gleam and pierce through all their cumbrous trappings and disguises.1 Subsection II.-Dionysos and Ariadne. 6 3 Dionysos Chrysokomes [the Golden-haired] made the blonde-haired Ariadne, daughter of Minos, his blooming spouse, and for him Kronion [Zeus] made her immortal and ever-young.'2 Dionysos here Dionysos here appears in one of his solar aspects, Chrysokomes, the Golden-haired Sun, as the rival divinity the Aryan Apollon is Akersekomes, the Unshorn, undeprived of his far-reaching beams. Minos, the mighty king of Krete, whose name is man, the measurer or thinker, the Indian Manu,' and whom Homeros speaks of as possessed of awful wisdom,' 4 is the son of Zeus and Europe the daughter, either of Phoinix son of the Phoenician king Agenor, or of Agenor himself. He is thus of direct Phoenician descent, and his daughter Ariadne, whose name is perhaps Phoenician,5 forms by relationship a suitable bride for her Phoenician cousin Dionysos. His rival is the Aryan Theseus, who is defeated in the competition, and Dionysos confers immortality on his consort as on his mother. The root of the story is probably some contest or connection between the Phoenician powers of Krete and Naxos, and the Hellenik Attike. Pausanias speaks of Dionysos as having had a much superior force, and, so far as the god represents in the legend Phoenici 6 because there is a tradition that he was slain in the West by a king of Sikelia. If all solar heroes, like their prototype, closed their careers in the West, their histories would present a gratifying consistency; but since heroes who travel from West to East, such as Achilleus, and die in Oriental regions, are equally supposed to be solar, it is evident that, let them die where they may, they cannot escape a solar character. The Episode of Dionysos and Ariadne formed one of the favourite subjects of ancient art, and is thus treated on a fresco discovered at Pompeii: Bacchus, after his arrival at Naxos, finds Ariadne sunk in a profound slumber. Her face is hid in the pillows; over her head stands Sleep, with outspread wings, and bearing in his left hand a torch reversed, a symbol common to him with his brother Death. A young faun lifts the sheet, or veil, in which Ariadne is enveloped, in an attitude expressive of surprise at her beauty, and looks earnestly at the god, as if to discover what impression it makes upon him. Bacchus, crowned with ivy and berries, clothed in a short tunic and flowing pallium, having on his legs rich buskins, and holding in his right hand the thyrsus bound with a fillet, appears to be approaching slowly, and cautiously, for fear he should awake the nymph.2 Seilenos and the Bakchik train follow. Mr. King, after having illustrated the custom of honouring a deceased friend by sculpturing his portrait in the character of a Bacchus,' remarks, from all this it is allowable to conjecture that the heads of Bacchus and Ariadne, in which the Roman glyptic art so conspicuously displayed itself may not in every instance be ideal, but may often te the features of deceased friends.' 3 2 Dyer, Ruins of Pompeii, 80-1; Adams, Buried Cities of Campania, 211-2. 3 Antiquens, i. 218, 265. Subsection III.-Grapes, the gift of Dionysos. The remaining allusion to Dionysos in the Hesiodik Poems states that he gave grapes to men, a source of joy and grief.' This passage excellently illustrates the twofaced character of Dionysos Theoinos, the Wine-god.2 In one aspect he is Luaios, the Deliverer-from-care; in the other he is Psychodaiktes, Destroyer-of-the-soul, frantic, and raging. The rustic author of the Shield of Herakles gives quite an Aryan aspect of the god, just as an Attik husbandman of the age of Perikles might have done, accustomed to connect him only with the rural Dionysia and the sports of the Askoliasmos or Leaping-on-the-wine-skin; and had we nothing more about the god than such a passage as this, we should unhesitatingly ascribe to him an Aryan origin. But even the Hesiodik allusions to Dionysos, brief as they are, would fully warrant us in regarding him as a foreign importation. In the time of Hesiodos the contests with Lykourgos and Pentheus were things of the past, and the son of Semele was universally acknowledged as a member of the Aryan Pantheon. Subsection IV.