noses, ignoble countenances, pointed goat-like ears, bald foreheads, bristly hair, and sometimes a scanty tail.1 This description includes the Seilenoi or older Satyroi. In the satyrik drama the bearded, hair-covered figures were called Pappo, or Down-covered Seilenoi. As regards the equable Seilenos himself, Müller observes,' Yet is this happy daemon, in a deeper mode of thinking which was unfolded especially by the Orphici, full of a wisdom to which all the restless bustle of mankind appears folly; the plastic art also represents him in nobler and grander forms as the fosterer and instructor of the young Dionysos."2 Of the female figures Ariadne is the protagonist; she is represented as beautiful, ivy-crowned, and frequently richly draped. Female Satyroi very rarely occur; and the Mainades have their serpents, flying garments, torn fawns and thyrsos staves as usual. The whole Dionysiak Cycle in art as elsewhere is of the earth earthy; from Dionysos downwards all the concepts are the links in a descending scale from the most refined voluptuousness to the grossest lust. But little innocent hilarity is found amid the maddened revel; but little rural freshness in the turbulent excitement. According to Müller, Nature overpowering the mind, and hurrying it out of the repose of a clear self-consciousness, lies at the basis of all Dionysian creations.' This is in a measure true; but yet is a very imperfect expression of the root-cause of these concepts. It is not so much Nature as human nature, the lower nature in man, which in the later developments of the Dionysiak Myth overpowers the higher and crushes down the aspirations towards infinite good, the grossest, i.e., most patent, instance of this overpowering occurring in the case of abuse of wine. Here may be noticed the Arkadian divinity Pan, who, 1 Westropp, Handbook of Archaeol. 184. 2 Ancient Art. 499. 1 although originally as unconnected with Dionysos as Hermes with the hermai, has been enrolled in the Bakchik train through accidental circumstances. The Panisks 'represent the secret pleasure and the dark horror of sylvan solitude. Here also there occurs, and that too in their native Arcadia, a human form which is only characterized as Pan by the shepherd's pipe, the pastoral crook, the disordered hair and also, perhaps, sprouting horns. This is the usual shape on coins and vase-paintings of the best period.' So that even in the case of Pan, a mere local genius of flocks and herds, not a divinity of Olympos, the anthropomorphic principle was so strong in the best period of Hellenik art that little budding horns, and perhaps not even these, formed the only unnatural feature in the figure of the rustic daemon. I have already endeavoured to point out that there is no real connection between Pan and Dionysos; but their points of apparent affinity and assimilation are chiefly the following: Each is a nature-god and a horned-god. It is the late Pan of the age of Praxiteles who appears fully horned, hook-nosed, and goat-legged. Each is a kosmogonic god; Dionysos is the animated universe, and through a false etymology Pan is made to represent the All, and consequently is thus addressed : Strong pastoral Pan, with suppliant voice I call, And all are parts of thee, O power divine. —(Orphik Hymn, XI. Taylor's Translation.) Pan, it will be observed, has nothing kosmogonic about him in origin; but the Orphiks fasten on the innocent country divinity all the dread, mystic and occult attributes and adjuncts of Dionysos, calling him the horned Zeus' 2 Sup. IV. iii. 2. 1 Ancient Art, 501. and 'universal queen,' like Semele. 'Pan,' says Pausanias, ‘in the same manner as the most powerful gods, consummates the prayers of men and punishes the wicked; before this Pan a fire, which is never extinguished, burns.'1 This is the later not the earlier cult of Pan; like Zagreus, he has become the equal of the highest gods, and is symbolized in accordance with the Orphik Hymn by immortal fire.' The fabled loud voice of Pan, another connecting link between him and Bromios the Noisy, is the mountain Echo whom he loved. His mythic parentage, again, as the son of Hermes, shows his Aryan character. His cult was not introduced into Attike until after the Persian Wars.2 A noisy, horned, nature-god, whose name was supposed to signify all,' could not avoid being connected with Dionysos, and so the luckless Pan is thrown into the Dionysiak train, and thoroughly degraded as a goatish, ithyphallic, grotesque monster. It was the misapprehension of later times, which, however, was very wide spread, that first transformed the ancient god of pasture into a universal daemon, and his unpretending reedpiping into the harmony of the spheres.' Mr. Boscawen compares the Kaldean Heabani (i. e., ‘Hea makes') with Pan. Heabani' is always drawn with the feet and tail of an ox, and with horns on his head.'5 I should rather connect the friend of Izdubar with other tauromorphic personages of Semitic regions. 