special secret Dionysiak celebration, called the Dodekate, because it fell on the twelfth of the month, at the temple of Dionysos Limnaios before mentioned, under the control of the wife of the Archon-King, who appointed fourteen noble women free from all ceremonial pollution, and called Gerarai the Venerables, to assist on the occasion. 'The Anthesteria,' remarks Donaldson,' was accompanied by mystic solemnities, pointing at once to this ideal [i.e. as a phallic divinity in the widest sense] of the religion of Dionysos, and to its Semitic origin. At this festival the mysteries were entrusted to the wife of the king Archon, and to fourteen priestesses, whose number is that of the victims sent to the Minotaur, and is obviously Semitic.1 As the representative of the state, and as symbolizing the virgin daughter of Demeter, who returned to the earth in the spring, the king Archon's wife was solemnly espoused to Dionysos, just as conversely the Venetian Doge annually married the sea, and she alone was admitted to gaze on the mysterious emblems of the god's worship, on which the welfare of the state was supposed to depend, namely, the sacred serpent and the Phallus.' 2 The symbolism, in its widest signification, is nothing less than indicative of the marriage of heaven and earth, of mind and matter, of soul and body, of active and passive principles, and of that union and unity of effort whence and by means of which are all things. Thus, the most ancient Dionysiak Festival of the god brings him before us as the phallic, serpent-girt, life-bestowing, fire-breathing, solar, kosmic, and also tauric, divinity, whose pristine home is in the Oriental cradle of mankind. The Dionysia Megala, the Greater or City Dionysia, celebrated yearly in the month Elaphebolion (MarchApril), was presided over by the Archon Eponymos, so As to the Minotauros, vide inf. IX. iii. 2 Theatre of the Greeks, 19; cf. Ibid. 55, 212-3; Herod. ii. 48-9. called because the year was registered in his name,1 and who was the first of the Nine. The order of the solemnities was as follows: I. The great public procession. This appears to have consisted of, 1. A motley crowd of dancing, shouting votaries, adorned with the leaves and with crowns of Bakchik trees and plants, such as ivy, vine, pine, and fir; beating drums, and playing on various musical instruments, some dressed in fawn- or goat-skins. 2. The bearers of the sacred vessels or mystic jars, one of which was filled with water, humidity being necessary to life and growth; and moisture or fluid matter having existed previously to the dry land, water, the Homerik all-fostering ocean-stream, being thus in one sense and aspect a kind of sire of all.2 3. The Kanephoroi or Basket-bearers, noble maidens who carried the mystic golden baskets filled with fruit, and also at times containing serpents. So the Chorus of Women in the Lysistrate, when enumerating the religious festivals which the Athenian maids took part in, conclude, And at length I bore the basket being a beautiful girl, having a string of dried figs.' These basket-bearers also appeared in the processions of Athene and Demeter.5 The Kaneon is identical in signification with the Kalathos, both words meaning primarily a wicker-basket.6 1 The Assyrian practice was similar. Vide George Smith, The Assyrian Eponym Canon. 3 Cf. Gen. i. 2, 6-10; Sanchou. i. 1; Berosos, Chaldaika, i. Frag. 1; Pindar, Ol. i. 1. 'It is evident that, according to the notion of the Babylonians, the sea was the origin of all things... a watery chaos preceded the creation and formed the origin and groundwork of the universe' (George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, 64-5). 4 4. The Phallophoroi,' crowned with violets and ivy, and carrying wooden representations of the Linga. 5. The Ithyphalloi, dressed as women, thus representing the androgynous or two-natured divinity. reeled along as if intoxicated, crowned with flowers. They 6. The Liknophoroi, who carried the Liknon, or sacred fan of Dionysos Liknites," the mystic fan of Iakchos,' which was an essential implement at the sacreds of the god, being typical of purgation and purification.3 Liknon signifies (1) an osier winnowing-fan; (2) a shallow basket for fruits and offerings, and so becomes identical with the Kaneon and the Kalathos; and (3) a cradle.