CHAPTER VIII

ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY

THE THRACIAN WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS

The popular conception of the continued existence of the souls of

the dead, resting upon the cult of the dead, grew up and coalesced

with a view of the soul derived from Homeric teaching on the

subject, which was in essential, though unrecognized, contradiction

with the cult of souls. The popular conception, unchanged in all

essentials, remained in force throughout the coming centuries of

Greek life. It did not contain within itself the seeds of further

development; it did not make any demand for better and deeper ideas

of the character and condition of the soul in its independent life

after its separation from the body. Still more, it had nothing in it

that could have led beyond the belief in the independent future life

of those souls to the conception of an everlasting, indestructible,

immortal life. The continued life of the soul, such as was implied

in and guaranteed by the cult of souls, was entirely bound up with

the remembrance of the survivors upon earth, and upon the care, the

cult, which they might offer to the soul of their departed ancestor.

If that memory dies out, if the venerating thoughtfulness of the

living ceases, the soul of the departed is at once deprived of the

sole element in which it still maintained its shadow of an

existence.

It was impossible, then, that the cult of the souls should produce

out of itself the idea of a true immortality of the soul or of the

independent life of the soul indestructible by its very nature.

Greek religion as it existed among the people of Homer could not

shape such a belief of its own accord, and even if it were offered

from outside could not have accepted it. It would have meant giving

up its own essential character.

If the soul is immortal, it must be in its essential nature like

God; it must itself be a creature of the realm of Gods. When a Greek

says "immortal" he says "God": they are interchangeable ideas. But

the real first principle of the religion of the Greek people is

this--that in the divine ordering of the world, humanity and

divinity are absolutely divided in place and nature, and so they

must ever remain. A deep {254} gulf is fixed between the worlds of

mortality and divinity. The relations between man and God promoted

by religion depend entirely upon this distinction. The ethical ideas

of the Greek popular conscience were rooted in the frank admission

of the limitations proper to human capacity which was conditioned by

an existence and a fate so different from that enjoyed by the gods;

in the renunciation of all human claims to happiness and

independence. Poetic fancies about the "Translation" of individual

mortals to an unending life enjoyed by the soul still united to the

body might make their appeal to popular belief; but such things

remained _miracles_ in which divine omnipotence had broken down the

barriers of the natural order on a special occasion. It was but a

miracle, too, if the souls of certain mortals were raised to the

rank of Heroes, and so promoted to everlasting life. The gulf

between the human and the divine was not made any narrower on that

account; it remained unbridged, abysmal. The bare idea that the gulf

did not in reality exist, that actually in the order of nature the

inner man, the "Soul" of man belonged to the realm of gods; that as

a divine being it had everlasting life--such an idea would involve

further consequences about which no one can be in much doubt: it

would have contradicted every single idea of Greek popular religion.

It never could have become widely held and believed in by the Greek

populace.

Nevertheless, at a certain period in Greek history, and nowhere

earlier or more unmistakably than in Greece, appeared the idea of

the divinity, and the immortality implicit in the divinity, of the

human soul. That idea belonged entirely to _mysticism_--a second

order of religion which, though little remarked by the religion of

the people and by orthodox believers, gained a footing in isolated

sects and influenced certain philosophical schools. Thence it has

affected all subsequent ages and has transmitted to East and West

the elementary principles of all true mysticism: the essential unity

of the divine and the human spirit; their unification as the aim of

religion; the divine nature of the human soul and its immortality.

The theory and doctrine of mysticism grew up in the soil of an older

cult-practice. Greece received from abroad a deeply emotional

religious cult, accompanied by practices that stimulated mysterious

and extraordinary imaginings. The sparks of momentary illumination

struck out by this faith were fed and fanned by mysticism till they

became a vivid and enduring flame. For the first time, clearly {255}

discernible through its mystical wrappings, we meet with the belief

in the indestructibility and eternal life of the soul: we meet it in

the doctrines of a mystical sect which united in the worship of

Dionysos. The worship of Dionysos must have sown the first seed of

the belief in an immortal life of the soul. To explain how this may

have happened; to make clear to the mind of the reader how the

essence and inner reality of that worship was bound to stir up the

belief in an immortal life--such is our next task.

