Experiencing Dionysus
Hero’s libation mechanism heightened the sensory experience for participants by creating movement, sound, and smell.
At key intervals, milk spurted from Dionysus’ thyrsus (wand) and wine streamed from his cup onto a little panther. Then Nike and Dionysius turned 180 degrees and repeated the libation. As libations were always accompanied by invocation and prayer, by controlling the libation liquids, Dionysus fully immersed himself with his followers, both mediating and blurring the boundaries between man and beast, men and women, human and divine, life and death.
Hero writes that the automaton was crowned by the figure of Dionysus performing a libation (On Making Automata 3.3). This was a common way to depict Dionysus in the ancient world. The painted image on the museum’s Dionysiac amphora shows the god holding a kantharos (wine cup) in one hand and a branch in the other. It invites us to visualise what Hero’s Dionysus may have looked like.