What is "bacchus"

Bacchus \Bac"chus\, n. [L., fr. Gr. Ba`kchos.] (Myth.) The god of wine, son of Jupiter and Semele.

Greek god of wine and revelry, a later name of Dionysus, late 15c., from Latin Bacchus, from Greek Bakkhos, perhaps related to Latin bacca "berry, olive-berry, bead, pearl." Perhaps originally a Thracian fertility god.

n. (context Roman god English) The Roman name for Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and vivid social gatherings.

Bacchus is the Roman name for Dionysus, the god of wine and intoxication.

Bacchus may also refer to:

• Temple of Bacchus, a Roman temple at a large classical antiquity complex in Baalbek, Lebanon
• Saint Bacchus, along with Saint Sergius, third-century Roman soldiers commemorated as Christian martyrs
• 2063 Bacchus, asteroid
• RFA Bacchus, the name of three ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary
• Bacchus (grape), white wine grape variety grown in Germany and England
• Bacchus (comics), comics character created by Eddie Campbell
• Bacchus-F, energy drink from South Korea
• Krewe of Bacchus, an organization that parades during the New Orleans Mardi Gras
• " In Praise of Bacchus", song from the album October Rust by the Type O Negative
• Bakos, a neighborhood in Alexandria, Egypt
• Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, a town in Victoria, Australia
• Bacchus or Eko.Bacchus, also known as Eko.Lsa, a French rapper
• Bacchus Wrath is the name of a villain from the Sentai series Chōriki Sentai Ohranger, his Americanized Power Rangers counterpart is known as King Mondo.

In art:

• Bacchus (Leonardo), painting by Leonardo da Vinci of John the Baptist
• Bacchus (Michelangelo), marble sculpture by Michelangelo depicting Bacchus in an inebriated state
• Bacchus (Caravaggio), a painting by Caravaggio held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
• Bacchus and Ariadne, an oil painting by Titian
• Bacchus and Ariadne (ballet), a ballet by Albert Roussel
• Young Sick Bacchus, an early self-portrait by Caravaggio in the Galleria Borghese in Rome
• Bacchus (opera)

The Bacchus is a white wine grape that was created by viticulturalist Peter Morio at the Geilweilerhof Institute for Grape Breeding in the Palatinate in 1933. He crossed a Silvaner x Riesling cross with Müller-Thurgau. Bacchus received varietal protection and was released for general cultivation in 1972. Its name is taken from Roman name of the Greek wine god Dionysus.

Bacchus can reach high must weights, and has no high requirement for sites it can be planted. It can therefore be used where Riesling, for example, does not ripen reliably. It ripens early, about the same time as Müller-Thurgau, and has a high productivity similar to that variety.

Bacchus wines can have powerful flavours and character, which have even been described as "exuberant", but only if it is allowed to ripen fully. It is however low in acidity, which does not always make it very well suited for varietal wines under typical German growing conditions. Among the new breeds, it is considered to give less elegant wines than Kerner. Therefore, Bacchus is often used for blending into Müller-Thurgau, to give the latter more flavour. Within Germany, Franconia is considered as the source of some of the more successful varietal Bacchus wines.

Bacchus is also grown in England. Under British growing conditions, where the colder climate means that a higher acidity is retained and where only lower yields are possible, Bacchus can give varietal wines of reasonable quality, somewhat in a Sauvignon blanc-like style.

German plantations peaked in the 1990 at around of which more than half were in Rheinhessen, where it was popular to use in QbA blends. Plantations have since decreased, and in 2006 there were of Bacchus left in Germany or 2.1% of the total vineyard surface.

Bacchus is a comics character created by Eddie Campbell and based upon the Roman god of wine and revelry, known to the Greeks as Dionysus.

The Bacchus was an express train in Germany, initially linking Dortmund and Munich. The train was named after the Roman God of wine, although for most of its existence it linked two cities famous for producing beer.

Bacchus, formerly Saint John the Baptist, is a painting in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, based on a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is presumed to have been executed by an unknown follower, perhaps in Leonardo's workshop. Sydney J. Freedberg assigns the drawing to Leonardo's second Milan period. Among the Lombard painters who have been suggested as possible authors are Cesare da Sesto, Marco d'Oggiono, Francesco Melzi, and Cesare Bernazzano. The painting shows a male figure with garlanded head and leopard skin, seated in an idyllic landscape. He points with his right hand off to his left, and with his left hand grasps his thyrsus and also points down to earth.

The painting originally depicted John the Baptist. In the late 17th century, between the years 1683 and 1693, it was overpainted and altered to serve as Bacchus.

Cassiano dal Pozzo remarked of the painting in its former state, which he saw at Fontainebleau in 1625, that it had neither devotion, decorum nor similitude, the suavely beautiful, youthful and slightly androgynous Giovannino was so at variance with artistic conventions in portraying the Baptist – neither the older ascetic prophet nor the Florentine baby Giovannino, but a type of Leonardo's invention, of a disconcerting, somewhat ambiguous sensuality, familiar in Leonardo's half-length and upward-pointing Saint John the Baptist, also in the Louvre.

