Dionysus

“ The guards loose the arms of Dionysus; Pentheus studies him for a while in silence, then speaks jeeringly. Dionysus remains gentle and unafraid.
Marry, a fair shape for a woman's eye, Sir stranger! And thou seek'st no more, I ween! Long curls, withal! That shows thou ne'er hast been A wrestler!—down both cheeks so softly tossed And winsome! And a white skin! It hath cost Thee pains, to please thy damsels with this white And red of cheeks that never face the light! ”

“ But farther from this account of Dionysus, we may perceive the truth of Plato’s observation, “that the design of the Mysteries is to lead us back to the perfection from which, as our beginning, we first made our descent.” For in this perfection Dionysus himself subsists, establishing perfect souls in the throne of his father; that is, in the integrity of a life according to Jupiter. So that he who is perfect necessarily resides with the gods, according to the design of those deities, who are the sources of consummate perfection to the soul. ”

“ Apollo, Dionysus:—strong, beautiful, swift. This boy!—what had he to do with them? Why should he suggest them? And then, in the background, a haunting sense of something darker, more fateful—tragic even!—again the legend of Dionysus; but more pitiable, quite human, vaguely pathetic and bewildering.
By and by he opened a copy of the Phaedrus, which he had worked through with his father, and began to read.
They had studied together most of the shorter dialogues, and the whole of the Republic, but the Phaedrus Graham cared for most. ”

“ The procession of Dionysus comes down the street. Flute-players go foremost; drunken men, some of them dressed as fauns and satyrs, dance to the measure. In the middle of the procession comes the Emperor Julian, riding on an ass, which is covered with a panther-skin; he is dressed as the god Dionysus, with a panther-skin over his shoulders, a wreath of vine-leaves round his head, in his hands a staff wreathed with green, and with a pine-cone fastened on its upper end. ”

“ TO DIONYSUS
I begin to sing of ivy-crowned Dionysus, the loud-crying god, splendid son of Zeus and glorious Semele. The rich-haired Nymphs received him in their bosoms from the lord his father and fostered and nurtured him carefully in the dells of Nysa, where by the will of his father he grew up in a sweet-smelling cave, being reckoned among the immortals. But when the goddesses had brought him up, a god oft hymned, then began he to wander continually through the woody coombes, thickly wreathed with ivy and laurel. ”

“ The disguise of the ancient god is thin indeed. His name is changed by an iota, but his character not a jot. S. Dionysius is god of the vine, and even retains his predecessor’s connexion with Naxos. It is perhaps noteworthy too that in Athens the road which skirts the south side of the Acropolis and the theatre of Dionysus is now called the street of S. Dionysius the Areopagite. I was once corrected by a Greek of average education for speaking of the theatre of Dionysus instead of ascribing it to his saintly namesake. ”

“ When Dionysus returned to Greece from his Eastern expedition, he encountered great opposition from Lycurgus, king of Thrace, and Pentheus, king of Thebes. The former, highly disapproving of the wild revels which attended the worship of the wine-god, drove away his attendants, the nymphs of Nysa, from that sacred mountain, and so effectually intimidated Dionysus, that he precipitated himself into the sea, where he was received into the arms of the ocean-nymph, Thetis. But the impious king bitterly expiated his sacrilegious conduct. ”

“ Moreover, among the emblems of Dionysus was the winnowing-fan, that is the large open shovel-shaped basket, which down to modern times has been used by farmers to separate the grain from the chaff by tossing the corn in the air. This simple agricultural instrument figured in the mystic rites of Dionysus; indeed the god is traditionally said to have been placed at birth in a winnowing-fan as in a cradle: in art he is represented as an infant so cradled ”

“ But they who conquer, these are our Saviours; they shall follow in the train of Dionysus; they shall lift us to the heavens, and sanctify in our remembrance the Sunday of Palms!
But Dionysus not only looks back with triumphant remembrance to ancient conquest, but has his victories in the present, also, and in the great Hereafter. For triumph was connected with all Dionysiac symbols, hints of which are preserved to us in representations found upon ancient vases: such, for instance, as the figure of Victory surmounting the heads of the ivy-crowned Bacchantes in their mystic orgies ”

