its fruits were collected, crushed and allowed to ferment until refined into wine, the sacred drink. Thus, the "sufferings" of the plant were seen as reflecting those of himself, and, like the wine itself, this god had a fiery nature according to which he was born and died from lightning, that is celestial Fire. The "Dionysian" was seen as a "stranger" not only because he turned the world upside down and destroyed established social norms, especially through him making women leave their homes to go into the wild, but also because he was conceptualised as coming from the outside to reach inside man and inspire him with his cult's ecstatic frenzy. Since deities of vegetation are always connected to the underworld, this was also the case of the "Dionysian" as well. Among the Greeks, Dionysus was sometimes believed to be the son of queen of the underworld Persephone, or identified with her husband, the king of the underworld, Hades, and the Thracians under Roman rule represented Dionysys as the one abducting Persephone, and they would pay respects to the dead during the Rosalia festival held in the honour of Dionysus. Unlike the Greek Dionysys, however, the Thracian chthonic was a god of divination, and all the famous oracles in Thrace belonged to him and all prophesising was made under the god's divine influence. The Greek myth of Dionysys and Lycurgus The Greek myth of Dionysus and Lycurgus preserves the history of the arrival of the cult of Dionysus (Zagreus) in Thrace. Lycurgus (, ; ), the king of the Edoni who lived on the shores of the Hellespont, was the son of the god of the North Wind, Boreas. Butes, a son of Boreas by another mother, plotted against his step-brother Lycurgus. When Lycurgus found out about it, instead of harming Butes, he ordered his step-brother and his co-conspirators to take a ship and settle in another land. Butes and his men eventually settled on the island of Strongyle, the future Naxos, where they became pirates. During one of their raids, Butes and his men landed in Drius in Thessaly, where the nurses of Dionysus were celebrating the orgies in honour of the god. Butes abducted the Maenad Coronis, who implored the help of Dionysus. The god turned Butes insane so that he threw himself into a well and drowned in it. Mythologically, the first person Dionysus (the chthonic form