Processions including wooden phalloi on poles or large painted phalloi in carts were a common mode of celebration for Dionysos throughout Greece; according to Herodotus (2.48-49), it was the Argive hero Melampous who first introduced this custom. Processional phalloi were a familiar sight in the rural and city celebrations of the Athenians, while epigraphic evidence starting in 301 shows that every year, the Delians created a winged, brightly colored phallos-bird and drew it through the streets in a wagon. This fanciful object was considered the image of the god himself, and while the direct evidence is Hellenistic in date, it is likely that the phallic parade was practiced from the Archaic period. Excavators found no temple of Dionysos on the island, but there was a deposit of items dedicated to the god including an Archaic stone phallos.9 The Delian phallos image of Dionysos, like the masked columns seen on Attic vase paintings, was intended to serve as a temporary simulacrum of the god, just as the phalloi used in the Athenian City Dionysia had to be replaced every year. The use of such ephemeral images is typical of Dionysiac cult but rare in other Greek worship.
The representation of the phallos in art and poetry is linked in sacred narratives with the proper reception of Dionysos. In Athens, for example, the men who failed to receive Dionysos Eleuthereus with honor made model phalloi in order to regain the god’s favor, while an inscription from Paros tells a similar, presumably apocryphal story about the poet Archilochus. When his attempt to introduce obscene Dionysiac poetry was rebuffed, the men of Paros were rendered impotent until they accepted the new mode of worship. Paradoxically, though the phallos has an important role in many Dionysiac cults, the god himself is rarely portrayed nude or in a state of sexual excitement; in fact he remains detached from sexuality except in the context of the sacred marriage. The Dionysiac phallos does not signify male sexuality or masculinity per se but the exuberant, animating force that makes arousal and procreation possible.10
World History