“ He now proceeds to draw an analogy between their loathsome god Dionysus and Jesus Christ! Thus Dionysus is born of God (Zeus) and a human mother. He is the “twice-born”—having been hidden in Zeus’s thigh after birth! He “comes to his own people of Thebes, and—his own receive him not.” Again “It seemed to Euripides in that favourite metaphor of his, which was always a little more than a metaphor, that a God had been rejected by the world that he came from.” Dionysus “gives his Wine to all men.... It is a mysticism which includes democracy, as it includes the love of your neighbour.” ”

“ Plutarch telling us how, before the battle of Salamis, with the assent of Themistocles, three Persian captive youths were offered to Dionysus the Devourer.
As, then, some embodied their fears of winter in Persephone, others embodied them in Dionysus, a devouring god, whose sinister side (as the best wine itself has its treacheries) is illustrated in the dark and shameful secret society described by Livy, in which his worship ended at Rome, afterwards abolished by solemn act of the senate. [49] He becomes a new Aidoneus, a hunter of men's souls ”

“ Well;—this softened version of the Bacchic madness is a sophism of Euripides; and Dionysus Omophagus—the eater of raw flesh, must be added to the golden image of Dionysus Meilichius—the honey-sweet, if the old tradition in its completeness is to be, in spite of that sophism, our closing impression; if we are to catch, in its fulness, that deep undercurrent of horror which runs below, all through [79] this masque of spring, and realise the spectacle of that wild chase, in which Dionysus is ultimately both the hunter and the spoil. ”

“ It is the finer, mystical sentiment of the few, detached from the coarser and more material religion of the many, and accompanying it, through the course of its history, as its ethereal, less palpable, life-giving soul, and, as always happens, seeking the quiet, and not too anxious to make itself felt by others. With some unfixed, though real, place in the general scheme of Greek religion, this phase of the worship of Dionysus had its special development in the Orphic literature and mysteries. ”

“ Dionysus was then conveyed by Hermes to be brought up by the nymphs of Nysa, a purely imaginary spot, afterwards localized in different parts of the world, which claimed the honour of having been the birthplace of the god. As soon as Dionysus was grown up, he started on a journey through the world, to teach the cultivation of the vine and spread his worship among men. ”

“ Of all the pagan Mysteries instituted by the ancients none were more extensively diffused than those of the Grecian god Dionysus. They were established in Greece, Rome, Syria, and all Asia Minor. Among the Greeks, and still more among the Romans, the rites celebrated on the Dionysiac festival were, it must be confessed, of a dissolute and licentious character. [1] But in Asia they assumed a different form. There, as elsewhere, the legend (for it has already been said that each Mystery had its legend) recounted, and the ceremonies represented, the murder of Dionysus by the Titans. ”

“ And I recognise the kinship of Athene and the Mother of the Gods through the similarity of the forethought that inheres in the substance of both goddesses. And I discern also the divided creative function of Dionysus, which great Dionysus received from the single and abiding principle of life that is in mighty Zeus. For from Zeus he proceeded, and he bestows that life on all things visible, controlling and governing the creation of the whole divisible world. ”

“ Κεραυνοι δε τουτοις ὁ Ζευς, του κεραυνου δηλουντος την επιστροφεν· πυργαρ επι τα ανω κινουμενα· επιστρεφει ουν αυτους προς εαυτον. But by the members of Dionysus being first boiled in water by the Titans, and afterward roasted by the fire, the outgoing or distribution of intellect into matter, and its subsequent returning from thence, is evidently implied: for water was considered by the Egyptians, as we have already observed, as the symbol of matter; and fire is the natural symbol of ascending. The heart of Dionysus too, is, with the greatest propriety, said to be preserved by Minerva ”

