Whereas all of the other divinities are accompanied by attendants who are of the same sex as they, women make up the intimate surroundings and retinue of Dionysus. He, himself, has something feminine in his nature. To be sure, he is in no way a weakling but a warrior and a hero who triumphs; and we shall have something to say about that later. But his manhood celebrates its sublimest victory in the arms of the perfect woman. This is why heroism per se is foreign to him in spite of his warlike character.

The feminine aspect of his nature is also revealed in his manner of loving. His whole existence is illuminated and crowned by the love of women. However, he is far from being a wanton profligate, and even if he occasionally receives an epithet which sounds obscene to us, the high nobility of his spirit is revealed that much more in all representations of him, and the impression they give is emphasized even more by the way in which his actions are contrasted with those of the satyrs, of whose naked lust the god seems to take no notice. Indeed, the one thing which sets him off from all of the truly masculine gods, whose passions are cooled by transient moments of possession, is the fact that his love is ecstatic and binds him to the loved one forever. We see this at its best in the vase paintings. There is good reason for our calling Ariadne the chosen one, for it is quite remarkable how little the myth speaks of any other true love affairs.