers and persecutors. A similar storyline underlies Euripides' Bakchai, and here too one finds processional ritual, the epiphany of Dionysos, and triumph over adversaries closely interrelated. As Seaford and others have noted, in the parodos of the play, the chorus speaks of itself as 'bringing in Dionysos', a choice of words that probably evoked the ritual Katagogia attested for many cities in Ionia... In the prologue of the play, Dionysos claims that he has returned to his city of birth having already established his religion throughout the Near East (13- 22). He claims that he will lead his followers in battle against the Thebans if necessary (50-2). The entrance of the chorus into the orchestra mimics a Dionysiac procession that accompanies the epiphany of the god, and represents the triumph of the god over non-believers.
The triumphal character of the epiphanic procession is also brought out through its comparison to the Roman triumph. Dionysios of Halikarnassos (Ant. 7.72.11) compared the practice of insulting notable persons during a Roman triumphal procession to the Athenian habit of hurling insults from carts, a custom to which we will return... Dionysos was even credited in antiquity with the invention of the triumphal procession... Versnel argued that there was a more or less fundamental step taken from 'a cyclic annual festival to a political-historical celebration of a victory'. By cyclical festival, he had in mind the Athenian Anthesteria and the epiphany of Dionysos celebrated in the ship-car procession. It is possible, however, that the practice of celebrating the arrival of a leader or military victor through the use of Dionysiac processional ritual predates the Hellenistic interest in the campaigns of Alexander...
There is a big difference between amusing the gods and offending them, because a genuine offence is likely to result in a titanic reaction. Precisely the same pair of opposing actions - causing offence and giving pleasure through humour - appear to have been mediated in certain ritual practices associated with the worship of Dionysos and Demeter... As noted earlier, Dionysios of Halikamassos (7.72.11) compared the practice of mocking famous people during the Roman triumphal procession to 'those participants in processions at Athens who ride in carts'. The origin of these allusions to outrageous behaviour from carts or chariots is explained by later lexicographers: 'in Athens in the festival of the Choes those revelling on wagons mocked and reviled those they met and they did the same later in the Lenaia'. Some sources may also connect the practice with the City Dionysia, because they simply specify 'the Dionysia' as the occasion for the custom of hurling abuse from wagons, and writers often understood the unqualified expression 'Dionysia' to refer to the City Dionysia. More importantly, hurling abuse from carts is closely associated with participating in a procession. Both Demosthenes and Menander employ the word noymeia, 'procession', as a synonym for abuse or mockery. Dionysios compared the Roman custom of insulting notable persons specifically during a triumphal procession to the Athenian custom of hurling abuse from wagons; moreover, in his description of the pompa circensis (7.72.10), mockery was supplied by men dressed as silens and satyrs...
Ritually sanctioned abuse was characteristic of cults of Demeter, and in the ancient sources for those cults, the display of genitalia and the hurling of insults are related practices. In Aristophanes' Wasps, Philokleon remembers the abuse he experienced during the Eleusinian Mysteries: 'I can play teenage tricks on [my son], the same tricks he played on me when I stood for initiation.' Several ancient sources refer to a practice localized at a bridge along the processional way from Athens to Eleusis: a woman, a man or several persons sat on the bridge and mocked the initiates as they passed by. Hurling insults was part of other festivals in honour of Demeter as well. Apollodoros (Bibl. 1.5.1) claims that women make mocking jokes at the Thesmophoria, presumably the Athenian festival. Diodoros (5.4.7) says that people speak shamefully to each other during the Thesmophoria in Sicily. Mockery also occurred during the women's rite of the Haloa in Eleusis, and at a festival of Demeter near Pellene, where men and women exchanged insults with each other. With respect to the worship of Demeter, what needs to be emphasized is, first, the close relationship between the practice of insulting people and obscenity, and, second, the importance of visual spectacle in ritual abuse...
