The newly discovered hexameters uncovered by Giulia Rossetto in a palimpsest from a codex in the library of the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai must rank as one of the most exciting recent discoveries for the study of Greek mythology.Footnote ¹ The codex contains an Arabic text of some saints’ Lives, written somewhere between 903 and 925 c.e. at the Monastery of Mar Saba by the scribe Dawid al Himsi (or David of Homs, known as ‘the carpenter’), but it is the underlying erased Greek hexameters recounting some episodes from the life of the Greek god Dionysus that provide new glimpses of hitherto unknown strands of Greek mythology and illuminate previously obscure references. The four fragments seem to recount two episodes, a scene with Aphrodite, the young Dionysus and his mother Persephone (A & B), and another that features Dionysus enthroned on the seat of Zeus with various attendants around, including minions of the jealous Hera who seek to harm him (C & D). These palimpsest texts illuminate long-puzzling allusions to the early life of the god, especially in some of the early Christian apologists and the collection of Orphic Hymns. These new texts reveal some different faces of Dionysus, an Adonis-figure at the heart of a dispute between two goddesses, and a personified wine-god, Oinos, threatened by the machinations of his enemies in the court of Zeus.

In September 2021, Rossetto convened an online interdisciplinary workshop to explore this text further, which produced many new suggestions and corrections to the text itself. The assembled scholars also wrestled with some of the peculiar features of the mythic narrative in the texts, since the fragments reveal unusual variants of stories familiar from the mythic tradition. One of the most striking features of the poem in the palimpsest text is the interaction of Aphrodite and Persephone, two goddesses not often found in each other's company. However, the tale of their quarrel over the handsome youth Adonis is recounted briefly in the mythographic collections of Apollodorus and Hyginus:

In the first fragment of the text (A), after Persephone reminds Aphrodite of a prophecy made by Night (presumably about the fate of this child), she brings out from a hidden chamber a radiantly beautiful child, identified as Dionysus and addressed with the familiar Dionysiac epithets of Eribromos and Eiraphiotes.Footnote ³ Persephone sets this child, extraordinarily beautiful (περικαλλές) and possessing his awesome beauty from the Graces (αἰνὸ[ν] καρποφόρων Χαρίτων ἄπο κάλλος ἔχ[οντα), upon the lap of Aphrodite, in a pose familiar from figurines of great kourotrophic goddesses with small mortals on their laps.Footnote ⁴ This beautiful boy, shared between Persephone and Aphrodite, is not called Adonis, however; even when Aphrodite addresses him in the second fragment (fr. B.13), she calls him simply ἄ̣μ̣β̣ροτε κοῦρε, ‘immortal youth’.Footnote ⁵ This direct address indicates that she is not merely recalling her favourite Adonis while she speaks to Dionysus; Dionysus here is Adonis, the youth beloved of Aphrodite over whom she wrangles with Persephone.

Such an identification of Dionysus with Adonis, though startling to the modern reader, may have been less surprising to ancient audiences. Plutarch indeed claims that those partaking in the rituals make this identification on the basis of the similarities of the rituals dedicated to the two figures:

As so often, the ancient thinkers make their conflations of deities not from the mythic stories more familiar to moderns but on the basis of ritual similarities that leave only faint traces in the evidence.Footnote ⁷ While Plutarch can make his point in the assumption that his readers will understand the resemblances he means, we can only speculate what similarities Plutarch might see.

The collection of the late Orphic Hymns provides potentially illuminating parallels, since the figures of Dionysus and Adonis seem blurred in several of these hymns, and the fragments can also help to understand some of the previously puzzling elements of these mysterious texts. As Morand notes, ‘La figure d'Adonis est donc très proche de celle de Dionysos’, because he is addressed with the Dionysiac epithet of Eubouleus and described as horned, as Dionysus is in an earlier hymn.Footnote ⁸ Most peculiarly, and significantly, Adonis is said to have been born in the childbed of Persephone, making the underworld queen the mother of Adonis just as she is of Dionysus.Footnote ⁹ This parentage for Adonis appears nowhere else, not even in the tales where Persephone takes an interest in Adonis as an infant.

