non-Hellenik, origin of Dionysos; (2) the introduction of his cult into the West; and (3) the violent but unsuccessful opposition which it excited. Whether Lykourgos was a real or an imaginary king of the Edonoi, or of any other kindred or neighbouring tribe, or whether, as has been conjectured, the name is that of a rival native deity 'worshipped perhaps with phallic rites like the Roman Luperci,' is quite immaterial; the purport and general bearing of the legend cannot be mistaken. I am not aware that anyone has attempted to explain it by the aid of the Natural Phenomena Theory, but any such attempt, if made would be about as rational as the assertion that the campaigns of Kudurlagamer2 represent astronomical allegories. Colonel Mure, who somewhat arbitrarily transfers the scene of the tale to Boiotia, very properly regards Lykourgos as 'a type of the resistance offered to the spread of those extravagant (Bakchik) orgies.'3 Mr. Gladstone remarks, 'What is most clear about Dionusos in Homer is, first, that his worship was extremely recent; secondly, that it made its appearance in Thrace; thirdly, that it was violently opposed on its introduction, a fact of which we have other records, as, for example, in the Bakchae of Euripides; and even Mr. Cox admits that the opposition of the Thrakian Lykourgos and the Theban Pentheus to the cultus of Dionysos is among the few indications of historical facts exhibited in Hellenik mythology.' In this brief Homerik sketch the god appears, somewhat as we are accustomed to see him in the Attik dramatists, as Bakcheios the Exciter-to-phrensy, accompanied by his attendant Bakchai (not the Nymphs his nurses), with their Thysthla or sacred implements, not merely the Thyrsoi. The circumstance, however, affords no proof of the

1 Mr. F. A. Paley, in loc.

2 Gen. xiv.

Crit. Hist. i. 151.

4 Juv. Mun. 319.

5 Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, ii. 294.

spurious character and comparatively late date of the passage; but, on the contrary, illustrates at once the antiquity of Bakchik worship, and the fidelity with which earlier traditions were preserved to later ages. Nor, again, can it be said, that the pristine cult of the god was merely that of Dionysos Theoinos, giver of wine and lord of the vine, and that on this primitive Aryan idea the Semitic orgies of the East were grafted. Homeros is quite innocent of any such notion. It is not to an Aryan Dionysos metamorphosed into a Semitic Sabazios that the ruler of the Edonoi objects, but to Dionysos altogether, in origin and in growth. Again, the Dionysos of the Ilias in no way differs from the Dionysos of the Homerik Hymns. The god of each is the son of a Kadmeian, i.e., Oriental, not of a Boiotik, mother; is connected with the mysterious Nysa; is supposed to be weak, but in reality is most potent; is opposed and insulted, and terribly avenged. In each case his would-be oppressors are smitten with blindness; not the mystic blindness of the great poets and prophets, Teiresias, Thamyris, and others, but the blindness of Pentheus, which is unable to foresee the coming vengeance of the god, that heaven-sent mania under the impulses of which the guilty wretch fulfils his doom, according to the familiar saying, 'Quem vult perdere Deus prius dementat.' And so, we do not find Lykourgos represented in other legends as having been physically blinded, but merely has having been smitten with Bakchik madness, in which state he kills his son Dryas, supposing that he was pruning vines.1 Such, then, are the principal features in the Episode of Lykourgos; other points, more or less connected with it, I shall have occasion to notice again in the course of the enquiry; but let the reader always bear in mind the important fact which will receive 1 Apollod. iii. 5.

1

ample confirmation as we proceed, and which is set forth with unanswerable force by this the earliest of HellenikoDionysiak legends, altered and trimmed as it may have been from time to time by rhapsodist or grammarian, that Dionysos in origin is a non-Hellenik divinity, whose whole cult breathes of that Semitic East where first it originated.

Subsection 11.-Dionysos, son of Semele.

In Ilias, xiv. 317-27, a passage which, although probably of genuine antiquity, is yet not quite beyond the reach of suspicion, having been doubted, amongst others, by some of the Alexandrine critics; Zeus gives a list of some of his most illustrious children and their mothers. Amongst these occur, side by side, the two Theban divinities Herakles and Dionysos, the former son of Alkmene, the latter of Semele. Both gods are stated to have been born in Thebai, and Semele is mentioned in a Homerik Hymn1 as one of the family of Kadmos, who himself is only directly alluded to in the Poems on the occasion where Odysseus is assisted by his daughter, the once mortal but afterwards deified Ino Leukotheë.2 The inhabitants of the Thebais, however, are called Kadmeioi and Kadmeiones, after Kadmos, their reputed ancestor. I loved Semele in Thebai,' says Zeus, and she bore Dionysos, a-source-of-joy to mortals.' The Episode of Lykourgos had left us in ignorance of the race of Dionysos, but this important passage links him with the house of the Phoenician Kadmos, and the mystic City of the Seven Gates; in other words, with the Semitic East. As to the legend of Kadmos, which Bunsen truly calls a wonderful myth,' suffice it to say here that the unanimous inf. VI. i. 2.

