The opening picture of the Frogs presents Dionysus in the guise of
a traveller, entering the space of the Lenaean theatre in Athens.
Nevertheless, the point of his departure is never stated openly for
the sake of the spectators, as it is, for example, in the Bacchae
(13-20). The god is just here, in the sight of the audience; he
suddenly appears, an 'itinerant epiphany' ( Detienne 1989: 5), a
divinity coming from outside, arriving 'from Elsewhere' ( Detienne
1989: 8). This aspect of Dionysus as a traveller and xenos is an
essential dimension of his mythical persona, since this god, a
missionary of his own rites, appears always in the guise of a
stranger, playing the role of a divine visitor in whatever land his
thiasos attains. ¹ More significantly still, it is the Attic branch of the
Dionysiac tradition which presents the god as a divinity brought
'more than once . . . into the city from outside' ( Henrichs 1990:
259). Thus, in the cultic cycle of the Dionysiac festivals in Athens,
the god's original advent is annually re-enacted: as part of the
preliminary rites inaugurating the City Dionysia festival, the cult-
statue of Dionysus Eleuthereus 'is taken to a temple near the
Academy on the road to Eleutherae only to be escorted back, in pro-
cession, to the theatre precinct, within the centre of the polis. ² It is
the thesis of this chapter that the various legends clustering around
Dionysus' visits and ultimate reception into Athens not only inform
the thematic structure of the Frogs but, more importantly, provide
one of the very prominent mythical models upon which the comic
god's reaggregation into the dramatic polis of the play is built. But,
in order to set the scene, let us first survey the ground of the
Athenian mythical tradition.

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