THE SPRING FESTIVAL IN GREECE
The tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed at
Athens at a festival known as the Great Dionysia. This took place early
in April, so that the time itself makes us suspect that its ceremonies
were connected with the spring. But we have more certain evidence.
Aristotle, in his treatise on the Art of Poetry, raises the question of
the origin of the drama. He was not specially interested in primitive
ritual; beast dances and spring mummeries might even have seemed to him
mere savagery, the lowest form of "imitation;" but he divined that a
structure so complex as Greek tragedy must have arisen out of a simpler
form; he saw, or felt, in fact, that art had in some way risen out of
ritual, and he has left us a memorable statement.
In describing the "Carrying-out of Summer" we saw that the element of
real _drama_, real impersonation, began with the leaders of the band,
with the Queen of the May, and with the "Death" or the "Winter." Great
is our delight when we find that for Greek drama Aristotle[19] divined a
like beginning. He says:
"Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation--the one
(tragedy) _originated with the leaders of the Dithyramb_."
The further question faces us: What was the Dithyramb? We shall find to
our joy that this obscure-sounding Dithyramb, though before Aristotle's
time it had taken literary form, was in origin a festival closely akin
to those we have just been discussing. The Dithyramb was, to begin with,
a spring ritual; and when Aristotle tells us tragedy arose out of the
Dithyramb, he gives us, though perhaps half unconsciously, a clear
instance of a splendid art that arose from the simplest of rites; he
plants our theory of the connection of art with ritual firmly with its
feet on historical ground.
* * * * *
When we use the word "dithyrambic" we certainly do not ordinarily think
of spring. We say a style is "dithyrambic" when it is unmeasured, too
ornate, impassioned, flowery. The Greeks themselves had forgotten that
the word _Dithyramb_ meant a leaping, inspired dance. But they had not
forgotten on what occasion that dance was danced. Pindar wrote a
Dithyramb for the Dionysiac festival at Athens, and his song is full of
springtime and flowers. He bids all the gods come to Athens to dance
flower-crowned.
"Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye
gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are
treading and incense steams: in sacred Athens come to the holy
centre-stone. Take your portion of garlands pansy-twined, libations
poured from the culling of spring....
"Come hither to the god with ivy bound. Bromios we mortals name
Him, and Him of the mighty Voice.... The clear signs of his
Fulfilment are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the
purple-robed Hours is opened, and nectarous flowers lead in the
fragrant spring. Then, then, are flung over the immortal Earth,
lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and voices
of song are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with
the calling of crowned Semele."
Bromios, "He of the loud cry," is a title of Dionysos. Semele is his
mother, the Earth; we keep her name in Nova _Zembla_, "New Earth." The
song might have been sung at a "Carrying-in of Summer." The Horæ, the
Seasons, a chorus of maidens, lead in the figure of Spring, the Queen of
the May, and they call to Mother Earth to wake, to rise up from the
earth, flower-crowned.
You may _bring back_ the life of the Spring in the form of a tree or a
maiden, or you may summon her to rise from the sleeping Earth. In Greek
mythology we are most familiar with the Rising-up form. Persephone, the
daughter of Demeter, is carried below the Earth, and rises up again year
by year. On Greek vase-paintings[20] the scene occurs again and again. A
mound of earth is represented, sometimes surmounted by a tree; out of
the mound a woman's figure rises; and all about the mound are figures of
dancing dæmons waiting to welcome her.
All this is not mere late poetry and art. It is the primitive art and
poetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual "things done,"
_dromena_. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where
to-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing
men, and specially women, Pausanias[21] saw near the City Hearth a rock
called "_Anaklethra_, 'Place of Calling-up,' because, if any one will
believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter
called her up there"; and he adds: "The women to this day perform rites
analogous to the story told."
These rites of "Calling up" must have been spring rites, in which, in
some pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted.
Another festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive,
because it is near akin to the "Carrying out of Winter," and also
because it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the
food-supply. Plutarch[22] tells us of a festival held every nine years
at Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used _Charila_, a
word which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the
Russian word _yaro_, "Spring," and is also akin to the Greek _Charis_,
"grace," in the sense of increase, "Give us all _grace_." The rites of
_Charila_, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows:
"The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and
pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of
_Charila_ is brought in. When they had all received their share,
the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the
Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place,
and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and buried it."