In this respect, the abuse spoken by Aristophanes' chorus of mystic initiates in the Frogs is also noteworthy. Theparodos of this play is generally held to reflect some of the public rituals of the Eleusinian mysteries. In its hymn to Demeter, the chorus hopes that it may 'say many funny things and many serious things too, sporting and jesting in a manner befitting your festival ... '(389-92). And when the chorus gets around to offering ritual abuse - 'would you like us then, all together, to make fun of Archedemos?' (416-17) - two of the three victims are ridiculed in graphic language for sexual preferences or practices...
In ancient religion, ritual abuse appears to have had several social, political and religious functions, but for my purposes the most interesting is its contribution to the inverted social order of the festival. The clearest and most detailed illustration of the interrelationships between mockery, social class and the inversion of class distinctions occurs in Theognis (53-63), and the passage is illuminating even though it does not explicitly refer to a festival: 'this city is still a city, but the people are different, people who formerly knew neither justice nor laws, but wore tattered goatskins about their sides and lived outside this city like deer. And now they are noble, Polypai'des, while those who were noble before are now base. Who can endure the sight of this? They deceive one another and mock one another, knowing neither the distinctive marks of the base nor those of the noble.' The lines are significant because here the practice of mocking or laughing at each other is related to ignorance of class distinctions and an inversion of the ordinary social order of the city: the base are now noble and the formerly noble are now base
"From the pragmatics of textures to a Christian utopia: The case of the Gospel of John" by Gerhard van den Heever in Rhetorical Criticism and the Bible: Essays from the 1998 Florence Conference (A&C Black, 2002):If the fact of empire was a carnivalesque, exuberant, excessive celebration of imperial good times, it was premised on the return of the mythical golden age, the Saturnia regna, the Saturnia saecula, or the saeculum aureum, the long gone age of Kronos or Saturn whose return is not only desired but actively touted as having indeed returned in the reign of the historical Augustus. According to the utopian vision, the earth will give her bounty, animals will live in harmony with one another and man will not feel the strain of hard work (Virgil), when there is peace and refuge after the ravages of the civil war, nature is beautiful, the earth fecund, weather ideal, and harmony reigns among all living creatures (Horace), and when there is social harmony, natural fecundity, political peace, economic security, personal happiness, a time noble and simple, rustic and blissful (Ovid). Any vestiges of realistic restoration dreams of justice returned under an ideal ruler were quickly swept away in a surge of enthusiasm for the fantastic, topsy-turvy, ‘hyperbolic fairy tale vistas of a genuine utopia,’ as one can witness in the flowering of panegyric language in dedicatory inscriptions and edicts pertaining to the position of the emperor – whatever Augustus may have thought about the adulation at the start of his reign, in the way he was constructed by sycophant-élites (especially in the Greek eastern provinces), early in the principate he cast aside the bonds of mortal humanity and earth to take up his abode among the gods. The superabundant blessings and benefactions bestowed by the emperor placed him in a category of his own, that is among the gods...
In the abundance of beneficences and the enthusiastic promotion of the honorand the dividing lines between divine and human had become blurred. However, this construction of the persona of the emperor was not an abstract discourse, but was enacted in mystery-like spectacle, not only in the mysteries of the imperial cult, but also in the interweaving of mystery myths and spectacle as well as processions as grand-scale performances, that were mythic constructions themselves...
If the mystery deities were constructed in the processional enactment of mystery narratives, so was the deity of the emperor. Compare, for instance, the justification of the apotheosis of the emperor in the emerging imperial myths and the similarity between the self-promotion of Augustus’s Res Gestae and the Hellenistic doctrine of apotheosis. The myth of the eastern triumphs of Dionysos was a creation of Alexander, triumphs which he surpassed in the conquest of India, and which caused him to be hailed as even more successful as Herakles and Dionysos, and which justified his recognition as divine. The theme was developed by Hellenistic writers such as Megasthenes (Dionysos as the fons et origo of Indian civilization and kingship) and Hecataeus of Abdera (who elevated Osiris as the Egyptian counterpart of Dionysos into a world conqueror, of Arabia, India, and Greece), and demonstrated in the famous pageant of Ptolemy Philadelphus – testimony to the attraction of the newly created legend for rulers and subjects. Callixeinos’s description of this procession with its visual construction of the return of Dionysos, complete with an eighteen foot statue of the god, elephants, and varied triumphal train, was as spectacle, a truly overwhelming marvel itself. In Virgil’s description of Augustus’s triumphal march across the East he matches the ascendant imperator with the Greek god, but has him surpass the achievements of both Alexander and the god by letting him reach the natural limits of the world, and transcend them (the conquests include Mount Atlas [the Axis Mundi], the southern fringes of the Sahara desert, the northern ocean beyond the Caspian and Azov Seas and the Rhine, colonies on the Atlantic coast of Africa and beyond, even beyond the stars and the sun). Greater than Alexander, greater than the conqueror-deities Herakles, Dionysos, and Osiris, and surpassing their labours for the benefit of humankind, Augustus became a god himself...