The overpainting transformed the image of St. John into one of a pagan deity, by converting the long-handled cross-like staff of the Baptist to a Bacchic thyrsus and adding a vine wreath. The fur robe is the legacy of John the Baptist, but has been overpainted with leopard-spots relating, like the wreath, to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication.

Bacchus (1496–1497) is a marble sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo. The statue is somewhat over life-size and depicts Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness. Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario’s banker and a friend to Michelangelo. Along with the Pietà the Bacchus is one of only two surviving sculptures from the artist's first period in Rome.

Bacchus is depicted with rolling eyes, his staggering body almost teetering off the rocky outcrop on which he stands. Sitting behind him is a faun, who eats the bunch of grapes slipping out of Bacchus's left hand. With its swollen breast and abdomen, the Bacchus figure suggested to Giorgio Vasari "both the slenderness of a young man and the fleshiness and roundness of a woman", and its androgynous quality has often been noted (although the testicles are swollen as well). The inspiration for the work appears to be the description in Pliny the Elder's Natural History of a lost bronze sculpture by Praxiteles, depicting "Bacchus, Drunkenness and a satyr". The sense of precariousness resulting from a high centre of gravity can be found in a number of later works by the artist, most notably the David and the figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Bacchus wears a wreath of ivy leaves, as that plant was sacred to the god. (They are not, as is often supposed, vine leaves.) In his right hand he holds a goblet of wine and in his left the skin of a tiger, an animal associated with the god "for its love of the grape" (according to Michelangelo's biographer Ascanio Condivi). The hand holding the goblet was broken off and the penis chiseled away before Maarten van Heemskerck saw the sculpture in the 1530s. Only the goblet was restored, in the early 1550s. The mutilation may have been to give the sculpture an illusion of greater antiquity, placed as it initially was among an antique torso and fragmentary Roman reliefs in Jacopo Galli's Roman garden. Such a concession to 'classical' sensibilities did not, however, convince Percy Bysshe Shelley of the work's fidelity to "the spirit and meaning of Bacchus". He wrote that "It looks drunken, brutal, and narrow-minded, and has an expression of dissoluteness the most revolting." The art historian Johannes Wilde summarised responses to the sculpture thus: "in brief... it is not the image of a god".

The statue was commissioned for the garden of Cardinal Raffaele Riario who intended for it to complement his collection of classical sculptures. It was rejected by Cardinal Riario and by 1506 found its way to the collection of Jacopo Galli, banker to both the cardinal and Michelangelo, who had a similar garden near the Palazzo della Cancelleria. There it first appeared in a drawing by Maarten van Heemskerck, c. 1533-36. The statue was bought for the Medici and transferred to Florence in 1572.

Bacchus (c. 1595) is a painting by Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610). It is held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

The painting shows a youthful Bacchus reclining in classical fashion with grapes and vine leaves in his hair, fingering the drawstring of his loosely draped robe. On a stone table in front of him is a bowl of fruit and a large carafe of red wine; with his left hand he holds out to the viewer a shallow goblet of the same wine, apparently inviting the viewer to join him.

Bacchus was painted shortly after Caravaggio joined the household of his first important patron, Cardinal Del Monte, and reflects the humanist interests of the Cardinal's educated circle. It was not in the cardinal's collection at his death, and may have been a gift to the Grand Duke in Florence. It was unknown until 1913. When it was found in a storeroom of the Uffizi Galleries, it had never been catalogued or framed.

Bacchus' offering of the wine with his left hand, despite the obvious effort this is causing the model, has led to speculation that Caravaggio used a mirror to assist himself while working from life, doing away with the need for drawing. In other words, what appears to us as the boy's left hand was actually his right. This would accord with the comment by Caravaggio's early biographer, the artist Giovanni Baglione, that Caravaggio did some early paintings using a mirror. English artist David Hockney made Caravaggio's working methods a central feature of his thesis (known as the Hockney-Falco thesis) that Renaissance and later artists used some form of camera lucida. The model for Bacchus might have been Caravaggio's friend Mario Minniti, whom he had used before in The Musicians.

Bacchus is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Catulle Mendès after Greek mythology. It was first performed at the Palais Garnier in Paris on 5 May 1909.

The story is based on the mythology surrounding Bacchus and Ariadne (Ariane). The Gods, among them demi-god Bacchus, appear in human form in ancient India to attempt to persuade the people away from the pervading Buddhist influence. Ariane has followed them, convinced that Bacchus is in fact Theseus, her unrequited love. In the end, Ariane sacrifices herself to save humanity and in doing so, Bacchus becomes a God.

Although not a proper sequel, as Ariane dies in both pieces, Bacchus is a companion to Massenet's earlier opera, Ariane. Of Massenet's twenty-five operas, Bacchus is probably the least known, without a modern performance history or single modern recording of even an excerpt.

The story of this opera is also related to that of Ariadne auf Naxos from Richard Strauss.