tion, one of the vastest and most wonderful concepts that ever entered the imagination of a thinker or received the homage of a devotee.

Subsection II.-Non-Vinal Allusions.

Pratinas, cir. B.C. 500, alluding to the god as Bromios the Noisy, a common epithet with the Lyric Poets, connects him with clamour and choric dances, and calls him by the sounding epithet of Thriambodithyrambos, the Trumpher-in-the-dithyramb; and, similarly, Anakreon speaks of him as the loud-shouting Deunysos,' 2 and in an Anonymous Fragment he is addressed O Iakchos Thriambos the chorus-leader.' It may be objected that 4 the noisy phase of the god is connected with wine; but this is only partially the case, for noise is linked with song and dance; and these, especially the latter, have other aspects and significations than mere vinal hilarity.5 Moreover, the cult of many Oriental divinities, e.g. the Great Mother, is distinguished by noise which has no connection with the excitement produced by wine. Anakreon connects the Bassarides with Dionysos, and calls the god Aithiopais, Child-of-the-sun-burnt-land, i.e. the East; while Hipponax, cir. B.c. 530, associates the Bakchanals with Kithairon. Another Anonymous Fragment 10 apparently identifies or closely links the god with Ares. Bromios spear-bearing Enyalios [the Warlike], father Ares rousing-the-din-of-war,' but the full meaning of the passage is probably uncertain. Euripides says similarly that Dionysos 'has something of Ares in him.'11 His

1 Pratin. Frag. i.

2 Frag. xi.

3 No. cix. Bergk.

Cf. Soph. Antig. 1147; Eur.

Bak. 141.

• Vide inf. IV. iii. 1.

Frag. Ivi.

7 Vide inf. IV. i. 2.

8 Vide VIII. i. Aithiopais. Frag. xci.; cf. Eur. Bak. 751; Aristoph. Thes. 996.

10 No. cviii. Bergk.

11 Bak. 302.

4

3

An

savage and warlike phase frequently appears.1 obscure passage from Kastorio2 addressed to the god, apparently exhibits him in a solar connection. We next come to a cluster of Fragments which show Dionysos in his tauric aspect. Thus Simonides alludes to the oxslaying priest of King Dionysos;' and Ion, in his Dithyrambs, addresses him as Inexorable youth, bull-faced, young not young, sweetest assistant of tempestuous loves, cheering wine, lord of men.' This passage exhibits, perhaps, the most perfect instance of the almost absolute blending of the Oriental aspects of Dionysos Tauropos with his familiar phase as the Wine-god. The divinity is actually treated as the very personification of wine, and yet is also styled inexorable, bull-faced, young and not young. This latter point in the description is of doubtful meaning, but it may well signify that the establishment of his cult in Hellas was comparatively recent, while at the same time its origin was lost in antiquity; that, in fact, he was much younger in Hellas than in the Outer-world. The epithet inexorable' is fully explained when we realise the Phoenician sternness and ferocity of his cult; and with respect to the remaining feature in the description, perhaps the adherents of the extreme vinous theory can explain why wine personified is called bull-faced. Failing to supply any satisfactory reason for the use of this very singular epithet, they must needs abandon their theory. Those who accept the true origin and character of Dionysos Taurokerôs can easily comprehend the poet, follow the obscure course of the historic phases of the god, and understand the invocation of the women of Elis, which describes him as the Worthy Bull.' 5

1 Vide inf. IV. iii. 2.

2 Frag. i.

3 Frag. clxxii.

4 Frag. ix.

5 Vide inf. IV. ii. 1, iii. 2, VI. i. IX. iii.

SECTION III.

EIKON OF THE LYRIC DIONYSOS.