Mr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria
in honour of _Yarilo_, the Spring God.
The image is beaten, insulted, let down into some cleft or cave. It is
clearly a "Carrying out the Death," though we do not know the exact date
at which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at
Delphi called _Herois_, or the "Heroine." Plutarch[23] says it was too
mystical and secret to describe, but he lets us know the main gist.
"Most of the ceremonies of the _Herois_ have a mystical reason
which is known to the Thyiades, but from the rites that are done in
public, one may conjecture it to be a 'Bringing up of Semele.'"
Some one or something, a real woman, or more likely the buried puppet
_Charila_, the Spring-Maiden, was brought up from the ground to enact
and magically induce the coming of Spring.
* * * * *
These ceremonies of beating, driving out, burying, have all, with the
Greeks, as with the savage and the modern peasant, but one real object:
to get rid of the season that is bad for food, to bring in and revive
the new supply. This comes out very clearly in a ceremony that went on
down to Plutarch's time, and he tells us[24] it was "ancestral." It was
called "the Driving out of Ox-hunger." By Ox-hunger was meant any great
ravenous hunger, and the very intensity and monstrosity of the word
takes us back to days when famine was a grim reality. When Plutarch was
_archon_ he had, as chief official, to perform the ceremony at the
Prytaneion, or Common Hearth. A slave was taken, beaten with rods of a
magical plant, and driven out of doors to the words: "Out with
Ox-hunger! In with Wealth and Health!" Here we see the actual sensation,
or emotion, of ravenous hunger gets a name, and thereby a personality,
though a less completely abstracted one than Death or Summer. We do not
know that the ceremony of Driving out Ox-hunger was performed in the
spring, it is only instanced here because, more plainly even than the
Charila, when the king distributes pulse and peas, it shows the relation
of ancient mimic ritual to food-supply.
If we keep clearly in mind the _object_ rather than the exact _date_ of
the Spring Song we shall avoid many difficulties. A Dithyramb was sung
at Delphi through the winter months, which at first seems odd. But we
must remember that among agricultural peoples the performance of magical
ceremonies to promote fertility and the food supply may begin at any
moment after the earth is ploughed and the seed sown. The sowing of the
seed is its death and burial; "that which thou sowest is not quickened
except it die." When the death and burial are once accomplished the hope
of resurrection and new birth begins, and with the hope the magical
ceremonies that may help to fulfil that hope. The Sun is new-born in
midwinter, at the solstice, and our "New" year follows, yet it is in the
spring that, to this day, we keep our great resurrection festival.
* * * * *
We return to our argument, holding steadily in our minds this
connection. The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the
importance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the
food-supply.
* * * * *
Do we know any more about the Dithyramb? Happily yes, and the next point
is as curious as significant.
Pindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question:
"Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos,
With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?"
Scholars have broken their own heads and one another's to find a meaning
and an answer to the odd query. It is only quite lately that they have
come at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive
rite. Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric
poetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring
Song, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How
can driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the
"slender-ankled" Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull?
The difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them,
is soon settled. They are the Seasons, or "Hours," and the chief Season,
or Hour, was Spring herself. They are called Charites, or Graces,
because they are, in the words of the Collect, the "Givers of all
grace," that is, of all increase physical and spiritual. But why do they
want to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all
grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their
"fruits in due season" is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the
Dithyramb "bull-driving"? Is this a mere "poetical" epithet? If it is,
it is not particularly poetical.
But Pindar is not, we now know, merely being "poetical," which amounts,
according to some scholars, to meaning anything or nothing. He is
describing, alluding to, an actual rite or _dromenon_ in which a Bull is
summoned and driven to come in spring. About that we must be clear.
