Various religions, like the cult of Isis in Egypt and the Dionysian cult of Greece, practiced their own forms of flagellation.

If it was imported from Italy then, a relic of a Dionysian cult which had survived there, it could easily have survived in England; or it could have been imported from France by the Normans far earlier.

One could observe entirely preserved vessels, e.g. sealed oenochoai representing scenes of the Dionysian cult - Silenus abducts a menade, a Satyr's masque.

By its nature as a mystery religion reserved for the initiated, many aspects of the Dionysian cult remain unknown and were lost with the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism; our knowledge is derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.

The thyrsus is explicitly attributed to Dionysus in Euripides's play The Bacchae as part of the costume of the Dionysian cult.

Silenus commonly figures in Roman bas-reliefs of the train of Dionysus, a subject for sarcophagi, embodying the transcendent promises of Dionysian cult.

The god Dionysus is especially seductive to actors and playwrights since, historically, theater in the West either developed out of the Dionysian cult or grew up alongside it.

Mithraism, the Eleusinian cult at Athens, the Dionysian cults, etc. all had age-old shamanic techniques for inducing neurosomatic rapture; Christianity(at first) seems to have been superior in creating neurosomaticcontrol.

This etymology indicates a link with the practices of the ancient Dionysian cults.

Their king, Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), whose mother adhered to the Dionysian cult, developed a reputation for inebriety.