* II. The Chorus of Youths. III. The Komos, or band of Dionysiak revellers, whose ritual is best illustrated in Milton's exquisite poem.5 And IV. The representation of Comedy and Tragedy, for at Athenai the stage was religion and the theatre a temple. At the time of this great Festival the capital was filled with rustics from the country townships, and strangers from all parts of Hellas and the Outer-world, including the numerous naval allies of the Athenians, who would doubtless be suitably impressed, by the elaboration of the ritual, with a sense of the power of the great city both in things human and divine. Such was the character of, and the general procedure observed at, the four great Attik Festivals of Dionysos, and it cannot be truly affirmed that they merely illustrate the cult of a wine-god. We are not here concerned with Hellenik antiquities generally, but only in so far as they illustrate the intricate nature and concept of this elastic and Proteus-like divinity. 1 Phallic Dionysiak processions appear to have been common in the majority of Hellenik cities. Cf. Aristot. Peri Poiet. iv.; Müller, Doric Race, i. 419; Donaldson, Theatre of the Greeks, 72. 2 Vide inf. VIII. ii. Liknites. 4 Cf. Hom. Hymn, eis Herm. 26. 5 Three other Dionysiak Festivals peculiar to Attike require notice: the Askolia, the Brauronia, and the Oschophoria. The first was observed by the Attik husbandmen who, after the sacrifice of a he-goat,' made a bottle of the skin, filled it with oil and wine, and then played at the sport called Askoliasmos, which consisted in leaping on the leathern bottle askos, and endeavouring to stand with one foot upon it, the victor receiving the bottle as his prize. Here the bottle corresponds with the mystic jar of the city festivals, and is in fact a kosmic Askidian. The Dionysia Brauronia was celebrated once in five years at the Attik town of Brauron, situate near the sea coast almost due east from Athenai, and which, in the fifth century B.C., with the exception of the capital and Eleusis, was the most important place in Attike. The Festival was marked by the wildest and most dissolute Bakchik revelry, and Brauron on the occasion became a noted trysting-place for doubtful characters of both sexes. It, however, is chiefly remarkable in a Dionysiak connection, as having been a point of contact between two similar divinities, Dionysos Taurokeros, the Bull-horned, and Artemis Taurike, the Bovine. Even a tyro in the study of mythology will at once see that Artemis Orthia, the Phallic, called Taurike, and also by the mysterious name Tauropolos, is in reality, like Artemis Ephesia Polymastos, the Many-breasted, a being perfectly distinct in origin from the simple Dorik huntress-goddess, sister of 1 Vide inf. VIII. ii. Goat. 2A simple Ascidian 'is, according to some, the venerable grandsire of the human race. When Bacchus' feasts came duly round, Athenian peasants beat the ground; And danced and leapt, to ease their toil, Mid leather bottles smeared with oil: From which they slid, with broad grimace, And falling, filled with mirth the place: And so they owned and honoured well Their great grand-sire-the leather bottèl.-Blackwood, May 1871. 3 Cf. Aristoph. Eirene, 874, et Schol.; Souidas. in voc Brauron. * Vide inf. IX. iii. the great Aryan sun-god Apollon. Nothing is more singular than the way in which the Hellenes apparently identified their innocent and beautiful concept of Artemis with such creations as Taurike of Brauron, Polymastos the Great Mother of Ephesos, or the Kamic Pasht. K. O. Müller, who is anything but clear in his view of the matter, is nevertheless constrained to remark that the image of the Ephesian Artemis is not connected by any visible bond,' nor indeed by any invisible bond, with the Hellenic notions of Artemis,' and mentions other forms of the goddess in Asia Minor, still more rude and unsightly. Altogether, Asia Minor was full of strange and peculiar representations of this deity' [of the Great Goddess Mother he should have said], which come nearer to the Anaitis of the East than to the Grecian Artemis.' Doubtless; and all such representations, moreover, transgress the Hellenik anthropomorphic canon which I venture to lay down.2 The name of Artemis may, therefore, be at once dismissed as being only calculated to create confusion of idea, and I will call the goddess Taurike. It must have been remarked that the Uasar of Hellas appears to have no Uasi, but we here find her at Brauron; and her connection with the Bull-horned Dionysos will become very apparent in the sequel. Her Brauronik festival, like that of Dionysos, was quinquennial, the first noticeable point of agreement between them; and was presided over by ten Hieropoioi, or Managers-ofsacred-rites, whose special function it was to see that the victims were without blemish. A goat was sacrificed, and rhapsodic recitations from Homerik Poems took place on the occasion. But the most interesting feature in the ceremonial was a procession of little girls, all under ten years of age, dressed in saffron-coloured garments, and 1 Ancient Art and its Remains, 456-7. 2 Vide inf. VII. Dionysos in Art. 3 Hesych. in voc. Brauroniois. |