Plutarch, the first anthropologist, wrote a little treatise called
_Greek Questions_, in which he tells us all the strange out-of-the-way
rites and customs he saw in Greece, and then asks himself what they
meant. In his 36th _Question_ he asks: "Why do the women of Elis summon
Dionysos in their hymns to be present with them with his bull-foot?" And
then, by a piece of luck that almost makes one's heart stand still, he
gives us the very words of the little ritual hymn the women sang, our
earliest "Bull-driving" Spring Song:
"In Spring-time,[25] O Dionysos,
To thy holy temple come;
To Elis with thy Graces,
Rushing with thy bull-foot, come,
Noble Bull, Noble Bull."
It is a strange primitive picture--the holy women standing in springtime
in front of the temple, summoning the Bull; and the Bull, garlanded and
filleted, rushing towards them, driven by the Graces, probably three
real women, three Queens of the May, wreathed and flower-bedecked. But
what does it mean?
Plutarch tries to answer his own question, and half, in a dim, confused
fashion, succeeds. "Is it," he suggests, "that some entitle the god as
'Born of a Bull' and as a 'Bull' himself? ... or is it that many hold
the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?" We have seen how a
kind of _daimon_, or spirit, of Winter or Summer arose from an actual
tree or maid or man disguised year by year as a tree. Did the god
Dionysos take his rise in like fashion from the driving and summoning
year by year of some holy Bull?
First, we must notice that it was not only at Elis that a holy Bull
appears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructive
_Question_:[26] "Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?" And we find
to our amazement that the sanctifier is a Bull. A Bull who not only is
holy himself, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he
is the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his
death in the month Bysios, the month that fell, Plutarch tells us, "at
the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many plants."
We do not hear that the "Sanctifier" at Delphi was "driven," but in all
probability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake
in the sanctity that simply exuded from him. At Magnesia,[27] a city of
Asia Minor, we have more particulars. There, at the annual fair year by
year the stewards of the city bought a Bull, "the finest that could be
got," and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seedtime they
dedicated it, for the city's welfare. The Bull's sanctified life began
with the opening of the agricultural year, whether with the spring or
the autumn ploughing we do not know. The dedication of the Bull was a
high solemnity. He was led in procession, at the head of which went the
chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the
sacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull
that nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must
have both their parents alive, they must not have been under the
_taboo_, the infection, of death. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer
for "the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the
women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of
grain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle." All this longing for
fertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose
holiness is his strength and fruitfulness.
The Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of
the whole people, is fed at the public cost. The official charged with
his keep has to drive him into the market-place, and "it is good for
those corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift," good for them
because they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is
their own luck. So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but
early in April the end comes. Again a great procession is led forth, the
senate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of
each class of the State--children and young boys, and youths just come
to manhood, _epheboi_, as the Greeks called them. The Bull is
sacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? Why not live out the
term of his life? He dies because he _is_ so holy, that he may give his
holiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to
his people.
"When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up
among those who took part in the procession."
The mandate is clear. The procession included representatives of the
whole State. The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten--to
every man his portion--by each and every citizen, that he may get his
share of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State.
* * * * *
Now at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we
hear no more. Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin
again. But at Athens at the annual "Ox-murder," the _Bouphonia_, as it
was called, the scene did not so close. The ox was slain with all
solemnity, and all those present partook of the flesh, and then--the
hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal
was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing.
The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We
are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the
renouncing of something. But _sacrifice_ does not mean "death" at all.
It means making holy, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man
just special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just
that special life and strength which all the year long they had put into
him, and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could
not eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he
must die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed
him, not to "sacrifice" him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat
him, live _by_ him and through him, by his grace.
And so this killing of the sacred beast was always a terrible thing, a
thing they fain would have shirked. They fled away after the deed, not
looking backwards; they publicly tried and condemned the axe that struck
the blow. But their best hope, their strongest desire, was that he had
not, could not, really have died. So this intense desire uttered itself
in the _dromenon_ of his resurrection. If he did not rise again, how
could they plough and sow again next year? He must live again, he
should, he _did_.
The Athenians were a little ashamed of their "Ox-murder," with its
grotesque pantomime of the stuffed, resurrected beast. Just so some of
us now-a-days are getting a little shy of deliberately cursing our
neighbours on Ash Wednesday. They probably did not feel very keenly
about their food-supply, they thought their daily dinner was secure.
