" One of his titles was "teeming" or "bursting"
(as of sap or blossoms); and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica
and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the
prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly
sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree. The
Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular
pine-tree "equally with the god," so they made two images of
Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand,
tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his
worshippers. Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially
associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a
Dionysus Ivy; at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos,
where figs were called _meilicha,_ there was a Dionysus Meilichios,
the face of whose image was made of fig-wood.
Further, there are indications, few but significant, that Dionysus
was conceived as a deity of agriculture and the corn. He is spoken
of as himself doing the work of a husbandman: he is reported to have
been the first to yoke oxen to the plough, which before had been
dragged by hand alone; and some people found in this tradition the
clue to the bovine shape in which, as we shall see, the god was
often supposed to present himself to his worshippers.
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