Dionysos (also spelled Dionysus)

Dionysos is unusual because he is a god of mystery. He is connected with madness, drunkenness and death.

Dionysos is the wine-god, and thus should be a nice god, but as wine makes people drunk and causes them to behave in strange ways, the Greeks showed the two sides of wine in the character of Dionysos.

The actors in the plays performed for Dionysos were masked reflecting the fact that wine changes the normal personality of the person who drinks it.

Dionysos induces mass hysteria, he is the god of mob fury. He is reflected in the chorus of many plays. They dance and sing in unison, all chanting the same words. The members of the chorus have no identity, each is merely an insignificant part of the whole, with no separate will.

Dionysos was the patron god of the theatre.