Liber (Bacchus)

Who was Liber’s Greek equivalent?

Liber (or Liber Pater) was commonly identified with the Greek god Dionysus; both were gods of fertility and wine. Roman literature often referred to Liber as Bacchus, an important cult title of Dionysus.

Though Liber seems to have originated as a native Italian god, the Romans increasingly merged his mythology and iconography with that of the Greek Dionysus. In cult, Liber was thought to have been based on Iacchus, one of the gods of the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece.

What does Liber’s name mean?

The name Liber is likely derived from the Latin verb liberare, meaning “to set free” (as an adjective, liber means “free”). But other etymologies are also possible, with some scholars suggesting that the name is related to the Greek word for “libation.”

How was Liber worshipped?

In Rome, the cult of Liber was centered on the Temple of Ceres, located on the Aventine Hill. Liber was one of the members of the “Aventine Triad,” along with the agriculture goddess Ceres and the more obscure goddess Libera.

Like Ceres and Libera, Liber was closely associated with the plebeian population of Rome. His main festival was the Liberalia, a fertility festival in which a large phallus was paraded through the streets of Rome.

Liber’s Double Birth

The Romans seem to have originally regarded Liber as the son of Ceres. However, they eventually adopted the Greek myth of the double birth of Dionysus (Liber’s Greek equivalent), making Liber’s parents Semele and Jupiter (Zeus).

In this myth, Jupiter’s wife Juno (Hera) became jealous of her husband’s affair with the mortal Semele. She therefore tricked Semele into making Jupiter come to her in his true divine form— knowing full well that, as a mortal, Semele would be unable to endure the experience.

When Semele died, Jupiter took the growing infant from her womb and sewed him into his thigh. Later, when the time was right, the god Liber was born from his father’s thigh.

Pronunciation

Other Names

The most important alternative name for Liber was Bacchus (Greek Βάκχος, translit. Bákchos), a popular cult title of the Greek god Dionysus. Liber was commonly identified with Dionysus (just as the other chief gods of the Roman pantheon were identified with important Greek gods). In Roman poetry especially, which was heavily inspired by Greek models and myths, Liber was frequently referred to as Bacchus.

Family Tree

Origins

Liber was an Italic-Roman god of obscure origins. One early theory posited that he was another form of Jupiter—the “Jupiter Liber” attested in some records—but this is now largely regarded as an incorrect interpretation. Most scholars today consider Liber to be an ancient vegetation god.

The earliest archaeological evidence for Liber comes from a few cistae (a type of vessel) from Praeneste in Latium; these were inscribed with his name in the fourth century BCE.^[18] Liber is also named on a third- or second-century BCE cippus (boundary stone) from Pisaurium.^[19]

According to the ancient Romans (as well as the ancient Greeks), Liber was introduced to Rome from Greece in the early fifth century BCE. The story goes that in 496 BCE, during the Romans’ conflict with the Latin League, the Sibylline Books instructed the Romans to import the divine triad of Demeter, Kore, and Iacchus from the Greek city of Eleusis.

The Romans did as the Sibylline Books instructed, translating Demeter into Ceres, Kore into Libera, and Iacchus—understood as another name for Dionysus—into Liber. This triad was honored with a new temple on the Aventine Hill in Rome.^[20]

The Birth of Liber

The Romans seem to have originally regarded Liber as a child of the agriculture goddess Ceres. Eventually, though, a different version of his birth became more popular, based on the myth of the double birth of Dionysus (the Greek god commonly identified with Liber).

According to this myth, Liber was the son of Jupiter (Zeus), the ruler of the gods, and Semele, a mortal princess from the Greek city of Thebes. Jupiter’s affair with Semele stoked the jealousy of his wife Juno (Hera), who plotted to destroy her mortal rival.

A handful of Roman authors, adapting the Greek myth, told of how Juno came to Semele in the form of her nurse Beroe. The goddess encouraged Semele to make her lover prove that he was really Jupiter by visiting her in his divine form—knowing very well that no mortal could endure the sight of Jupiter in his full glory.

Semele took Juno’s treacherous advice and made Jupiter swear an unbreakable oath to grant her any request. Once she had revealed what she wanted, Jupiter had no choice but to comply: he showed himself to Semele as thunder and lightning. The unfortunate woman was unable to bear the sight:

The mortal dame, too feeble to engage

The lightning’s flashes, and the thunder's rage,

Consum'd amidst the glories she desir’d,

And in the terrible embrace expir’d.^[21]

When Semele died, Jupiter took the unborn child from her womb and sewed him into his thigh; once Liber had come to term, he was “born” from his father. Afterwards, Jupiter gave the child to the nymphs of Nysa so that they could bring him up.^[22]

Other Myths

There is no evidence of any original mythology for the god Liber; instead, the Romans adopted the mythology of the Greek god Dionysus, often even referring to Liber by the Greek name Bacchus (a cult title of Dionysus). The result is that many Greek myths about Dionysus are transmitted via Roman sources for Liber.

