# Bacchanalia · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

Source: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/atlas/library/cults/006-bacchanalia/ · The Congregation of Tomorrow · the Atlas · language: en
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The Cult Dossier · No. 006 · Ancient Mystery Cult
Bacchanalia
The Dionysian Mysteries at Rome
c.600 BCE – 186 BCE (suppression) · Greece, Magna Graecia, Rome
I. ANTIQUITY — THE MYSTERY CULTS
Fully religious
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- 186 BCE The Senate issues the SENATUS CONSULTUM DE BACCHANALIBUS, surviving on a bronze tablet found in Calabria in 1640. Bacchic worship restricted to five persons, no male officers, no common funds, prior praetorian licence required.
- 186–181 BCE LIVY (39.8–19) reports around 7,000 arrests across Italy and states that most of those arrested were executed. HE IS THE ONLY NARRATIVE SOURCE, AND HE WROTE ROUGHLY 200 YEARS AFTER THE EVENTS. The only contemporary document is the bronze SENATUS CONSULTUM DE BACCHANALIBUS itself, which records the restrictions but no casualty figure.
- Modern assessment SCHOLARS ARE GENERALLY SCEPTICAL OF LIVY'S ACCOUNT. His lurid material — the orgies, the poisonings, the forged wills — is widely read as propagandistic veneer. The likelier driver of the crackdown was the Senate reasserting civil and religious authority after the crises of the SECOND PUNIC WAR (218–201 BCE) against a cult that was unsanctioned, uncontrolled, and therefore a threat to the social and religious hierarchy — not the crimes Livy describes.
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