"As even Livy knew, the true Dionysian instrument was the drum. Greece was not a percussion culture compared to Egypt, where Osiris's celebrants were far more polyrhythmic. But the tympanon, which generated a deep thump from a single animal-skin side, always came out for Dionysus, as did giant castanets called krotala."--Robert Christgau's archaeology of the Dionysian spirit of music and "liberation through ecstasy"