Eleusinian legend. Thus the latter appears to be the unnamed child of Zeus and Demeter, whose loves are noticed. The Mysteries of Eleusis, a name which signifies 'Coming,' and is said to have been given on account of the arrival of Demeter there, having thus been established probably for some ages, a new personage, Dionysos, was at length introduced on the scene as the Assistant and Associate of the Two Goddesses. No connection between Dionysos and the more ancient divinities of Eleusis appears in Homeros, or in the Hesiodik Theogony, but his installation at the Mysteries had taken place considerably earlier than the time of Pindaros. I have already noticed some of the passages which introduce and illustrate the part of Dionysos at Eleusis, which is in exact parallel to his position by the side of Apollon at Delphoi. Thus he is the Associate of bronze-rattling Demeter,' 2 whom Euripides frequently, but incorrectly, treats as being absolutely identical with Kybele. The Chorus in the Antigoné, addressing the god, exclaimed, 'Thou rulest over the Eleusinian rites of Deo in the vales common to all.' The last word seems to imply that the ceremonies of initiation were for the people at large, not for any particular persons or classes. Thus Herodotos says, 'Every year the Athenians celebrate this feast to the Mother and the Daughter, and all who wish, whether they be Athenians or any other Greeks, are initiated.' The Fragment quoted from the Triptolemos of Sophokles is very valuable in this connection. Triptolemos, the law-administering King,' appears in the Homerik Hymn as one of those to whom Demeter unfolded her mysteries; and as already noticed, his patroness gave him a winged or dragondrawn chariot, in which he was carried over the earth,

1 ll. xiv. 326; cf. Juv. Mundi, 261.

2 Pind. Isth. vi. 3.

3 Soph. Antig. 119-21.

4 Herod. viii. 65.

5 Sup. IV. ii. 1.

distributing wheat-seeds to mankind.' 'I beheld,' Triptolemos himself is probably the speaker, the famed Nysa, the abode of Bakchik fury, which the Ox-horned Iakchos inhabits as his best beloved retreat.' Triptolemos, in the course of his journeyings over the earth, arrives at the mystic Nysa, the very place whence Persephone was snatched away, and at Nysa, of course, meets with Dionysos, the taurik god of the East, who, it will be observed, is called by the special name under which he was known in the Eleusinian mysteries, Iakchos. The absolute identity of the taurik Dionysos and the ox-horned Iakchos of Nysa comes out with great clearness. A singular statement of Grote on this point may here be noticed: Bacchus or Dionysos are in the Attic Tragedians constantly confounded with the Demetrian Iacchos originally so different-a personification of the mystic word shouted by the Eleusinian communicants.'1 The greater part of the Hellenes,' says Strabo, attribute to Bakchos, Apollon, Hekate, the Muses, and Demeter everything connected with orgies and Bakchanalian rites, dances, and the mysteries attendant upon initiation. They also call Bakchos Dionysos, and the chief Daemon of the mysteries of Demeter.' 2 So that not only the Attic Tragedians,' but also the greater part of the Hellenes, were, according to Grote, entirely in error on this simple point. All these, many of whom had actually been initiated, believed that Dionysos was an important personage at Eleusis, when in reality he was never worshipped there at all. How comes it that the modern historian knows these facts so much better than the persons who made the history which he has recorded? This is not a point on which information has increased: Dionysos was either worshipped at Eleusis, or he was not, and of this

Hist. of Greece, i. 86, Note.

2 Strabo, x. 3.

fact, those who took part in the ritual of the place are, according to all laws of evidence, the best judges. But if he was worshipped there at all, it was as Iakchos. Again, who is Iakchos? and if he were not Dionysos, how came he to be confounded with him? But Iakchos is said to be the personification of a mystic word, and so for that matter is Dionysos also. Donaldson very properly alludes to Iakchos as the synonym of Bakchos, and explains the name in the usual way, i.e., as referring to the outcries attending' the worship of the god.1 The observations of Ouvaroff on this subtle question are well worthy of attention:- The third Bacchus is the Iacchus of Eleusis, who seems to have been imagined only that he might consecrate, in some degree, the alliance between the recent worship of Bacchus and that of Ceres, to which all the mysteries tended. Iacchus is the symbol of this association: his only destination having been already fulfilled by his birth, the myth has remained imperfect; it is the most vague of all.' The sixth day of the Eleusinian mysteries 'consecrated to Iacchus was the most solemn of all. But it requires very little reflection to perceive that this procession, subsequently so famous, was at first only an addition, foreign to the mysteries of Eleusis. It had not, in fact, any relation with the basis of the mysteries, but reveals incontestably the association of the secret worship of Bacchus to the mysteries of Ceres. Several mythographers have endeavoured to distinguish between Bacchus and Iacchus; but this attempt has been useless. There is in the employment of Tacchus, so distinct from the basis of the Eleusinian Mysteries, something which rather bespeaks a later association than a perfect identity.'2 A passage in the Tôn of Euripides, which I have already illustrated, represents Dionysos as hastening to Eleusis, in 1 Theatre of the Greeks, 17. Sup. IV. iii. 1.