In this collection of hymns, Dionysus also seems to take on characteristics of Adonis. In the Orphic Hymn to Mise, the masculine-feminine aspect of the god, the deity is described as the one enjoying Cyprus with Cytherean Aphrodite, a role more often imagined for Adonis.Footnote ¹⁰ This gender-fluid divinity, with male and female elements, also resembles the androgynous Adonis, described in his own hymn as both youth and maiden.Footnote ¹¹ In the Orphic Hymn to Dionysus Liknites, Dionysus is described (‘curieusement’, as Fayant says ad loc.) not just as the ‘beloved sprout of the Nymphs’ but also ‘of well-crowned Aphrodite’, while Adonis is likewise ‘the sweet scion of Cypris’.Footnote ¹² The presence of Aphrodite among the nurses of Dionysus in the Hymn does not fit with the descriptions of his infancy in other sources, but it does match with Aphrodite's appearance in these palimpsest fragments, where her interest in the young Dionysus is remarkable.

In the second fragment (B, 8–9, 11–12), Aphrodite recounts how, after Dionysus has left the nymphs who reared him, she searched the whole world to find him, finally reaching him only in the underworld:

Aphrodite here takes on the role of the wandering goddess, searching all the world for her lost loved one like Demeter does for Kore, Meter for Attis, or Isis for Osiris (or even Io for Epaphos). Although these myths might all seem significantly different to the modern observer, it is worth noting once again that ancient thinkers such as Herodotus and Plutarch readily conflated them on account of the similarities of their rituals.Footnote ¹³ In the Orphic Hymn to Mise, the deity is called upon in multiple forms, accompanying rituals for different goddesses, Demeter, Meter, Aphrodite and Isis (Hymn. Orph. 42.5–10):

In these ritual contexts, all these goddesses play the same kind of role for the younger deity, whether female or male.

In myth likewise, whether the motivation is that of a mother seeking her lost child or of a lover seeking her missing beloved, the pattern of action that involves the goddess wandering with laments through every land, seeking shelter and asking the local inhabitants for news of her lost one, remains the same. Apollodorus recounts that Io, after her son Epaphos was abducted by the Kouretes at the behest of a jealous Hera, wandered around until she found him in Syria and brought him back to Egypt, where she is worshipped as Isis and Demeter (Bibl. 2.1.3):

In such tales, Aphrodite appears less often than Demeter, but an early Christian author, Aristides of Athens, bears witness to a tale of this goddess’ emotional behaviour toward her adulterous lover: ‘She bewailed his death, seeking her lover, and they say that she went even down to Hades so that she might redeem Adonis from Persephone’ (οὕτινος καὶ τὸν θάνατον κλαίει ζητοῦσα τὸν ἐραστὴν αὐτῆς⋅ ἣν λέγουσιν καὶ εἰς Ἅιδου καταβαίνειν, ὅπως ἐξαγοράσῃ τὸν Ἄδωνιν ἀπὸ τῆς Περσεφόνης, Apologia 11.3).

The tale in the palimpsest fragments, then, fits within this pattern of the wandering goddess seeking her lost loved one, even though the story of Aphrodite seeking the child of Persephone appears rather different from the most familiar version of the Adonis tale from Ovid, where Adonis is conceived by Myrrha, princess of Cyprus, in incest with her father, or even from the tale in Apollodorus, where Adonis becomes the object of a dispute between the goddesses that can only be settled by Zeus.

This Dionysus Adonis, however, does seem to fit within another familiar mythic pattern, one often linked with the story of the wandering goddess, that of the threatened divine child. In this schema, a child is prophesied to create some sort of trouble for the existing generation, so he is threatened by a group of older males. Sometimes others of the older generation, either nurses or male protectors, try to protect the child. The child either escapes from the threat or is somehow brought back after being thought dead, and he manifests his power. The protagonist of this story may be Dionysus (whether the son of Semele or of Persephone), but he may also be Epaphos, Apollo, or even Zeus himself. On the mortal level, Herodotus’ tale of the Corinthian tyrant Cypselus fits neatly into this pattern (5.9b–e). The threat comes from a group of older men who may be named Titans, Gigantes, Kouretes, Korybantes, Telchines, or even (in the case of Cypselus) Bacchiads, and the threat may take the form of abduction, dismemberment, or some other form of murder. Epaphus, like Adonis and Attis, is said to have suffered a hunting accident, in this case engineered by Hera and the Titans or Kouretes, and, in one version, the infant Zeus is threatened with dismemberment by the Titans and whisked to safety from Crete to Phrygia by three Korybantes.Footnote ¹⁴

