Eleutherius

"Deliverer." A surname of Dionysus, which he derived either from Eleuther, or the Boeotian town of Eleutherae; but it may also be regarded as equivalent to the Latin Liber, and thus describes Dionysus as the deliverer of man from care and sorrow.

The form Eleutherius is certainly used in the sense of the deliverer, and occurs also as the surname of Zeus.1

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References

Notes

  1. Plutarch. Symposiacs vii, in fin.; Pindar. Olympian Odes xii, 1; Strabo. Geography ix, p. 412; Tacitus. Annals, xv, 64.

Sources

  • Pausanias. Description of Greece i, 20.2, 38.8.
  • Plutarch. Quaestiones Romanae, 101.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.