1 Eis Dionyson, v. 57.

2 Od. v. 333. As to Ino, vide

3 Il. iv. 385 et seq.; v. 804 et seq.

voice of antiquity describes him as an Oriental stranger, Phoenician or Egyptian, the founder of the legendary Thebai; nor does the Homerik version differ from others, for Zethos and Amphion founded the Lower City, Hypothebai,1 described as Eurychoros, Spacious, like Sparte; while Kadmos founded the Upper City, or comparatively small Kadmeia. Homeros distinguishes, as Pausanias observes, between the Lower City and the Kadmeia.1 That this tradition contains very important historic truth, sound modern opinion, in harmony with the universal belief of antiquity, admits.5 Dionysos, therefore, in Homerik mythic genealogy, is a Phoenician by the mother's side, and adopted by the Aryan Zeus, into whose realm he has penetrated. But he is also said to be 'a-source-of-joy to mortals,' and the wonderful propriety of this description will only become apparent when we fully realise his various phases. Once for all, let me caution the reader against simply regarding Dionysos as Theoinos the Wine-god, and supposing that he is merely a source of joy as making glad the heart of man with the juice of the grape. This would, indeed, be a sadly incomplete concept of the son of Semele. As well might we suppose that Zeus was naught but Ombrios, the Raingod, or Poseidon only Kyanochaites, the Lord-of-thedark-blue-sea. Moreover, all the aspects of Dionysos Theoinos are by no means joyful, since wine has a double influence, producing, on the one hand, happiness and exhilaration, and, on the other, misery and madness. The Wine-god might thus have been properly represented as

1 Il. ii. 505.

2 Od. xi. 263.

3 Paus. ii. 6.

• Vide inf. X. ii.

Cf. Niebuhr, Ancient Ethnography, i. 114; Kenrick, Phoenicia, 97 et seq.; Donaldson, Theatre of the Greeks, 14 et seq.; Thirlwall, Hist. Greece, i. 68, 69; Bähr in Herod.

v. 57; Creuzer, Symbolik, iv. 236; Mure, Crit. Hist. iii. 499; Rawlinson, Herod. ii. 78; Lenormant, La légende de Cadmus, and Ancient Hist. of the East, ii. 169, 204; Gladstone, Juv. Mun. 122; Grote, Hist. Greece, ii. 357; and Rev. G. W. Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, i1. 86.

Janus-faced, and so at times we see him as Psychodaiktes, the Destroyer-of-the-soul,1 or Hypnophobes, the Terrifierduring-sleep, i.e. by sending dreadful dreams. Thus

Dionysos as Theoinos would be by no means a source of unmixed joy to mortals. But Homeros calls him Charma, a mystic charm, soothing as the Nepenthe of Polydamna; (1) as aye fresh and young, the EverYouth, a new-fledged Eros in perennial vigour; (2) as Hymeneïos, god of marriage and rejoicing; (3) as Karpios and kindred epithets, which connect him with the beautiful green earth in its might of strength and growth; (4) as Melpomenos, the Singer and leader of the cheerful song-and-dance; (5) as Hygiates, the Healer, and restorer to sound health and vigour; and (6) as Theoinos, the Exhilirater-by-wine. Let the reader consider the combined force of epithets such as these, and he will see how truly Dionysos was regarded as a source of joy, and how rightly Hesiodos calls him Polygethes the Much-cheering, and Ploutarchos, Charidotes the Joy-giver.

Subsection III.-Dionysos and Naxos.

Odysseus, when recounting his adventures in the Under-world, states that he saw 'beautiful Ariadne, daughter of Minos, whom once Theseus was conducting to the cultivated soil of sacred Athenai; but Artemis slew her in sea-girt Dia, through the testimony of Dionysos.'4 The common tradition about Ariadne, daughter of the Phoenician Minos, represents her as having been abandoned by Theseus in Naxos, and found there by Dionysos, who makes her his wife. But in this Homerik legend the chaste Artemis avenges the profanation of a sanctuary by the flying lovers, as Kybele had done in the

1 Cf. Hos. iv. 11.

2 Cf. Hesiod. Aspis Herak, 400. 3 Od. iv. 220

4 Od. xi. 321.

5 Cf. I. xiv. 321; Juv. Mun. chap. v.