“ A still closer analogy, however, with the Hindu and Persian conception is to be found in the cult of Dionysus, who was regarded as present in the wine, which was his gift to man. “He, born a god,” says Euripides, “is poured out in libations to the gods.” [290] And again, “This god is a prophet. For when he forces his way into the body, he makes those who 127 rave to foretell the future.” [291] The fact that Dionysus was essentially a tree-god, “the spiritual form of the vine,” [292] renders the analogy still more striking. ”

“ From the Peloponnesus Lasus brought the new art to the court of the Pisistratidæ at Athens. At that time everything connected with the worship of Dionysus was regarded with special favour, the dithyrambus was introduced into state festivals, and wealthy citizens vied with one another in equipping and training Bacchic choirs, composed of fifty singers who danced circling the flaming altars of Dionysus; and no expense was spared to procure new songs for the Attic Dionysia from the greatest masters, such as Pindar and Simonides. ”

“ Thus far the resurrection of the slain god is not mentioned, but in other versions of the myth it is variously related. According to one version, which represented Dionysus as a son of Zeus and Demeter, his mother pieced together his mangled limbs and made him young again. In others it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven; or that Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded; or that Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele, who in the common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. ”

“ If Dionysus, like Persephone, has his gloomy side, like her he has also a peculiar message for a certain number of refined minds, seeking, in the later days of Greek religion, such modifications of the old legend as may minister to ethical culture, to the perfecting of the moral nature. A type of second birth, from first to last, he opens, in his series of annual changes, for minds on the look-out for it, the hope of a possible analogy, between the resurrection of nature, and something else, as yet unrealised, reserved for human souls ”

“ One of his titles was “teeming” or “bursting” (as of sap or blossoms) ; and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree. The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree “equally with the god,” so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers. ”

“ It is true that the dead were often consulted (and necromancy long survived among civilized peoples) , but any spirit or god might take possession of a worshiper and make him the vehicle of revelation. Nor is the phallus-cult peculiar to Dionysus; this cult is widely diffused, and its origin is to be referred not specifically to the recognition of the general generative power of nature, but to the mystery of human life.1340 In his original home Dionysus seems to have represented everything that touched the life of his people. ”

“ Kern, s.v. “Dionysus,” in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 1010 sqq.; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religiöser Bedeutung (Leipsic, 1906) , pp. 258 sqq.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, v. (Oxford, 1909) pp. 85 sqq. The epithet Bromios bestowed on Dionysus, and his identification with the Thracian and Phrygian deity Sabazius, have been adduced as evidence that Dionysus was a god of beer or of other cereal intoxicants before he became a god of wine. See W. Headlam, in Classical Review, xv. (1901) p. 23 ”

“ For he in whom the abundance of life has not been perfected by the essential nature of Dionysus, uniform and wholly indivisible as it is in the divisible world and pre-existing whole and unmixed in all things, he I say who has not been perfected by means of the Bacchic and divine frenzy for the god, runs the risk that his life may flow into too many channels, and as it flows be torn to shreds, and hence come to naught. ”

“ I refer, in fact, to Dionysus. Although the mother of this truly estimable demi-god was not only a mortal, but a barbarian, and his maternal grandfather a tradesman in Phoenicia, one Cadmus, it was thought necessary to confer immortality upon him. With his own conduct since that time, I am not concerned; I shall have nothing to say on the subject of his snood, his inebriety, or his manner of walking. You may all see him for yourselves: an effeminate, half-witted creature, reeking of strong liquor from the early hours of the day. ”

“ Here are statues of Pæonian Athene and Zeus and Mnemosyne and the Muses, and Apollo (the votive offering and work of Eubulides) , and Acratus a satellite of Dionysus: his face alone is worked in the wall. And next to the shrine of Dionysus is a room with statues of earthenware, Amphictyon the king of the Athenians feasting Dionysus and all the other gods. Here too is Pegasus Eleutherensis, who introduced Dionysus to the Athenians; and he was assisted by the oracle at Delphi, which foretold [Pg 5] that the god would come and settle there in the days of Icarius. ”