§ 2

In the spiritual life of men and nations, it is not by any means the

extravagant or, in one sense or another, the abnormal that is most

difficult for our sympathetic understanding to grasp. By clinging to

a traditional and too narrow formula for the Greek spirit we make

difficulties for ourselves; but it is not really a matter of serious

perplexity, if we reflect upon it, to understand how Greek religion

at the height of its development regarded "madness" (~mani/a~) as a

religious phenomenon of wide-reaching importance. Madness, in this

sense, is a temporary destruction of physical balance, a condition

in which the self-conscious spirit is overwhelmed, "possessed" by a

foreign power, as our authorities explain it to us. This madness

"which comes not from mortal weakness or disease, but from a divine

banishment of the commonplace"[1\8] found effective application in

the _mantic_ and _telestic_ arts. Its effects were so common and

well recognized that the truth and importance of such religious

madness (entirely distinguishable from bodily disease was treated as

a fact of experience not merely by philosophers, but by the doctors

themselves.[2\8] For us it only remains obscure how such "divine

mania" was fitted into the regular working order of the religious

life; the sensations and experiences themselves belonging to this

condition are made intelligible enough by a whole host of analogies.

In fact if the truth were told we should rather have to admit that

it is easier for us to sympathize with such overflowing of sensation

and all that goes with it than with the opposite pole of Greek

religious life, the calm and measured composure with which man

lifted up heart and eye to the gods, as the patterns of all life and

the patrons of a serenity as brilliant and unmoved as that of the

clear heavens themselves.

But how came it that in the character of a single people such

extravagance of emotion was combined with a fast-bound and regulated

equilibrium of temper and behaviour? The answer is that these

opposing features sprang from two {256} different sources. They were

not originally combined in Greece. The Homeric poems hardly give any

hint of that overflowing of religious emotion which later Greek

peoples knew and honoured as a heaven-sent madness. It spread among

the Greeks themselves in the train of a religious agitation, we

might almost say revolution, of which Homer records, at most, only

the first faint essays. It had its origin in the religion of

Dionysos, and in company with this religion enters as something new

and strange into Greek life.

The Homeric poems do not recognize Dionysos as belonging to the gods

of Olympos, but they are aware of his existence. It is true they

nowhere plainly[3\8] refer to him as the wine-god honoured in joyful

festivals, but we read (in the narrative of Glaukos' meeting with

Diomedes) of the "frenzied" Dionysos and his "Nurses" who were

attacked by the Thracian Lykourgos.[4\8] The _Mainas_, the frenzied

woman of the Dionysos-cult, was such a well-known phenomenon, so

familiar in men's minds, that the word could be used in a simile to

explain the meaning of something else.[5\8] In this form the worship

of the god first came to the notice of the Greeks; this was the

origin of all the other festivals of Dionysos that later Greece

developed in so many different directions.[6\8] They learnt to know

Dionysos Bakcheios, "who makes men frenzied,"[7\8] as he was

worshipped in his own country.

That the original home of Dionysos-worship was in Thrace, that his

cult, popular among many of the Thracian peoples,[8\8] was

particularly honoured among the southernmost of the Thracian stocks

who were best known to the Greeks and lived on the coast between the

mouths of the rivers Hebros and Axios and in the mountainous country

behind--to all this the Greeks themselves bore frequent and manifold

witness.[9\8] The god whose name the Greeks knew in its Greek form

"Dionysos" had, it appears, among the numerous and divided Thracian

peoples various appellations of which those most familiar to the

Greeks were Sabos and Sabazios.[10\8] The Greeks must have known and

remarked on the nature and worship of the god at an early period of

their history. They may have met with him in Thrace itself. At all

periods they had an extensive and varied intercourse with this

country and must in the early days of their wanderings have passed

through it on their way to their future home. They may have had

further opportunities of knowing it from the Thracian races or

tribes who, according to a few isolated legends, had dwelt in

primitive times in certain localities of Central Greece. The

ethnographical material of these {257} legends was regarded as

founded on fact by the great historians of the fifth and fourth

centuries.[11\8]

The cult of this Thracian divinity differed in every particular from

anything that we know of from Homer as Greek worship of the gods. On

the other hand, it was closely related to the cult paid by the

Phrygians, a people almost identical with the Thracians, to their

mountain-mother Kybele. It was thoroughly orgiastic in character.