The Dionysus in the palimpsest text seems unlikely to have perished in a hunting accident, but the other fragments show that the threat from the band of older males is part of this story, even if the details remain difficult to recover from the fragments. What is clear, however, is that there is a plot, engineered by Hera, that involves first an open attack (in fragment C) and then (in fragment D) a more subtle ploy designed to lure the young god off the throne of Zeus. The importance of the throne in this scenario suggests that the tale would evoke the Korybantic rites, specifically the thronôsis ritual, which involves the initiand being seated on a throne while armed and threatening figures whirl in a circle around him.Footnote ¹⁵

Dionysus, referred to in this scene as Oinos, the personification of wine, is seated on the throne of Zeus (in accordance perhaps with the prophecy mentioned in fragment A), and he seems to be veiled, while others sing and dance in a circle around the throne. Suddenly, the veil is plucked from his eyes, and Akmon attacks him with an axe, while Kyrbas leaps to his defence.Footnote ¹⁶ Oinos does not leave the throne and thus escapes unscathed, but, in the next fragment, the more devious plan of Hera is put into action to lure this child of Zeus and Persephone from his father's throne. Crowning his head with wreaths of flowers and continuing to process around in a circle, the Gigantes offer enticing toys and wheedling words (fr. D.8–12).

This scene is familiar from Clement of Alexandria, who condemns the barbarity of the rites of Dionysus (Protr. 2.17.2):

Although our palimpsest text does not specify what the ἀθύρματα νηπίαχα are, Clement refers to verses of Orpheus that list ‘a top and a whirligig and dolls with jointed limbs, and golden apples from the high-voiced Hesperides’. A similar list appears in the Gûrob papyrus and in other accounts, with the addition of a mirror, the implement crucial in Nonnos’ version for the Titans to lure the infant Dionysus from the throne of Zeus.Footnote ¹⁸ To judge by these testimonies, after our fragment D ends, the toys will succeed in luring Oinos from the throne, whereupon he will be torn to pieces.

Clement's version, which he cites from Orpheus, involves the Kouretes as protectors of Dionysus and the Titans as his destroyers, but here the Gigantes seem to take the role of the minions of Hera, while it is unclear who the defenders are. The name Kyrbas suggests one of the Korybantes, and Nonnos lists Akmon among the Korybantes who support Dionysus in his military campaigns, although, according to Strabo, he is more often named among the Idaian Dactyls.Footnote ¹⁹ To further complicate matters, in fragment D, Amalkeides is mentioned, a figure who only appears as one of the Tritopatores in a reference from an Orphic Physika. These Tritopatores are described by Harpokration (Lexicon Τ 32, s.v. Τριτοπάτορας) as the doorkeepers and guardians of the winds, but he notes that some make them, like the Giants or the Titans, the children of Earth and identify them with Kottos, Briareos and Gyges, the hundred-handed monsters named in Hesiod. As Gagné has shown, the Tritopatores receive cult in Attica and elsewhere as ancestral spirits, the thrice-forefathers, so—again like the Kouretes, Korybantes, Titans and Giants—they fit into the category of primordial peoples from the earliest generations.Footnote ²⁰ Already in antiquity Strabo comments on the interchangeability of all these figures (10.3.7):

For Strabo, the confusion caused by the complexities of the myths can be resolved by noting the similarities of their roles in ritual.

The earth-born Giants and Titans are, likewise, often interchangeable in the myths of the war against the gods and the infancy of Dionysus. Certain authors, however, could favour one version over another to suit their interpretative agenda. Neoplatonic authors such as Proclus, Damascius and Olympiodorus, who read the dismemberment of Dionysus as an allegory of the movement from One to many, see the Titans as representatives of particularity, as the responsible villains. As Olympiodorus notes, ‘And he is torn apart by the Titans, of whom the ti [‘something’] indicates the particular. The form of the whole is torn apart in genesis, and Dionysus is the monad of the Titans.’Footnote ²¹ The Orphic texts that these Neoplatonists cite, like those of Clement, thus have Titans rather than Giants.

