Like Dionysus who is depicted in a number of forms which range from an older, bearded god to a long-haired youth, Bond has appeared in a variety of guises from the debonair David Niven to the strapping Daniel Craig.

Pythagoreans believed three was male and four female – their unity in 007 makes perfect sense. Bond’s number in the secret service - Agent 007 - is thus the perfect number to represent a modern-day fertility god. In ancient Greece, the number seven was sacred and composed of the number three (the heavenly male) and the number four (the heavenly female). This puts a new spin on the Midas myth in which Dionysus granted the king’s wish to be blessed with the golden touch, only to discover that it is a curse making it impossible to eat or even embrace his daughter without turning her into metal. In Goldfinger (1964), Jill Masterton is punished by the eponymous villain for betraying him to Bond, dying of skin suffocation when he covers her in gold paint. In Live and Let Die (1973), Bond girl, Solitaire loses her psychic powers after a close encounter of the passionate kind with Bond and becomes a target for heroin baron, Dr Kananga. IMDBĪs with the Maenads, devotion to Bond comes with its perils. Bond – here Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights (1987) – found himself surrounded by devoted women.

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