The festival was held on the mountain tops in the darkness of night

amid the flickering and uncertain light of torches. The loud and

troubled sound of music was heard; the clash of bronze cymbals; the

dull thunderous roar of kettledrums; and through them all penetrated

the "maddening unison" of the deep-toned flute,[12\8] whose soul

Phrygian _aulêtai_ had first waked to life. Excited by this wild

music, the chorus of worshippers dance with shrill crying and

jubilation.[13\8] We hear nothing about singing:[14\8] the violence

of the dance left no breath for regular songs. These dances were

something very different from the measured movement of the

dance-step in which Homer's Greeks advanced and turned about in the

_Paian_. It was in frantic, whirling, headlong eddies and

dance-circles[15\8] that these inspired companies danced over the

mountain slopes. They were mostly women who whirled round in these

circular dances till the point of exhaustion was reached;[16\8] they

were strangely dressed; they wore _bassarai_, long flowing garments,

as it seems, stitched together out of fox-skins;[17\8] over these

were doeskins,[18\8] and they even had horns fixed to their

heads.[19\8] Their hair was allowed to float in the wind;[20\8] they

carried snakes sacred to Sabazios[21\8] in their hands and

brandished daggers or else thyrsos-wands, the spear-points of which

were concealed in ivy-leaves.[22\8] In this fashion they raged

wildly until every sense was wrought to the highest pitch of

excitement, and in the "sacred frenzy" they fell upon the beast

selected as their victim[23\8] and tore their captured prey limb

from limb. Then with their teeth they seized the bleeding flesh and

devoured it raw.

It is easy enough, by following poets' descriptions and plastic

representations of such scenes, to elaborate still further the

picture of this nocturnal festival of fanatic enthusiasm. But, we

must ask, what was the _meaning_ of it all? We shall get nearest to

the truth if we will exclude as far as possible all theories

imported from unrelated provinces of thought and fix our attention

solely on what, for the participants, was the result of it all--the

result anticipated and consciously proposed by them, and therefore

the recognized object, or, at least, one {258} of the recognized

objects of these strange proceedings. The participators in these

dance-festivals induced intentionally in themselves a sort of mania,

an extraordinary exaltation of their being. A strange rapture came

over them in which they seemed to themselves and others "frenzied",

"possessed".[24\8] This excessive stimulation of the senses, going

even as far as hallucination,[25\8] was brought about, in those who

were susceptible to their influence, by the delirious whirl of the

dance, the music and the darkness, and all the other circumstances

of this tumultuous worship.[26\8] This extreme pitch of excitement

was the result intended. The violently induced exaltation of the

senses had a religious purpose, in that such enlargement and

extension of his being was man's only way, as it seemed, of entering

into union and relationship with the god and his spiritual

attendants. The god is invisibly present among his inspired

worshippers. At any rate, he is close at hand, and the tumult of the

festival is to bring him completely into their midst.[27\8] There

are various legends about the disappearance of the god into another

world and his return thence to mankind.[28\8] Every second year his

return is celebrated, and it is just this Appearance, this

"Epiphany" of the god, that gives the reason and the motive of the

festival. The Bull-God, in the most ancient and primitive form of

the belief, appeared in person among the dancers,[29\8] or else the

imitated roaring of a bull produced by hidden "Mimes of Terror"

served to suggest the invisible Presence.[30\8] The worshippers,

too, in furious exaltation and divine inspiration, strive after the

god; they seek communion with him. They burst the physical barriers

of their soul. A magic power takes hold of them; they feel

themselves raised high above the level of their everyday existence;

they seem to _become_ those spiritual beings who wildly dance in the

train of the god.[31\8] Nay, more, they have a share in the life of

the god himself; nothing less can be the meaning of the fact that

the enraptured servants of the god call themselves by the name of

the god. The worshipper who in his exaltation has become one with

the god, is himself now called Sabos, Sabazios.[32\8] The superhuman

and the infra-human are mingled in his person; like the frenzied

god[33\8] he throws himself upon the sacrificial animal to devour it

raw. To make this transformation of their nature outwardly manifest,

the participants in the dance-festival wear strange dress: they

resemble in their appearance the members of the wild _thiasos_ of

the god;[34\8] the horns they set on their heads recall the horned,

bull-shaped god himself, etc.[35\8] The whole might be called a

religious drama, since {259} everything is carefully arranged so as

to suggest to the imagination the actual presence of the mysterious

figures from the spirit world. At the same time, it is something

more than mere drama, for it can hardly be doubted that the players

themselves were possessed by the illusion of living the life of a

strange person. The awe-inspiring darkness of night, the music,

especially that of the Phrygian flute, to which the Greeks

attributed the power of making its hearers "full of the god",[36\8]