Anyhow the emotion that had issued in the pantomime was dead, though
from sheer habit the pantomime went on. Probably some of the less
educated among them thought there "might be something in it," and anyhow
it was "as well to be on the safe side." The queer ceremony had got
associated with the worship of Olympian Zeus, and with him you must
reckon. Then perhaps your brother-in-law was the Ox-striker, and anyhow
it was desirable that the women should go; some of the well-born girls
had to act as water-carriers.
The Ox-murder was obsolete at Athens, but the spirit of the rite is
alive to-day among the Ainos in the remote island of Saghalien. Among
the Ainos the Bear is what psychologists rather oddly call the main
"food focus," the chief "value centre." And well he may be. Bear's flesh
is the Ainos' staple food; they eat it both fresh and salted; bearskins
are their principal clothing; part of their taxes are paid in bear's
fat. The Aino men spend the autumn, winter and spring in hunting the
Bear. Yet we are told the Ainos "worship the Bear"; they apply to it the
name _Kamui_, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to
all strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is
formidable. In the religion of the Ainos "the Bear plays a chief part,"
says one writer. The Bear "receives idolatrous veneration," says
another. They "worship it after their fashion," says a third. Have we
another case of "the heathen in his blindness"? Only here he "bows down"
not to "gods of wood and stone," but to a live thing, uncouth, shambling
but gracious--a Bear.
Instead of theorizing as to what the Aino thinks and imagines, let us
observe his _doings_, his _dromena_, his rites; and most of all his
great spring and autumn rite, the _dromenon_ of the Bear. We shall find
that, detail for detail, it strangely resembles the Greek _dromenon_ of
the Bull.
As winter draws to a close among the Ainos, a young Bear is trapped and
brought into the village. At first an Aino woman suckles him at her
breast, then later he is fed on his favourite food, fish--his tastes are
semi-polar. When he is at his full strength, that is, when he threatens
to break the cage in which he lives, the feast is held. This is usually
in September, or October, that is when the season of bear-hunting
begins.
Before the feast begins the Ainos apologize profusely, saying that they
have been good to the Bear, they can feed him no longer, they must kill
him. Then the man who gives the Bear-feast invites his relations and
friends, and if the community be small nearly the whole village attends.
On the occasion described by Dr. Scheube about thirty Ainos were
present, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best clothes.
The woman of the house who had suckled the Bear sat by herself, sad and
silent, only now and then she burst into helpless tears. The ceremony
began with libations made to the fire-god and to the house-god set up in
a corner of the house. Next the master and some of the guests left the
hut and offered libations in front of the Bear's cage. A few drops were
presented to him in a saucer, which he promptly upset. Then the women
and girls danced round the cage, rising and hopping on their toes, and
as they danced they clapped their hands and chanted a monotonous chant.
The mother and some of the old women cried as they danced and stretched
out their arms to the Bear, calling him loving names. The young women
who had nursed no Bears laughed, after the manner of the young. The Bear
began to get upset, and rushed round his cage, howling lamentably.
Next came a ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at
the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the _inabos_, sacred
wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet
high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. _Five new wands
with bamboo leaves attached to them_ are set up for the festival; the
leaves according to the Ainos mean _that the Bear may come to life
again_. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of
attention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his
staple food. But vegetation is not quite forgotten. The animal life of
the Bear and the vegetable life of the bamboo-leaves are thought of
together.
Then comes the actual sacrifice. The Bear is led out of his cage, a rope
is thrown round his neck, and he is perambulated round the neighbourhood
of the hut. We do not hear that among the Ainos he goes in procession
round the village, but among the Gilyaks, not far away in Eastern
Siberia, the Bear is led about the villages, and it is held to be
specially important that he should be dragged down to the river, for
this will ensure the village a plentiful supply of fish. He is then,
among the Gilyaks, taken to each hut in the village, and fish, brandy,
and other delicacies are offered to him. Some of the people prostrate
themselves in front of him and his coming into a house brings a
blessing, and if he snuffs at the food, that brings a blessing too.
To return to the Aino Bear. While he is being led about the hut the men,
headed by a chief, shoot at the Bear with arrows tipped with buttons.