By contrast, the Giants (Gêgeneis or Gigantes) appear more often in versions of the myth in which Dionysus is understood as an allegory for wine. Diodorus Siculus explains that the mythographers have portrayed Dionysus as being torn apart by the earth-born and brought back together by Demeter to symbolize the transformation of grapes into wine by the earth-working farmers (γηγενεῖς = γεωργοί), as well as the restoration of the integrity of the vine by the earth.Footnote ²² The name of Oinos for Dionysus in fragment C, together with the Gigantes in fragment D, suggests that a similar symbolism may be at play in the palimpsest text.

The hexameters from the palimpsest are thus clearly not the poem of Orpheus from which Clement and the other Christian apologists quote, nor that to which Olympiodorus and the other Neoplatonists refer. Their source has been supposed by scholars to be the Sacred Discourses in 24 Rhapsodies mentioned in some of the late testimonies, and the collection has been imagined to recount an epic over the course of two dozen books, like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Rossetto has suggested that the psi mark at the top of fragment A could indicate that these fragments come from Book 23 of these lost Orphic Rhapsodies, but the episodes in these fragments would make little sense as the penultimate chapter of a longer narrative.Footnote ²³ These scenes of the childhood of Dionysus would need to be significantly earlier in the Rhapsodies collection if there were a coherent plot line that ran throughout. Nonnos puts the dismemberment of his Dionysus Zagreus in Book 6 (out of his 41 books), while one of the few references that mentions the placement of any story within the Rhapsodies puts the war against the Gigantes in Book 8.Footnote ²⁴

If, however, the structure of the Orphic Rhapsodies were envisaged not as a coherent epic but as a loose collection of poems attributed to Orpheus, the palimpsest hexameters might have come from the twenty-third selection in such an anthology. A late collection such as the Sibylline Oracles provides a better model for understanding the structure of the Rhapsodies than the Homeric epics, since the Sibylline Oracles in fact often recount the same story in multiple different versions.Footnote ²⁵ So too, by comparing the quotations from Lactantius with the contents of the extant Oracles, we can see how the selective quotation according to a theological agenda can skew the perception of the whole work, suggesting that the references from early Christian apologists and late Neoplatonists may provide a distorted picture of the contents of the Rhapsodies—a picture skewed to cosmogonies and the dismemberment story rather than tales of the Korybantes and the Kabeiroi, the rites of Osiris, or other selections from the full range of tales recounted in the Orphic poems.

The prologue to the late Orphic Argonautica may provide a more comprehensive picture of the themes that late imperial audiences would have expected in the poems of Orpheus. While the cosmogonic themes are mentioned, so too are less familiar tales, including (25–30):

The references to the Idaian Dactyls and the Korybantes recall the presence of Akmon and Kyrbas in fragment C, while fragment A refers to an oracle of Night about Dionysus in the context of Aphrodite and Persephone discussing an Adonian child. None of these subjects, then, would be out of place in an Orphic poem, any more than the dismemberment of Dionysus would be.

However, none of the episodes in these hexameters would be out of place in other kinds of literature recounting the adventures of Dionysus either. The massive epic Dionysiaca of Nonnos makes clear that many such poems must have been circulating from which Nonnos drew his material, and it seems possible that Nonnos used this poem in his own composition. While the conflation of Dionysus with Adonis appears less frequently in our extant evidence, it would not have surprised Plutarch or the audiences of the Orphic Hymns. The tale of the dismemberment of Dionysus is recounted in myriad forms from the Hellenistic period (and probably earlier), even if the anthropogonic sequel usually found in myths of the Gigantomachy or Titanomachy is only added in the sixth century c.e. by Olympiodorus.Footnote ²⁶

The fragments in the palimpsest text reveal some new pieces of this Dionysiac mythic tradition circulating in many forms. This Dionysus may be conflated with Adonis, but he is called Erikepaios, Eribromos, Eiraphiotes and Oinos, evoking many other versions of his mythology. The episodes in these fragments help to clarify the descriptions of Dionysus and Adonis in the Orphic Hymns that have long puzzled scholars, and they also shed new light on the range of versions of the dismemberment story, introducing new players not found in other versions and highlighting the flexibility of the tale with its many meanings among the different tellings. These fascinating new texts provide modern scholars with many new questions to answer, many new problems to solve, and many new issues to sort through, but they also provide welcome light on long-standing problems of Dionysiac mythology, as they show us many new faces of the many-named god.