the vertiginous whirl of the dance--all these may very well, in

suitably disposed natures,[37\8] have really led to a state of

visionary exaltation in which the inspired person saw all external

objects in accordance with his fancy and imagination. Intoxicating

drinks, to which the Thracians were addicted, may have increased the

excitement;[38\8] perhaps they even used the fumes derived from

certain seeds, with which the Scythians and Massagetai knew how to

intoxicate themselves.[39\8] We all know how even to day in the East

the smoke of hashish may make men visionaries and excite religious

raptures[40\8] in which the whole of nature is transformed for the

enthralled dreamer. "Only when thus possessed did the Bakchai drink

milk and honey out of the rivers; their power ceased when they came

to themselves again," says Plato.[41\8] For them the earth flowed

with milk and honey, and the air was filled with the sweet odours of

Syria.[42\8] Hallucination was accompanied by a state of feeling in

which pain itself was only an added stimulus to sensation or in

which the visionary became completely insensible to pain, as is not

unusual in such states of exaltation.[43\8]

Every detail confirms the picture of a condition of wild excitement

in which the limitations of ordinary life seemed to be abolished.

These extraordinary phenomena transcending all normal experience

were explained by saying that the soul of a person thus

"possessed"[44\8] was no longer "at home"[45\8] but "abroad", having

left its body behind. This was the literal and primitive meaning

understood by the Greek when he spoke of the "ekstasis" of the soul

in such orgiastic conditions of excitement.[46\8] This ekstasis is

"a brief madness", just as madness is a prolonged ekstasis.[47\8]

But the ekstasis, the temporary _alienatio mentis_ of the Dionysiac

cult was not thought of as a vain purposeless wandering in a region

of pure delusion, but as a _hieromania_,[48\8] a sacred madness in

which the soul, leaving the body, winged its way to union with the

god.[49\8] It is now with and in the god, in the condition of

_enthousiasmos_; those who are possessed by this are ~e/ntheoi~;

they live and have their being in the god.[50\8] While still

retaining {260} the finite Ego, they feel and enjoy to the full the

infinite powers of all life.

In _ekstasis_ the soul is liberated from the cramping prison of the

body; it communes with the god and develops powers of which, in the

ordinary life of everyday, thwarted by the body, it knew nothing.

Being now a spirit holding communion with spirits it is able to free

itself from Time and see what only the spiritual eye beholds--things

separated from it in time and space. The enthusiastic worship of the

Thracian servants of Dionysos gave birth to the _inspiration

mantikê_,[51\8] a form of prophecy which did not (like prophecy as

it invariably appears in Homer) have to wait for accidental,

ambiguous and external signs of the god's will, but on the contrary

entered immediately into communion with the world of gods and

spirits and in this heightened spiritual condition beheld and

proclaimed the future. This power belonged to men only in

_ekstasis_, in religious madness, when "the God enters into men".

The _Mainads_ are the official exponents of this _mantikê_ of

inspiration.[52\8] It is simple and intelligible enough that the

Thracian cult of Dionysos, which was throughout a means of

stimulating men to a condition of extreme exaltation that they might

enter into direct communion with the spirit-world, also encouraged

the prophesying of inspired seers, who in their rapt exaltation and

frenzy became clairvoyant. Among the Thracian Satrai there was a

tribe called the Bessoi who produced _prophêtai_, and these were in

charge of an oracle of Dionysos situated on the top of a high

mountain. The prophetess of this temple was a woman who gave

prophecies like the Pythia at Delphi, that is to say, in a state of

rapt ecstasy. This, at least, is what Herodotos says,[53\8] and we

have many other accounts of Thracian _mantikê_ and its close

connexion with the orgiastic cult of Dionysos.[54\8]

§ 3

The Greek type of religion, perhaps from its very origin, certainly

at the earliest period of its development in which it becomes

accessible to our observation--the period to which the Homeric poems

belong--had no leaning to anything resembling an excited emotional

worship like that practised by the Thracians in their orgiastic cult

of Dionysos. The whole movement wherever it came to their notice

must have struck the Greeks of Homer as something strange and

barbaric, attractive only through the interest ever attached to the

unknown. And yet--the fact is certain--the thrilling tones {261} of

this "enthusiastic" worship awoke an answering chord deep in the

hearts of many Greeks; in spite of all that was strange they must

have recognized a familiar accent in it--something that, however

outlandishly expressed, could appeal to the common nature of

mankind.