But the object of the shooting is not to kill, only apparently to
irritate him. He is killed at last without shedding of his sacred blood,
and we hope without much pain. He is taken in front of the sacred wands,
a stick placed in his mouth, and nine men press his neck against a beam;
he dies without a sound. Meantime the women and girls, who stand behind
the men, dance, lament, and beat the men who are killing their Bear. The
body of the dead Bear is then laid on a mat before the sacred wands. A
sword and quiver, taken from the wands, are hung about the Bear. If it
is a She-Bear it is also bedecked with a necklace and rings. Food and
drink, millet broth and millet cakes are offered to it. It is decked as
an Aino, it is fed as an Aino. It is clear that the Bear is in some
sense a human Bear, an Aino. The men sit down on mats in front of the
Bear and offer libations, and themselves drink deep.
Now that the death is fairly over the mourning ends, and all is feasting
and merriment. Even the old women lament no more. Cakes of millet are
scrambled for. The bear is skinned and disembowelled, the trunk is
severed from the head, to which the skin is left hanging. The blood,
which might not be shed before, is now carefully collected in cups and
eagerly drunk by the men, for the blood is the life. The liver is cut up
and eaten raw. The flesh and the rest of the vitals are kept for the day
next but one, when it is divided among all persons present at the feast.
It is what the Greeks call a _dais_, a meal divided or distributed.
While the Bear is being dismembered the girls dance, in front of the
sacred wands, and the old women again lament. The Bear's brain is
extracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin,
is hung on a pole near the sacred wands. Thus it would seem the life and
strength of the bear is brought near to the living growth of the leaves.
The stick with which the Bear was gagged is also hung on the pole, and
with it the sword and quiver he had worn after his death. The whole
congregation, men and women, dance about this strange maypole, and a
great drinking bout, in which all men and women alike join, ends the
feast.
The rite varies as to detail in different places. Among the Gilyaks the
Bear is dressed after death in full Gilyak costume and seated on a
bench of honour. In one part the bones and skull are carried out by the
oldest people to a place in the forest not far from the village. There
all the bones except the skull are buried. After that a young tree is
felled a few inches above the ground, its stump is cleft, and the skull
wedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot the skull
disappears and there is an end of the Bear. Sometimes the Bear's flesh
is eaten in special vessels prepared for this festival and only used at
it. These vessels, which include bowls, platters, spoons, are
elaborately carved with figures of bears and other devices.
Through all varieties in detail the main intent is the same, and it is
identical with that of the rite of the holy Bull in Greece and the
maypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the
Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads,
later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and
the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear
and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a
special life and strength intensely desired. They are led and carried
about from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, and avail
for all; the animal dies that he may be eaten; the Tree is torn to
pieces that all may have a fragment; and, above all, Bear and Bull and
Tree die only that they may live again.
* * * * *
We have seen (p. 71) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actually
_per_ceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image,
an imagined Tree Spirit, or "Summer," or Death, a thing never actually
seen but _con_ceived. Just so with the Bull. Year by year in the various
villages of Greece was seen an actual holy Bull, and bit by bit from the
remembrance of these various holy Bulls, who only died to live again
each year, there arose the image of a Bull-Spirit, or Bull-Daimon, and
finally, if we like to call him so, a Bull-God. The growth of this idea,
this _con_ception, must have been much helped by the fact that in some
places the dancers attendant on the holy Bull dressed up as bulls and
cows. The women worshippers of Dionysos, we are told, wore bulls' horns
in imitation of the god, for they represented him in pictures as having
a bull's head. _We_ know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a
bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the
rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt,
may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why
should she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of
a bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real Bull and the
worshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an
imagined Bull-God; but, it should be observed, only among gifted,
imaginative, that is, image-making, peoples. The Ainos have their actual
holy Bear, as the Greeks had their holy Bull; but with them out of the
succession of holy Bears there arises, alas! no Bear-God.
* * * * *
We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not
obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of
spring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were
performed at Athens, the young men (_epheboi_) brought in not only the
human figure of the god, but also a Bull "worthy" of the God. We
understand, too, why in addition to the tragedies performed at the
great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung--"Bull-driving Dithyrambs."
