Son of Dryas and king of the Edonians beside the river Strymon, Lycurgus was the first mortal to insult and expel Dionysus — driving the god's nurses from Mount Nysa with an ox-goad until the gods struck him blind and doomed him to a short life.1
When Dionysus, purified by Rhea and armed with the Bacchic rites, marched through Thrace toward India, Lycurgus son of Dryas ruled the Edonians who dwelt beside the Strymon. He was the first to deny the god: he insulted Dionysus, expelled him from the kingdom, and seized the Bacchanals as prisoners together with the satyr attendants of the god.2
Homer tells the terror of the encounter on sacred Nysa. Man-slaying Lycurgus drove the nursing mothers of raging Dionysus down the mountain with an ox-goad; they dropped their wands and fled. The young god plunged beneath the waves, and Thetis received him in her bosom, filled with dread — but the gods blinded the persecutor, and he did not live long after.3
Hyginus adds the king's own ruin. Lycurgus denied that Liber was a god, drank wine, and in drunkenness tried to violate his mother; he cut down the vines, saying wine was a poison to the mind. Liber sent him madness, and Lycurgus, son of Dryas, killed himself — one of the doomed kings who could not endure the god's power.4
⁂
the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story