This enthusiastic Thracian cult was in fact only a special

expression, conforming to their peculiar national characteristics,

of a religious impulse that is to be found all over the earth, and

which breaks out in every stage of civilization. It must, indeed,

answer to an instinctive need of human nature, and be rooted in the

physical and psychical constitution of man. In moments of supreme

exaltation man felt the presence above him and around him of mighty

powers that seemed to express themselves even in his own personal

life. These he was no longer to confront in pious and fearful awe,

passively confined within the limits of his own separate

personality: he was to break down every barrier and clasp them to

his heart, making them his own in unconditional surrender. Mankind

needed not to wait for that strange product of poetry and thought,

Pantheism, before it could experience this instinctive need to lose

its own private existence, for a moment, in the divine. There are

whole races of men, not otherwise among the most distinguished

members of the human family, who have a special tendency and gift

for such expansion of the human consciousness into the

supra-personal. They have an urgent impulse to such rapt and

visionary states, and they regard the enticing or horrifying visions

that visit them in those states as actual experiences of another

world into which their "souls" have for a brief while been

transported. In every part of the world there are peoples who regard

such ecstatic exaltation as the only true religious act, the only

way of intercourse with the spirit-world available to man, and base

their religious performances principally upon such ceremonial as

experience has shown to be most capable of inducing the ecstasies

and visions. The means most commonly adopted by such peoples to

produce the desired intensity and stimulation of feeling is a

violently excited dance prolonged to the point of exhaustion, in the

darkness of night, to the accompaniment of tumultuous music.

Sometimes whole companies of the people induce in themselves a state

of religious excitement by wild and furious dancing.[55\8] More

often selected individuals, specially susceptible to such

impressions, suffer their "souls" to be drawn out by music and

dancing and every other sort of stimulating influence, and made to

visit the world of spirits and gods.[56\8] Such "magicians" and

priests who can place {262} themselves in immediate contact of soul

with the spirit world, are to be found all over the globe. The

shamans of Asia, the "medicine men" of North America, the Angekoks

of Greenland, the Butios of the Antilles, the Piajes of the

Caribbees are merely special cases of a universal type, essentially

the same in all its different manifestations. Africa, Australia, and

the island world of the Pacific are equally familiar with them. Both

their performances and the range of ideas that lie behind them

belong to a type of religious experience that occurs with the

regularity of a natural phenomenon, and must therefore not be

regarded as abnormal. Even among Christian peoples of long standing,

the smouldering fires of this primitive and emotional type of

religion are ever ready to burst out again in renewed flames, and

those who feel their warmth are kindled to a more than human sense

of life and vigour.[57\8] Conventionality and traditionalism, even

the substitution of a cold and spurious mimicry for real feeling,

are of course quite compatible with a form of religion which

consists so much in the display of emotion. But even so, the most

cautious observers[58\8] have declared that by such violent

stimulation of every sense the "magicians" are thrown into a state

of quite unfeigned exaltation. In accordance with the character and

content of their normal modes of thought, the hallucinations to

which the magicians are subject differ in different cases; but as a

general rule their frenzy opens to them a way of immediate

intercourse, frequently of complete communion of being, with the

gods. This is the only explanation which will account for the fact

that, like the inspired Bakchantes of Thrace, the magicians and

priests of so many peoples are called by the name of the divinity to

whom their "enthusiastic" worship elevates them.[59\8] The impulse

to union with God, the extinction of the individual in the

divine--these are what form the fundamental points of contact

between the mysticism of the most highly cultivated and talented

people and the emotional religion of primitive "savages". Even the

external machinery of excitement and stimulation are not always

dispensed with by the mystics:[60\8] they are always the same as

those with which we are already familiar in the orgiastic religion

of primitive peoples--music, the giddy whirl of the dance, narcotic

stimulants. Thus (to take the most striking example out of many that

might be given) the dervishes of the Orient whirl round in their

violent dances to the rattle of drums, and the sound of flutes till

the last stages of excitement and exhaustion are reached. The

purpose of it all is vividly expressed by the {263} most fearless of

all the mystics, Jelaleddin Rumi, in the words: "He that knows the

power of the dance dwells in God; for he has learnt that Love can

slay.[61\8] Allah hu! . . ."