In this respect one should not underestimate the effect of processions, spectacles, and triumphs in the ‘mysterification’ of the empire...These assaults on the senses not only grew more elaborate (each new staged procession aiming to surpass the previous), but also preserved, and consciously evoked, the pompa triumphalis of Dionysos (the god’s ‘raucous epiphany,’ so Brilliant) as described by Callixeinos and preserved in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae 5, 196a–203b)... In the cosmopolitan culture established as a result, the ancient ethnically brotherhoods as kin groups (which is what the mysteries were ab origino) were transformed into societies with open membership, as fictive kinship groups. Adoption, ‘the juridical category of kinship recruitment,’ provided the model for rites of initiation into the mysteries. And since adoption was represented as rebirth from the womb of the new mother, initiations into mystery groups were portrayed as rebirths (see above). If, in a context of imperialising religious mentality, an initiate is resocialised into a new, fictive kinship or brotherhood under the tutelage of an imperialising deity (Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, Cybele/Magna Mater, and so on), in which the beneficences pertaining to the Saturnalian age are announced in the advent of the emperor and celebrated in the mystery cult group, then the mysteries replicated, in miniature, just so many imperial societies.
Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015) Georgia PetridouIn reading a narrative it is always necessary to refer back to the threefold distinction of story (story facts), narrative (story facts-as-presented) and narration (the act and its communication context that produces the act). It is on the level of story facts-as-presented that the language of the imperium intrudes as the way the story of Jesus is told, as the way in which Jesus' bios in presented in the terms of the political reality of the imperium.
From Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem to his execution, the mood that prevails is shot through with political realities an Ephesian audience would have been well acquainted with. Jesus' triumphal entry in Jn 12.12-19 is portrayed in the same fashion as the adventus or triumphus with a description of the festive procession, the decoration of the scenery and the songs of praises. Jesus is hailed as the coming King of Israel. In the context of Ephesus this was a well-known phenomenon ever since the triumphal entry of Mark Anthony as 'New Dionysus' in 38 BCE and the adventus of Hadrian as 'New Dionysus' in 129 CE; the latter event marks the outer limit of the time frame under consideration. The religious roots of the adventus or triumphus never became extinct. The point that John is making through the portrayal of Jesus' entry is that this is the advent of a conquering god.
This line of portraying by means of political language is taken up again in the passion narrative from 18.28-19.27, especially from 19.1. In an ironical portrayal Jesus' trial is presented as the installation of a Roman imperial pretender. The scenes that follow one another are reminiscent of usurpation of power by an imperial pretender. In 19.1-3 the soldiers acclaim Jesus as king and invest him with the 'symbols of power': 'crown' and 'purple toga'... Jesus is received into the city as 'King of Israel', a judgment with which the Jewish leaders do not concur. It is they who deliver him over to the Roman governor on a charge of sedition, vying to be king in Caesar's place.