One early Greek myth, repurposed by the Roman poet Ovid, told of how Liber was abducted by sailors. Struck by the beauty of the youthful Liber, the treacherous sailors decided to fetch a high price for him by selling him into slavery. But Liber easily escaped his captors, taking over their ship and turning them into dolphins:

Around their oars a twining ivy cleaves,

And climbs the mast, and hides the cords in leaves:

The sails are cover’d with a chearful green,

And berries in the fruitful canvass seen.

[...]

The God we now behold with open’d eyes;

A herd of spotted panthers round him lyes

In glaring forms; the grapy clusters spread

On his fair brows, and dangle on his head.

And whilst he frowns, and brandishes his spear,

My mates surpriz’d with madness or with fear,

Leap’d over board; first perjur’d Madon found

Rough scales and fins his stiff’ning sides surround…^[23]

Other myths described how Liber dealt with those who failed to acknowledge his divinity. For example, when Lycurgus, a Thracian king, attacked Liber’s followers, the god punished him with madness and death.^[24] When the Theban king Pentheus tried to suppress the worship of Liber in his city, the god caused the women of Thebes—led by Pentheus’ mother Agave—to tear apart the blasphemer in a divine frenzy.^[25] And when the Minyades, daughters of the Boeotian king Minyas, neglected Liber’s rites, he turned them all into bats.^[26]

Liber, like his Greek counterpart Dionysus, was a well-traveled god. Roman authors often alluded to his conquest of India, which became a popular parallel to Roman imperialism.^[27] Some authors even claimed that Liber traveled as far west as the Iberian Peninsula.^[28]

Another popular myth told of Liber’s seduction of the Cretan princess Ariadne. A figure of Greek mythology, Ariadne helped the Athenian hero Theseus kill the Minotaur when he was sent to Crete as a prisoner. Theseus took Ariadne with him when he fled Crete, only to faithlessly abandon her on the island of Naxos (or Dia). 

It was there that Liber (or Dionysus, in Greek texts) found the princess and fell in love with her. He made her his bride, gifting her a beautiful golden crown that would become the constellation Corona Borealis.^[29]

Other Roman tales of Liber, also largely derived from Greek mythology, detailed his descent to the Underworld to bring back his mother Semele;^[30] his battle with the Giant Rhoetus during the war between the gods and the Giants;^[31] and even the Orphic myth of Dionysus Zagreus, in which the young god was torn apart and devoured by the Titans.^[32]

Temples and Sanctuaries

The Romans themselves believed that Liber was a Greek god. His cult was based on the Eleusinian cult of the Greek Iacchus (Iacchus, in this case, was understood as another name for Dionysus or Bacchus, the Greek god of wine and intoxication).

The chief sanctuary of Liber was the Temple of Ceres on the Aventine Hill, erected in the early fifth century BCE at the behest of the Sibylline Books. This temple belonged to the triad of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, and her subordinates Liber and Libera (the Romans regarded these three gods as the equivalents of the Greek Demeter, Iacchus, and Kore, respectively).

The Aventine temple became a center for plebeian religious cult in Rome. As a result, Liber—like Ceres and Libera—was closely associated with the plebeians.

There is some evidence (from the remains of the Fasti Farnesiani) that one other sanctuary of Liber was erected in Rome. This sanctuary seems to have stood on the Capitoline Hill, but nothing definitive is known about it.

As Roman power expanded, temples of Liber were erected in other parts of the empire. One notable example is the astonishingly well-preserved Temple of Bacchus in modern Baalbek (in Lebanon), commissioned by the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius in the second century CE.

Festivals and Rituals

The most important festival of Liber was the Liberalia, celebrated annually on March 17. This festival featured wreathed old women who sold honey cakes (called liba) to passersby;^[33] a phallus transported on a wagon through the city as celebrants sang crude rustic songs;^[34] and masks of the god hung on trees.^[35]

On the day of the Liberalia, seventeen-year-old Roman boys would ceremonially pass from childhood to adulthood, exchanging the toga praetexta for the toga virilis.^[36]

Liber was honored at other festivals as well. For instance, he was one of the gods celebrated at the Ludi Ceriales, connected with the Aventine temple that he shared with Ceres and Libera. Sacrifices to Liber were also made at various wine and harvest festivals.

The notorious Bacchanalia were also connected with Liber in a sense, though these were more properly the rites of the Greek Dionysus rather than the Italian Liber. Concrete details about the Bacchanalia are scarce, partly due to a lack of sources, and partly due to the distortions of ancient authors like Livy who condemned the Bacchic cults. At the very least, we know the festivities included drinking, carousing, and reveling.

The Bacchanalia were violently suppressed in Rome in 186 BCE, but they continued to be celebrated in other cities throughout Italy, and even in the Near East.^[37]