* * * * *
We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the
most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the
drama. _The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth._
Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. "Some," he says,
"are prayers to the gods--these are called _hymns_; others of an
opposite sort might best be called _dirges_; another sort are _pæans_,
and another--the birth of Dionysos, I suppose--is called _Dithyramb_."
Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a
particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they
were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the
information carelessly--the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the
birth or coming to be, the _genesis_ of Dionysos.
The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato's statement. When a
poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the
title _Dithyrambos_. Thus an inscribed hymn found at Delphi[28] opens
thus:
"Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come.
...
Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring
Holy hours of thine own holy spring.
...
All the stars danced for joy. Mirth
Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth."
The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in
the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull.
* * * * *
And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a dæmon,
and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos
the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once
_per_ceived, then remembered and _con_ceived. Dionysos, the Bull-God, is
but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual
holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, generalized, conceived. But
the god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental
image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the
_birth_ of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a
child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original
form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in
Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called _Liknites_, "Him of the
Cradle."[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child
Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women.
But it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship
and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in
the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when,
Homer says, "youth is most gracious." This is the Dionysos that we know
in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the
Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty
like a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of
birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of
the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born.
This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the
word _Dithyrambos_ as meaning "He of the double door," their word
_thyra_ being the same as our _door_. They were quite mistaken;
_Dithyrambos_, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer,
and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it
shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos
was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his
father's thigh, like no man.
But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the
Tree-God, arises from a _dromenon_, a rite, what is the rite of second
birth from which it arises?
* * * * *
We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth
existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and
find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over
half the savage world.
With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his
first birth he comes into the world, by his second he is born into his
tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk;
at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society
of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult
for us to realize. A boy with us passes very gradually from childhood to
manhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man.
Little by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social
privileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters
a workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession.
In the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to
linger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as
Coming Out. A girl's dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up,
she is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign's hand, a dance
is given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the cocoon state
of the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom,
with its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does
not obtain at all. Both sexes share, of course, the religious rite of
Confirmation.
To avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is
always a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his
ignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and
transitions. The long process of education, of passing from child to
man, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months
of tremendous educational emphasis--of what is called "initiation,"
"going in," that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the
gist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish
things, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to
cease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him
for his two chief functions as a tribesman--to be a warrior, to be a
father. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man.
This "initiation" is of tremendous importance, and we should expect,
what in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues
in _dromena_, "rites done." These rites are very various, but they all
point one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the
new-born man has entered on a new life.
Simplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by
the Kikuyu of British East Africa,[30] who require that every boy, just
before circumcision, must be born again. "The mother stands up with the
boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour
pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed."
More often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a
resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their
presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east
Australia,[31] when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy
bark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks
and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his
hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other
bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought
to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes
on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and
more and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave.
The Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The
boys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with
blood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first
gives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to
cleanse themselves.
Here the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death
that the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is
practised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram[32] boys at puberty
are admitted to the Kakian association. The boys are taken blindfold,
followed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest
trees in the depths of the forest. When all are assembled the high
priest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is
heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo
trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the
priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of
chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword dripping with
blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy's
head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the
other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men
who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a
half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the
good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys
themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they
go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate.
They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the
simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of
twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not
comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the
forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their
heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry.
Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new
name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, new dances are
danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the
Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row
cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out.
The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of
each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of
spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the
society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house.
The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood
relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe.
Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or
represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it
is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called
Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings
them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a _dromenon_ or
rite of swallowing we are not told.
In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to
grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus
among the Carrier Indians[33] when a man wants to become a _Lulem_, or
Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a
bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four
days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to
find him. They cry out _Yi! Kelulem_ ("Come on, Bear") and he answers
with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at
last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and
there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first
appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in
initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same
object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to
another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and
other ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which
seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is
explained if we see that in intent they _are_ all the same, all a
passing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in
every rite, the putting off of the old, the putting on of the new; you
carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is
a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded,
under a _taboo_.