-Eikon of the Hesiodik Dionysos. The Hesiodik Dionysos appears as the son of Zeus, and Semele daughter of Kadmos the Oriental, and as the husband of Ariadne, daughter of the Phoenician Minos. His wife and mother are both deified, or received into the Aryan Pantheon, through his agency; and he is the giver of the grape to mortals, inasmuch as he is Chrysokomes, the Golden-haired Sun, whose beams cause the earth to yield her increase. He is thus foreign in connection and kosmogonico-solar in character. 1 Aspis Herak. 400. Cf. sup. sec. i. 2. SECTION III. THE ORPHIK DIONYSOS. Subsection I-Thrake and Orphik Mysticism. Down to the time of the Peloponnesian War Thrake extended on the eastern side of the Bosphoros, as far as Herakleia, on the coast of the Euxine, and this country, at once European and Asiatic, appears in legendary history as the home of a peculiar school of mythical poetry and religious symbolism. Orpheus, one of the three Theologers or Writers on the Nature of Divinity (Homeros and Hesiodos being the other two), Mousaios the Muse personified in the poet, said to be a son of Orpheus or of Eumolpos, and reputed author of various poems connected with the cult of the Eleusinian Demeter; Eumolpos, the Good-singer, founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries and first high priest of Demeter and Dionysos; Linos, or Song personified, either plaintive as the Dirge, or lively, all these, and many other similar personages, appear in tradition as either actually Thrakian, or else in some way linked with Thrake. The Asiatic connection of Thrake is illustrated in the Homerik Poems where the Eastern Thrakians appear in the Catalogue among the Troian allies; 1 and the Western Thrakians, who subsequently arrive with Rhesos, their king, in like manner join the Troian array.2 The antagonism between the Thrakian and the Ionik schools of poetry is seen in the allusion to the fate of the Thrakian bard Thamyris, who, with the arrogance of Marsyas and Linos, both of whom challenged Apollon to musical contests, boasted that he could conquer even the Muses in song, on which they struck him with blindness, 1 Il. ii. 844. 2 Il. x. 434; Eur. Rhesos. 3 and deprived him of his skill. In sculpture he was represented holding a broken lyre. The singular compound Thrakian character and phase of thought is produced by and resolvable into a blending of the Aryan and Turanian elements, combined with a Semitic tinge, imported by the adventurous Phoenician colonists. Orpheus himself is identified by Professor Max Müller2 with the Sanskrit Ribhu, used in the Veda as an epithet of Indra and name for the sun, and in this case he is of Aryan origin. Eumolpos is Aryan in name; but his name, like that of Mousaios, who is sometimes spoken of as his son, or like that of the earliest Hellenik lyric poet who is called Olen, or Flute-player, is merely a descriptive epithet; while his being represented as a son of Poseidon points to a Semetic connection. Linos, or the Genius of Song, is also represented as a grandson of Poseidon, and not unnaturally his cult obtained especially in the form of very similar Dirges, alike in Egypt, Phoenicia, Hellas, and other places; a circumstance which, although so surprising to the worthy Herodotos, is not in itself mysterious when the underlying links between those countries are brought to light. Another incident connecting the Thrakian poets with the Semitic East is their intimate relation to Dionysos. Thus Orpheus is torn to pieces by the Thrakian Bakchanals, not like Pentheus, as a despiser of the god, but as being indifferent to the attractions of his worshippers, and his death is avenged by Dionysos, who transforms the infuriate matrons into trees. Again, all four poets, Orpheus, Mousaios, Eumolpos, and Linos, are credited with having written poems relating the exploits, or otherwise connected with the rites and in 1 Il. ii. 595. 2 Chips, ii. 127. 452. Cf. Bunsen, Egypt's Place, iv. Paus. ix. 29; vide Poseidon, xxvii, xxviii. The Children of Poseidon. 5 Cf. Herod. ii. 79. |