§ 4

Wherever a cultus of this kind, making its aim and object the

evocation of ecstatic raptures, has taken root--whether in whole

races of men or in religious communities--there we find in close

alliance with it, whether as cause or effect or both, a peculiarly

vital belief in the life and power of the soul of man after its

separation from the body. Our comparative glance over the analogous

phenomena of other lands has shown us that the exalted worship

offered to "Dionysos" among the Thracians was only a single variety

of a method, familiar to more than half the human race, of getting

into touch with the divine by a religious "enthousiasmos". We

therefore expect to find among the Thracians a specially strong and

well-developed belief in the life of the "soul". And in fact we find

Herodotos telling us of a Thracian tribe, the Getai, whose belief

"made men immortal".[62\8] They had only one god, Zalmoxis by

name.[63\8] To this god, who dwelt in a cavernous mountain, all the

dead of their race, they believed, would one day be gathered and

have immortal life.[64\8] The same belief was held by other Thracian

tribes, too.[65\8] This creed seems to have had in view the

"transplantation"[66\8] of the dead to a blessed life in the

hereafter. But, it would seem, this transplantation was not perhaps

for ever. We hear of the belief that the dead would "return"[67\8]

from the other world; and that this idea existed among the Getai is

implied (though the narrator does not clearly understand this) by

the absurd pragmatizing fable which Herodotos got from the Greek

settlers on the Hellespont and the Pontos.[68\8] In this story (as

often in later accounts too Zalmoxis is actually a slave and pupil

of Pythagoras of Samos. Whoever invented this fairy-tale was led to

it by observing the close relationship between the Pythagorean

doctrine of the soul and the Thracian belief. In the same way later

observers of the same fact reversed the positions and made

Pythagoras the pupil of the Thracian.[69\8] In any case the fact

cannot to be doubted that in Thrace people thought they had found

again the special doctrine of Pythagoras as to the _transmigration_

of souls. The belief in the "return" of the soul must be interpreted

as meaning that the souls of the dead return to life in new bodies

and resume their life on earth, to this extent being {264}

"immortal". Only so interpreted could it have been held for a moment

without coming into conflict with obvious appearances. An allusion

in Euripides seems to regard as Thracian such a belief in a

recurrent incarnation of the soul.[70\8]

We should be justified in expecting to find an inner connexion

between this Thracian belief in immortality, which seems to have

made such an impression on our Greek informants, and the religion

and "enthousiastic" worship of the same people. Nor are traces

lacking of a close association of the Thracian worship of Dionysos

and Thracian cult of the Souls.[71\8] But if we ask why the religion

of the Thracian Dionysos was attended by a belief in the

independent, indestructible life of the soul, a life not confined to

the period of its sojourn in the body which at present envelopes it,

the answer must be sought not in the nature of the god to whom the

cult was offered (that nature being, in fact, insufficiently known

to us) but in the nature of the cult itself. The object of that

cult--we might almost say its special task--was to exalt its

worshippers to a state of "ekstasis" in which their "souls" should

be forcibly delivered from the normal circle of their human and

circumscribed being, and raised as pure spirits to communion with

the god and his company of spirits. The true "Bakchai"[72\8]--those

who were really cast into a state of religious madness--found in the

rapture of these orgies a new province of experience open before

them: they experience things of which they could give no account in

the fully conscious light of ordinary day. There can be no doubt

that the experiences and visions that their "ekstasis" gave them

were regarded by them as the plainest and most literally real of

facts.[73\8] The belief in the existence and life of a second self

distinct from the body and separable from it was already encouraged

by the "experiences" of the separate existence and independent

behaviour of that self in dreams and fainting fits.[74\8] How much

more strongly and vividly must this belief have been confirmed for

those who in the intoxication of those delirious dances had

"experienced" for themselves how the soul, freed from the body,

could participate in the joys and terrors of the divine existence;

not indeed the whole man, body and soul together, but the soul by

itself and in separation from the body--the spiritual being

invisibly living within the man. The sense of its own divinity, its

eternity, which had been blindingly revealed to it in "ekstasis",

might be developed by the soul into a lasting persuasion that it was

indeed of a divine nature, and called to a divine life which it

would enjoy for ever as soon as it was freed from the body, {265}

just as it had then enjoyed it for a moment. No mere intellectual

arguments could give such powerful support to a spiritualism of this

kind as the personal experience itself which, even in this life

supplied a foretaste of what the individual was one day to enjoy as

his own for ever.

In some such way as this, the persuasion of an independent,

continued existence of the soul after the death of its body was

developed into a belief in the divinity and immortality of the soul.

