The Wine God Drove a King Mad, and Had Him Slay His Own Family Before He Was Torn to Pieces
Lycurgus of Thrace was a mythical king of the Edoni people in southern Thrace, and he had a beef with Dionysius, the Greek god of grape and wine. According to Greek mythology, Lycurgus got drunk on wine and tried to rape his own mother. When he sobered up and realized what he had almost done, he swore off the drink, became a teetotaler, and enacted a version of Prohibition in his kingdom by banning wine and ordering the destruction of all grapevines throughout the realm. Lycurgus also banned the religious cult of Dionysius, whom he refused to acknowledge as divine, and prohibited the worship of the grape god in his kingdom.
Dionysius, being a god, was not about to heed the dictates of a mortal, not even a mortal king. So when his disciples, the Maenads, threw a festival in honor of the wine god atop the sacred mountain of Nyseion in Lycurgus’ kingdom, Dionysius took on human form and attended as the guest of honor. When Lycurgus heard that his command was being defied and that Dionysius was in his kingdom, he flew into a rage. Arriving at Mount Nyseion, Lycurgus used an ax to slay a Maenad who had nursed Dionysius as a child, and broke up the festival by chasing the remaining attendants out with an ox goad.
To save himself from the livid Lycurgus, Dionysius was forced to flee, and escaped the wrath of the angry king by leaping into the sea. There, Dionysus was rescued by the sea nymph Thetis, who kindly received the wine god and sheltered him in an undersea cave. In the meantime, Lycurgus conducted an anti-Dionysian purge throughout his kingdom and carried out a persecution that saw the rounding up, arrest, and imprisonment of the Maenads and other followers of Dionysius.
Understandably, Dionysius was greatly angered by Lycurgus disrespect and impiety, so he set out to visit divine punishment upon the Thracian king by taking away his sanity and reducing him to a raving loon. In his madness, Lycurgus slew his wife and family. Having ordered the cutting down of all grapevines, the crazy king mistook his own son for a vine and chopped him to death with a sword, pruning away his ears, nose, fingers and toes.
Dionysius was not done with him yet, however. The wine god laid a curse upon Lycurgus’ kingdom, rendering its soil barren and incapable of producing fruit. The desperate Edonian sought advice from an oracle, who informed them that fertility would not return to their land until Lycurgus was killed. So the Edonians seized their king, tied him up, and flung him to a man-eating horse, which tore Lycurgus to pieces.