These mystery cult processions which seem to have influenced the Roman triumphal processions, are also found in the mysteries of Osiris. During the reenactment of the death and resurrection of Osiris, his statue would be triumphantly carried back to his temple.Hedreen, on the other hand, attempts to draw parallels between the Phye pompē and the Dionysiac epiphany processions, such as the ship cart epiphany procession of the Anthesteria, or the escorting in from the hearth of the cult statue of the god from his temple in the academy back to the city centre. Peisistratus himself is often discussed amongst the long line of Hellenistic and early Imperial monarchs, who likened themselves, both visually and conceptually, to Dionysus while entering the gates of their cities, and has therefore been regarded as some sort of proto-triumphator. On this interpretation, Peisistratus’ entrance into the city in a jovial pompē is comparable to, let us say, Alexander entering Gedrosia accompanied by his entire army in a quasi-Dionysiac thriambos procession; Demetrius’ remarkably extravagant entrance to Athens in the spring of 307 bc; Attalos’ triumphal entrance to Athens in 201 bc; or Mark Antony’s entering Ephesus in 41 bc amidst women dressed as Bacchants and boys as satyrs and pans in a procession which abounded in pipes, flutes, thyrsoi, ivy branches, and other Dionysiac insignia and paraphernalia [213]. The two structurally integral elements of these triumphal entries were a) the entry of the ruler through the city gates, who was met by the citizenry, and escorted in a jovial procession, often accompanied by hymns and acclamation, to the city’s special local deity’s dwelling; and b) the offering of sacrifices to this deity. The arrival of the victorious ruler signifies the beginning of a new era for the community. These triumphal entrances of the Hellenistic and early Imperial monarchs may have been partly modelled on the epiphany processions of the Archaic and Classical Greek-speaking world.
[213] Plut. Ant. 24.3–4; Vell. Pat. 2.84.4; Dio Cass. 50.5.3. Cf. also Duff (1992, 55–71), who maintains that Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, as reported by Mark (11.1–10), has been modelled on Graeco-Roman triumphal processions of this sort...
This part of the discussion focuses on epiphany narratives that involve cult statues that become animated in the eyes of their beholders. Nowhere is this premise more applicable than in the so-called advent festivals, that is festivals that celebrated the seasonal return of a deity to a place... Perhaps the most renowned advent festival in Attica in which divine presence was denoted by the presence and the handling of the divine cult statue was that of Dionysus in his ship car, as depicted on vase paintings from the end of the sixth century onwards. The preliminary rite of the City Dionysia featured a ritual re-enactment of the original epiphany of the god in the city of Athens... The statue of the god was to be escorted to a small temple of the deity near the Academy on the way to Eleutherai and led back to the Athenian theatre in a torchlight procession led by the epheboi, as we hear from the so-called ephebic inscriptions. Likewise, a conspicuous place was reserved for the cult statue of Iacchus in the chariot procession of the Eleusinian festival, which was, as will be shown shortly, Demeter’s advent festival. On a particular day of the Mysteries Demeter’s visit to Athens had to reach an end and she had to return to Eleusis. An elaborate procession, with the priestesses of Eleusis in the lead, would lead the hiera—the earthly pars pro toto manifestation of the goddess’s visitation (more on which in due course)—from the Eleusinion, through the Agora, to the Dipylon and the Iaccheion. In the Iaccheion they would find Iacchus in the form of his wooden effigy: the youthful god with his torches and his hunting boots, who led the mystai to their final destination, the Eleusinian Telesterion. That Iacchus’ statue was perceived as the earthly manifestation of the god is evident from the kind of treatment it received: it was crowned with a wreath of myrtle and was carried in a carriage, an honour denied to the mystai, reserved only for the priestly personnel and the god himself. The Iacchagōgos, the god’s priest with the god’s image, would take his place at the head of the procession, which followed Demeter on the road to Eleusis (Hiera Hodos) amidst much sacred exhilaration and festive singing...
While there is no decisive evidence for the use of statues of either Demeter or Kore in the Great Mysteries, the cult statue of the Kore was in the foreground in Kore’s advent festivals in other parts of Greece: Pausanias, for instance, attests the use of Kore’s xoanon in the ritual enactment of the seasonal epiphany of the goddess in Helos (Laconia); while during the Koragia in Mantineia, another advent festival of Kore, it is again the statue of the goddess that is removed from the temple to the house of a certain individual, and then taken back to its original location... All five examples of advent festivals (two from Attica, two from the Peloponnese, and one from Caria) given above illustrate the central role the divine cult statue played in re-enacting the first or seasonal arrival of the deity in the course of sacred processions.