2

Essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries,vi.

3

order to appear there on the sixth day of the mysteries as Protagonist in the universal nature-dance in honour of the Mother and the Daughter.1 In the Kretes, Frag. II.,2 the office of Iakchos as torch-bearer is alluded to. The mystic imitates the life of the night-wandering Zagreus,' by holding up torches to the Mountain-mother,' i.e., Kybele, who, according to Euripides, is identical with Demeter. Thus the god in all his phases as ZagreusDionysos-Iakchos is represented as the Attendant, Associate, and chief Torch-bearer to the Great Goddesses of Eleusis. So in the Orphik Hymn Demeter is called the 'hearth-sharer of Bromios,' which, although incorrectly expressed, aptly illustrates their connection. The writer should have styled Dionysos the hearth-sharer of Demeter; he is the second, not the first. So, again, Persephone is said to be 'the Mother of Eubouleus, the Wise-counsellingOne, i.e., Dionysos, an easy transition, as Dionysos, the Earth-spirit, is naturally the son of all the great telluric and chthonian goddesses. Kallimachos forcibly illustrates the union of their nature and cult when he says that the same acts enrage Demeter and Dionysos,5 and the mythological itinerary of Pausanias frequently affords illustrations of the close connection between them. The introduction of Dionysos to the mysteries is also illustrated in the Batrachoi of Aristophanes, where Herakles first explains to him the state of the initiated; and then, having crossed the Styx, he is terrified by a dreadful spectre called the Empousa, which was covered with bloody pustules, and constantly, Proteus-like, changed its shape. This having disappeared, he hears the Chorus of Mystics calling on Iakchos to lead the sacred dance in the

1 Cf. Eur. Hel. 1301-68.

2 Noticed sup. IV. iii. 5.

3 Hymn xl. 10.

4 Hymn xxix. 8. with xxx. 6.

5 Hymn. eis Dem. 71.

6 Bat. 154-8.

7 Cf. Ekkle. 1066.

8 Bat. 288-305.

U

meadow, torch in hand, on which the god exclaims, I will go with the damsels and the women where they by night celebrate the festival of the goddess, bearing the sacred torch.' Thus was Dionysos installed as the Dadouchos, or Torch-bearer, at the Mysteries.

1

Such being the connection between Dionysos and the Goddesses of Eleusis, we have next to consider the reason of it, why Dionysos more than any other divinity should have been introduced into the ritual which was in itself complete without him.2 The answer is supplied at once, and completely, by the nature of these several personages. The terrestrial Earth-mother and her chthonian and telluric Daughter exactly harmonise and accord, alike and yet how different, with Dionysos, the spirit of kosmic life. The one idea in origin was simple, innocent, and Aryan ; the other, although corresponding, more psychical, involved, mysterious, and Semitic. Dionysos appears as a stranger in Hellas; his worship becomes eminently popular, as both appealing directly to the lower nature, and yet at the same time attempting to satisfy some of the higher aspirations of the soul. Many of his more remarkable and repulsive Phoenician phases become altered and obscured; the glowing Sun-god loses much of his fierce heat and high dignity; he sinks to an inferior, an assistant and associate, and although his rays for a time are partly shorn, he still bravely bears his torch, and, ere long, again reaches high honour and mysterious dignity. Nations are not in the habit of changing their gods that are no gods, and so Demeter and her Daughter are not forsaken for the brilliant stranger; but the entrance to the

1 Bat. 444-5.

2 Canon Rawlinson remarks, 'Bochart believes that the Phoenicians introduced the worship of Ceres [Demeter,] into Greece. Certainly the Eleusinian mysteries appear to have been thoroughly oriental in their

character' (Herodotus, iii. 217). Bochart's conjecture cannot be allowed, Demeter being a purely Aryan goddess. I trust I have indicated as clearly as the subject allows, the respective amounts of Aryan and Semitic influence at Eleusis.