God Dionysus and Bacchantes sterling silver plaque (on Italian Green Alpi marble)

This sterling silver plaque (obtained from a cast of an ancient Roman intaglio), placed on Italian Verde Alpi marble, depicts the god Dionysus,( Bacchus for Romans ) with the head of a bull and the human body, observing three Bacchantes from behind a tree. Dionysus in the vases and craters that represent him has the image of the bull, but in the choir of Euripides' Bacchantes appears the character of the Dionysian religious experience, which is simultaneously violence and purity, wildness and holiness. Dionysus was at the head of a mystery religion which saw him appearing as a god "Bull with a red mantle"; in the Dionysian ceremonies the god-Taurus made anyone fall into the madness of the dance. The followers of Dionysus, the Bacchantes, followed him in the orgiastic cult of him, wearing feral skins, with the thyrsus in hand; they ran dancing more and more wildly through the mountains, in a state of alcoholic intoxication and accompanied by the roar of cymbals, timpani, flutes and other instruments. Dionysian ecstasy can be linked to overcoming the human condition, to the discovery of total liberation, to the achievement of a freedom and spontaneity inaccessible to mortals.