"Les fêtes d'Osiris à Abydos au Moyen Empire et au Nouvel Empire" by M-Christine Lavier in Egypte, No.10 (1998):
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2011), Jan Assmann:Brought back to life, Osiris-Onnophris then received justification in Peqer, corresponding to the myth to the one received at the end of the suit instituted in Seth before the tribunal of Heliopolis. After the ascribed acclamation, the prophet of Harendotes put on the god's head the crowns of justification to general rejoicing. This recognition of Osiris had like effect, in the beyond, to count the dead and to distinguish the blessed ones, victorious of the judgement. In the world of the living, it had as a consequence the transference of the paternal royal function to Horus, the legitimate heir. Resuscitated, recognised as just, and in the middle of the jubilation of the inhabitants of the Thinite nome and the rejoicing of the deceased, Osiris-Onnophris left Peqer on board of the Neshmet-barque to triumphantly join his temple by the great processional way.
The Egyptian pharaoh would model his triumphal processions on the sun god's triumph. The sun god journeyed through the sky and underworld every day and night. At midday, the sun was at its strongest so it was depicted as being the sun god's triumph over evil and darkness represented as the serpent Apophis. From that point, the sun god then descends into the underworld where he dies and is reborn/resurrected and ascends out of the underworld in the morning. As I've mentioned before, the sun god and Osiris were the two deities that were associated with mysteries in ancient Egypt and influenced the Hellenistic Isis mysteries (and probably other mystery cults).IV. The Procession to the Temple of Osiris: The last act of the festival was the return of the god to the temple. Just as the procession to U-poqer was celebrated as a funeral procession and the night spent there as the “night of vindication,” so the return was interpreted as a triumphal entry of the vindicated and resurrected Osiris into his palace.
Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the Crisis of Polytheism (Routledge, 1995), Jan Assmann:
So it seems that the imperial cult and mystery cults became closely associated at some point. This makes sense because joining a mystery cult formed a bond and a close association between the initiate and the deity at the center of the cult. The Roman emperor would also form a bond and close association with a deity and be declared "god's son". Initiates and Roman emperors would then have some form of eternal life after death.The different semantic levels correlated by the Solar Phases Hymn in its original function as "transfiguration" of the solar journey are (if it is permissible to summarise the results of extensive research into sun hymns and mortuary texts in one sentence): (a) the cosmic level of the events summarised in the concept "solar journey", (b) the kingship level and (c) the funerary belief level. The meaning content of the acts that represent the solar journey in the mythic-iconic mode of thought can be fully understood by the reader only when those actions are related to these three semantic levels. Take, for example, the act of "overcoming": on the cosmic level it refers to overcoming resistance, personified in the solar enemy Apophis as standstill, clouds, darkness; on the kingship level, it means overcoming external and internal enemies and embodying the triumphant rule of justice; on the funerary belief level, it means overcoming death. The icon sees all three levels as one and relates them to each other. Cosmos, kingship and funerary belief in the Solar Phases Hymn form three semantic levels that refer to and explain each other. Thus, the solar journey appears as the prototype of rule and eternal life. In the defeat of the enemy and of death, which takes place anew every day, the Egyptian sees that his own continued existence is guaranteed both on the personal and political level...
The representation of the solar journey in the Solar Phases Hymn concentrates all ideas associated with the boat journey on the specifically midday manifestation of the sun god as "Re". In this form the sun god appears as ruler and judge, travelling through his domain in the boat as the instrument and symbol of rule in order to enforce law and order (Maat). The sentence that usually begins the midday stanza and contains an introductory "thematic catchword" expresses this specifically ruler-like manifestation of the sun god as follows: "You cross the sky with dilated heart". The "dilated heart" is a specifically royal emotion: the joy of the victor in a triumphal procession...
When the sun god crosses the sky in the hours of midday, he comes up against the sun enemy Apophis. This confrontation is, however, described as such only in the cosmographies. The Book of the Day places the struggle with Apophis in the 6th Hour (the Hour "that rises for Seth") and refers also in the 7th and 8th Hours to the heavenly struggle... The midday subject of the Solar Phases Hymn is not, however, the struggle, but the triumphal procession of the god, which presupposes the successful outcome of the struggle.