3 The following example, though not strictly an instance of Statuary, may be here appropriately noticed. The androgynous Demiurge, with female breasts, and holding a scarf or fillet in the right hand and a serpent in the left, stands by the Dionysiak column. The scarf is wrapped round the arm and one end held over the head. This 1 Paus. viii. 37. Herod. vi. 105. 3 Müller, Anct. Art. 501. 4 Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch. iv. 286. 5 Geo. Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, 196. 6 Montfaucon, Supplement v. Pl. 1. Fig. 2. Some sages of the past called it a Kleopatra ! scarf or kredemnon, in addition to a frequent meaning previously noticed,1 here signifies the veiling of darkness, the Demiurge being concealed in the Under-world, the secret home of life-potency. This kredemnon of blackness, the exact opposite to that of Ino,2 is well illustrated by a beautiful sable figure of Night, with rays of darkness round her head, reversed torch, the flaming Sun having sunk to the Under-world, and holding a very large black scarf which surrounds the rays and is star-spotted, and thus equivalent to the kosmic Dionysiak panther-skin. Another similar figure holds the scarf over her head with both hands, and without it are three eight-rayed stars. Europe, i. e. Ereb, the West, as the region of night and darkness at times, appears on Kretan coins, holding this scarf over her head when carried away westwards by the Zeus-bull. SECTION III. DIONYSIAK COINS. As in Statuary the shapeless block, often a supposed ouranopipt, preceded the carved figure; so in coinage, using that term in its widest sense, the familiar circular form was the last and highest development of the art, and the successor of other and ruder shapes; and further, as such forms in statuary were peculiarly connected with Dionysos, so were they in coinage. Ploutarchos writes that the money anciently in use at Sparta 'was of iron, 1 Sup. sec. i. Nos. X., XLV. Sup. VI. i. 2. Montfaucon, i. Pt. ii. Pl. ccxiv. Fig. 1. Ibid. Fig. 2. The Homerik Erebos, which was in the West (Od. xii. 81); the Assyrian eribu, to 'descend, enter, or set,' as the sun (Rev. A. H. Sayce, Assy rian Grammar. Syllabary, No. 60). So Aïdes, as king of the Under-world, is called Hesperos Theos' (Soph. Oid. Tyr. 177), and a westward position was generally adopted when invoking infernal divinities (Od. x. 528. Cf. Ibid. xi. 37. Mitford, History of Greece, xxii. 2). dipped in vinegar while it was red hot, to make it brittle and unmalleable, so that it might not be applied to any other use. Besides, it was heavy, and difficult of carriage, and a great quantity of it was but of little value. Perhaps all the ancient money was of this kind, and consisted either of pieces of iron or bronze, which, from their form, were called obeliskoi; whence we have still a quantity of small money called oboloi, six of which make a drachme or handful, that being as much as the hand can contain.' 1 To the same effect writes the learned Isidoros, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville), A.D. 600-636: The obol was made formerly, from bronze, like an arrow, whence also it received the name Obel (Arrow) from the Greeks.' 2 Obolos and Obelos are only Ionik and Attik differences in pronunciation, and belos is a glance, an arrow, or their effect. Obeliskos, the diminutive, is any small pointed instrument. Speaking of obelisks, Plinius remarks that 'monarchs have entered into a sort of rivalry with one another in forming the elongated blocks known as obelisci and consecrated to the divinity of the Sun. The blocks had this form given to them in resemblance to the rays of that luminary, which are so called in the Egyptian language. Mesphres, who reigned in the city of the Sun [Han, On, Heliopolis], was the first who erected one of these obelisks, being warned to do so in a dream.'4 So Herodotos notes that the Kamic King whom he calls Pheron presented two stone obelisks to the temple of the Sun.5 These obols or obelisks are identical with the sacred conical stones above referred to, which formed the germ of statuary, and like them were frequently supposed to have been heaven-fallen thunderbolts, and represent 1 Plout. Lysandros, xvii. Origin. xvi. 23. 3 Ioul. Pol. ix. 77. Plin. xxxvi. 14. 5 Herod. ii. 111. Sup. sec. ii. 7 Cf. D'Hancarville, Arts de la Grèce, i. 1. |