“My name is Dionysus (/daɪ.əˈnaɪsəs/; Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Dionysos), I’m the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. I was also known as Bacchus (/ˈbækəs/ or /ˈbɑːkəs/; Ancient Greek: Βάκχος Bacchos) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Romans) for a frenzy I’m said to induce called baccheia. As Dionysus Eleutherius ("the liberator"), my wine, music, and ecstatic dance free my followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. My thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose my cult and the freedoms of I represents. Those who partake of my mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god itself.”