The Lyric Dionysos appears as born in Thebai, and as the son of Zeus and Semele, the daughter of Kadmos; and his mother, beloved by her son, is at length exalted to an equality with the elder Aryan divinities of the country. As the lord of ever-renewing life and vitality he is Kissophoros the Ivy-bearer, Kissodotas the Ivycrowned, and Eukissos the Ivy-girt. As a kosmogonic divinity he is the Assistant of Demeter, the great Earthmother; and appears as Eurychaites the Flowing-tressed, son of Semele the foundation of material existence, who is addressed as Tanuetheira the Long-haired, and Helikampyx Curling-hair-circlet-girt, these flowing locks of mother and son typifying the flow and force of the lifevigour of the world. As an Oriental divinity he is connected with the bull the prize of the successful dithyramb in which he triumphs, is styled 'bull-faced,' and hymned as the Worthy Bull;' and thus appears as Taurokerôs the Bull-horned, and the Ox-horned Iakchos of the Mysteries. As fits a divinity of eastern votaries he is the choir-leader of the heated dance wild and orgiastic, and as such is Bromios the Noisy, and Eriboas the Loud-shouting, the fit Associate of the Great Goddess, who is herself Chalkokrotos the Bronze-rattling. He is also the Wine-god, and has something of the War-god in him, an aspect occasionally stern and savage. These notices, comparatively few as they are, sufficiently embrace the salient points of the character of the god, a stranger of Oriental associations and Phoenician introduction, a solar, igneous, kosmogonic earth-power, yet making his way into the Aryan Olympos, the lord of vitality and the son of Zeus.

91

CHAPTER IV.

THE DIONYSOS OF THE ATTIK TRAGEDIANS.

SECTION I.

THE DIONYSOS OF AISCHYLOS.

Subsection I-Dionysiak Allusions in Extant Plays. BUT a tithe of the works of the son of Euphorion have descended to us, and the seven extant Plays contain only three direct Dionysiak allusions. In the opening speech of the Eumenides, the scene of which is at Delphoi, the Pythia or Priestess of Apollon recounting the divinities of the country, says, 'And Bromios possesses the land from the time when the god marshalled the Bakchai, having contrived death for Pentheus like a hare.'1 Lykourgos, and Pentheus the grandson of Kadmos and King of Thebai, afford the two most remarkable instances of hopeless opposition to the introduction of the Bakchik cult. The episode of the latter will be considered when examining the Bakchai of Euripides, but the present allusion is important as showing that the worship of Dionysos Bromios, the noisy and orgiastic god, was not indigenous, but was introduced into the Kadmeis at an early but still sufficiently known period, and that on its introduction it was unsuccessfully opposed.

3

In their opening speech in the Iketides, the Chorus,

1 Eumen. 24-6.

2 Sup. II. i. 1.

3 Inf. sec. iii. 2.

consisting of the daughters of Danaos the Egyptian, exclaim, But if not [i.e. if they did not escape from their persecutors], a blackened sunburnt race1 to Zagreus2 the many-guest-receiving Zeus of the dead we will go.'8 The epithet Zagreus has been interpreted 'Mighty Hunter,' as if from za, intensive, and agreus the hunter, an epithet of Apollon, Pan, and several other divinities; but from the context the poet seems to have understood it as derived from zogreo, to take alive, He-that-makesnumerous-captives, i.e. the Dead, called euphemistically the Majority. We have already, in a surviving line of the Epigonoi, caught a glimpse of 'Zagreus highest of all gods,' the chthonian Dionysos, and shall have occasion again to refer to him when speaking of some special phases of the god.6

In the Hepta epi Thêbas the messenger tells Eteokles that Hippomedon 'raves (Baxxa) for fight like a Thyiad,'7 i.e. a Rager, a term technically applied to a Bakchante.8 Such are the slight Dionysiak allusions in the extant Plays of Aischylos; and if we knew nothing further about his writings, and placed confidence in that broken reed the argument from silence,' we should undoubtedly conclude that Dionysos was a divinity about whose legendary history Aischylos was either comparatively ignorant or indifferent.

Subsection II.-The Lykourgeia.

But it would have been strange if the citizen of Eleusis, whose father, moreover, was personally connected with the cult of Demeter, the great goddess and associate