When Friedrich Nietzsche described himself as “the last disciple of the god Dionysus”, he expressed something significant about his outlook on the world. Like Christ, the pagan god Dionysus was said to be a mixture of deity and creature, having a divine father and a human mother. Both figures, moreover, are associated with triumphing over an agonising death. But for Nietzsche, these apparent similarities between Dionysus and Christ conceal a fundamental difference in their respective attitudes towards suffering and life.