In all such cases it was almost inevitable that the naive

distinction between "body" and "soul", natural to simple-minded

peoples and individuals, should harden into an _opposition_ between

the two. The descent from the heights where the ecstatic and

emancipated soul enjoyed its thrilling delights was too sudden; the

body could not but seem a burden and a hindrance, almost an enemy of

the heaven-born soul. Disparagement of the ordinary existence of

every day, a turning aside from this life--these are the natural

results of such an advanced spiritualism, even though it may have no

speculative basis, when it influences so profoundly the religious

temperament of a people as yet untroubled by the subtleties of a

scientific culture. A trace of such a depreciation of the earthly

life of mankind in comparison with the joys of a free

spirit-existence is to be found in what Herodotos and other

narrators tell of certain Thracian tribes[75\8] who receive the

new-born among their kinsfolk with mourning, and bury their dead

with joyful acclamation, for the latter are now beyond the reach of

all pain, and are living "in perfect happiness".[76\8] The

cheerfulness with which the Thracians faced death in battle[77\8]

was explained by the persuasion which they held that death was only

an entrance into a higher life for the soul. They were even credited

with a real desire for death, for to them "dying seemed so

fair".[78\8]

§ 5

Further than this the Thracians--who never quite outgrew a sort of

semi-animated torpor of the intellect--could not go on the way

marked out for them. The seed of a mystical form of religion that

existed in the ecstatic dance-orgies of Dionysos-worship never came

to fruition. We never feel with them that we are being taken beyond

the region of vague unconscious emotion; it is but a passing

illumination that for a moment of wild excitement reveals the near

presence of overwhelming spirit-forces.

Not until the flames of such ecstatic worship were fed and nourished

by a people of more independent and developed spiritual life, could

fitful suggestions be welded into deep and {266} enduring thought.

Reflexion upon the nature of the world and of God, the changing and

deceptive flow of appearance with the indestructible One Reality

behind it; the conception of a divinity that is One, a single light

that, divided into a thousand rays and reflected from everything

that is, achieves its unity again in the soul of man; such thoughts

as these, allied to the dim half-conscious impulse of an

enthusiastic dance-worship, might allow the pure waters of the

stream of mysticism to run clear at last, freed from the turbid and

unsatisfying enthusiasm of popular religious practices.

Thus, for example, among the stern and rigid-minded peoples of

Islam, with their stiff, uncompromising Monotheism, there arose, no

one knows whence, the inspired dance-orgies of the Dervishes, which

then spread far and wide carrying with them the mystical doctrine of

the Sûfis, that child of the profound mind of India. Man is God; God

is All: such was the pronouncement of the inspired poetry--the

special contribution in particular of Persia to this religion of

mystic **ecstasy--now in the most transparent simplicity, now in the

most gorgeous magnificence of imagery. In the ecstatic dance, which

in this case remained in organic connexion with the mystical

doctrine (as the soil of the maternal earth with the flowers which

she puts forth) new strength was ever being added to the spiritual

superstructure. Mystical theory was invigorated by the practical

experience, in heightened consciousness, of an internal and

unquenchable source of undying power and might. The veil of the

world was torn aside for the inspired worshipper; the All-One became

sensible and intelligible for him; it poured into his own being; the

"deification" of the Mystai was realized in him. "Who knows the

power of the Dance dwells in God". . .

Many years before all this, a process of development was completed

on Greek soil which has no closer parallel than the special phase of

Oriental religion just referred to. Greek religion never indeed (so

long at least as the independence of Greek life lasted) went to the

extravagant lengths of Oriental mysticism. Even the sense of the

infinite had to be expressed by the Greek imagination in plastic

form. But for all that, on Greek soil, in the ecstatic Cult of

Dionysos, under the influence of Greek reflexion upon God, the world

and mankind, the seeds which previously lay undeveloped in the womb

of that cult were unfolded in a mystical doctrine, whose guiding

principle was the divinity of the human soul and the infiniteness of

its life in God. It was from this source that Greek philosophy found

the courage to advance a doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

[1\8: Pl., _Phdr._ 265 A.]

[2\8: e.g. Cael. Aurel. (i.e. Soranos), _Morb. Chr._ i, § 144 ff.;

Aret. _Chron. Pass._ i, 6, p. 84 Kühn [vol. 24].]

[3\8: Even the late interpolated passages ~X~ 325, ~ô~ 74, are not

quite conclusive. Apart from these the statement of Sch. ~i~ 198

applies strictly throughout both poems: ~to\ mê\ paradido/nai

Ho/mêron Dio/nuson oi/nou heuretê/n~, Lehrs, _Arist._^3, p. 181.]

[4\8: ~Z~ 132 ff. The scene is evidently meant to be a Bacchic

festival. This is shown by the ~thu/sthla~, which the ~Diônu/soio

tithê=nai~ let fall out of their hands. All the rest is obscure.