* * * * *
To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth,
marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little
or no social emphasis. But _the_ rite which concerned the whole tribe,
the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of
initiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and
significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word
for rite was _tělětē_. It was applied to all mysteries, and sometimes to
marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with death. It comes
from a root meaning "to grow up." The word _tělětē_ means _rite of
growing up_, becoming complete. It meant at first maturity, then rite of
maturity, then by a natural extension any rite of initiation that was
mysterious. The rites of puberty were in their essence mysterious,
because they consisted in initiation into the sanctities of the tribe,
the things which society sanctioned and protected, excluding the
uninitiated, whether they were young boys, women, or members of other
tribes. Then, by contagion, the mystery notion spread to other rites.
* * * * *
We understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite,
the _dromenon_ of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second
birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells
us--Dio_nysos_, "Divine Young Man."
When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of
the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that _image_
which is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring rite
_must_ be a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are
but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young _man_. Where
emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just
initiated, what the Greeks called a _kouros_, or _ephebos_, a youth of
quite different social status from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth
survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women
are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of
all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.
And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a
blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in
spring and autumn alike "they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of
olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits,
_that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it:
"Eiresione brings
Figs and fat cakes,
And a pot of honey and oil to mix,
And a wine-cup strong and deep,
That she may drink and sleep."
The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called
_Korythalia_,[34] "Branch of blooming youth." The young men, says a
Greek orator, are "the Spring of the people."
* * * * *
The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a
Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a
young man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a
_kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors:
"Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet
and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Diktè
for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song."
The leader of the band of _kouroi_, of young men, the real actual
leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a
daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in
the new year at spring. The real leader, the "first kouros" as the
Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of
leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all.
He is "lord of all that is wet and gleaming," for the May bough, we
remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and
blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away
from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing
their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough
remains to make the meaning clear.
And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood:
"The Horæ (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dikè to
possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by
wealth-loving Peace."
We know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dikè is strange.
We translate the word "Justice," but Dikè means, not Justice as between
man and man, but the order of the world, the _way_ of life. It is
through this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the
seasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that
order were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion,
barrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears:
"To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and
leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase."
And yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p. 32), who
throws his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian
peasant girls who leap high in the air crying, "Flax, grow." The
leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their
tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must
grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their
annual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end:
"Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, _and for
our young citizens_, and for goodly Themis."
They are now young citizens of a fencèd city instead of young tribesmen
of the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds
them together is the bond of social custom, social structure, "goodly
Themis." No man liveth to himself.
* * * * *
Crete is not Athens, but at Athens in the theatre of Dionysos, if the
priest of Dionysos, seated at the great Spring Festival in his beautiful
carved central seat, looked across the orchestra, he would see facing
him a stone frieze on which was sculptured the Cretan ritual, the armed
dancing youths and the child to be year by year reborn.
We have seen what the Dithyramb, from which sprang the Drama, was. A
Spring song, a song of Bull-driving, a song and dance of Second Birth;
but all this seems, perhaps, not to bring us nearer to Greek drama,
rather to put us farther away. What have the Spring and the Bull and the
Birth Rite to do with the stately tragedies we know--with Agamemnon and
Iphigenia and Orestes and Hippolytos? That is the question before us,
and the answer will lead us to the very heart of our subject. So far we
have seen that ritual arose from the presentation and emphasis of
emotion--emotion felt mainly about food. We have further seen that
ritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the
chief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the
Dithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy--that
is, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before
us.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] _Poetics_, IV, 12.
[20] See my _Themis_, p. 419. (1912.)
[21] I, 43. 2.
[22] _Quaest. Græc._ XII.
[23] _Op. cit._
[24] _Quæst. Symp._, 693 f.
[25] The words "in Spring-time" depend on an emendation to me
convincing. See my _Themis_, p. 205, note 1.
[26] IX.
[27] See my _Themis_, p. 151.
[28] See my _Prolegomena_, p. 439.
[29] _Prolegomena_, p. 402.
[30] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 228.
[31] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 424.
[32] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 442.
[33] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, p. 438.
[34] See my _Themis_, p. 503.