De Incredibilibus (excerpta Vaticana)

Charax says that Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, is said to have fallen pregnant while still unmarried. During the birth a thunderbolt struck; she disappeared but the baby survived. The people imagined her to have obtained divine honours, as is said of those struck by lightning, and they called her ‘Thyone’ [‘Offering’]. Cadmus argued that the child was divine because he had been rescued from the fire, and gave him the patronymic of the Egyptian Dionysus.

Alexander of Aphrodisias says the following in his Physica: It is not without reason that they tell these stories: the Bacchant follows Dionysus because dancing results from wine, Satyrs because of lightness of movement, Lydians because some find release through him and a leopard because of the vividly coloured hallucinations experienced in drunkenness: for under the influence of wine each person has his own different, variegated reasoning, and the pelt of the animal is, likewise, densely dappled. A single Bacchant, raving, committed murder since many, intoxicated, also kill. Dionysus is naked because wine provokes the disclosure of drinkers’ thoughts. He lusts after Aphrodite and Ariadne because drinkers are commonly struck by extreme desire for women. He has with him a bald man because large quantities of wine greatly empty the brain and harm and wither the body, and because of this they also call him ‘Maron’. [ . . . ] He was struck with a thunderbolt and placed in a thigh: this means that often wine which has been placed in the sun is then brought to perfection in its blending and strength while hidden in jars. He has four women as his sisters because wine progresses through four changes and transformations.

Some say that Homer uses the word ‘chain’ allegorically to mean the days, and the rays of the sun.