This sculpture of Aphrodite is located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The accompanying placard informs us:
"Marble statuette of Dionysos
Greek, early 2rd century B.C.
Said to have been found at Koukouvvaones in Attica...
The god wear Thracian boots, a short chiron, a belted panther skin, and a goatskin worn like a cape, with the forelegs of the goat wrapped around his arms. He can perhaps be identified as Dionysos Melanaigis (of the Black Goatskin), whose cult was introduced into Attica from Boetia..."
Wikipedia (visit link) adds:
"Dionysus ... was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name, thought to be a theonym in Linear B tablets as di-wo-nu-so (KH Gq 5 inscription), shows that he may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks; other traces of the Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, "the god that comes", and his "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. Dionysus was the last god to be accepted into Mt. Olympus. He was the youngest and the only one to have a mortal mother. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. He is an example of a dying god."
As for the asteroid, Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"3671 Dionysus is a small binary Amor asteroid, orbiting between the Earth and the asteroid belt. It was discovered by Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker at Palomar Observatory on 27 May 1984. It is named after Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. Its provisional designation was 1984 KD. It is an outer Earth grazer because its perihelion is just within Earth's orbit.
Near-Earth object
Dionysus makes many close approaches to Earth. Its closest approach so far occurred in 1984, when Dionysus passed just 0.03047 astronomical units (4,558,000 km) from Earth. Dionysus is expected to continue to make close approaches.
Moon
In 1997, a team of astronomers at the European Southern Observatory announced that lightcurve observations indicate the presence of a small moon orbiting Dionysus. Its provisional designation is S/1997 (3671) 1. This moon measures 300 meters in diameter, and orbits 3.6km from Dionysus with an eccentricity of 0.07 and an orbital period of 27.72 hours. From the surface of Dionysus, S/1997 (3671) 1 would have an apparent diameter of roughly 3.02 degrees.[a] For comparison, the Sun appears to be 0.5° from Earth."