Even in antiquity no one knew who the ~tithê=nai~ of Dionysos really

were, and hence alternative suggestions were all the more numerous:

cf. Nauck, _Fr. Trag._^2, p. 17. Voigt, in Roscher's _Mythol. Lex._

i, 1049. It can hardly be necessary (with Sch. A on Z 129) to deduce

from the reference to ~tithê=nai~ that Dionysos himself was regarded

as ~nê/pios e/ti kai\ pai=s~. His former ~tithê=nai~ follow him in

the Bacchic festival even after he has grown up, exactly as in _h.

Hom._ xxvi, 3, 7-10. ~hai Dionu/sou trophoi/~ as the frenzied mob

worshipping the god, ~tô=| theô=| orgia/zousai~ (in Thessaly), come

in D.S. 5, 50, 4, in a parallel narrative to the story of Lykourgos

and the Mainads. With the conception of the god as ~likni/tês~

neither his leap into the sea (~Z~ 135 ff.), nor esp. the adj.

~mainome/noio~ (132) are in harmony. This last word does certainly

give us pause. The accounts provided by later ages of the madness of

Dionysos are obviously made up from the lines of Homer and are

therefore of no use to us (already ap. Eumelos in the ~Eurôpi/a~,

Schol. AD. ~Z~ 131; then Pherekydes, Achaios ~en I/ridi~: Phld.,

_Piet._, p. 36 [Nauck, _Fr. Trag._^2, p. 751]; E., _Cyc._ 3.

[Apollod.] iii, 5, 1, is prob. derived from Pherec. as are also

Philistos _fr._ 57, _FHG._ i; Pl., _Lg._ 672 B; Nic. ~Ophiak.~ _fr._

30 Schn., etc.). Scholastic interpreters even thought of a

hypallage: ~mainome/noio = maniopoiou=, bakchei/as

paraskeuastikou=~, Schol. A, ~Z~ 132; cf. Sch. B, p. 182a, 43 f. Bk.

And, indeed, there is certainly in this case a sort of mythological

or sacramental hypallage: the state of mind brought about by the god

in those who surround him is reflected back on to the god himself

(~maino/menoi Sa/turoi~, E., _Ba._ 130; cf. the mad nurses of

Dionysos, Nonn., _D._ ix, 38 ff.). It would not be hard to parallel

this (e.g. Dionys. who makes men drunk is represented as himself

drunk, Ath. 428 E, etc.).]

[5\8: ~X~ 460, ~mega/roio die/ssuto _maina/di_ i/sê, pallome/nê

kradi/ên~. The evidence of this passage for the familiarity of

Homer's audience with the nature of the Mainads cannot be set aside

as Lob., _Agl._ 285, tries to do. The word could only be used as an

~eikô/n~ if the thing were often before men's eyes. ~maina/s~,

indeed, is even something different from, and more specialized than

~mainome/nê~ (~Z~ 389).]

[6\8: The view that ~mai/nesthai~ was primitive in the cult of D.,

the wine, etc., being added later, was definitely put forward in

1825 by O. Müller (_Kl. Schr._ ii, 26 ff.) arguing against J. H.

Voss. But it is only in quite recent times that in tracing the

origin of the religion of Dionysos occasional inquirers have taken

this view as their starting point: cf. esp. Voigt in his noteworthy

treatment of Dionysos in Roscher's _Myth. Lex._ i, 1029 ff.]

[7\8: ~ho\s mai/nesthai ena/gei anthrô/pous~, Hdt. iv, 79.] {268}

[8\8: E.g. the Odrysai, who, however, lived further north in the

Hebros valley; Mela, ii, 17, mentions distinctly the mountain chains

of Haimos, Rhodope, and Orbelos as sacris Liberi patris et coetu

Maenadum celebratos.]

[9\8: Lob., _Agl._ 289 ff.]

[10\8: Sabazios: ~Saba/zion to\n Dio/nuson hoi Thra=|kes kalou=sin~

Sch. Ar., _Ves._ 9; cf. Sch. Ar., _Lys._ 388; D.S. 4, 4, 1; Harp.

~Saboi/~; Alex. Polyh. ap. Macr. i, 18, 11 (_Sebadius_: cf. Apul.,

_M._ viii, 25, p. 150, 11 Ey. The original form of this name seems

to have been _Savos_, _Savadios_, Kretschmer, _Einleitung in. d.

**Gesch. d. griech. Spr._ 195 f.; Usener, _Götternamen_ 44). Sabos,

Phot. p. 495, 11-12 Pors. Hesych. s.v.; Orph., _H._ 49, 2, etc. The

fact that others could call Sabazios a Phrygian god (Amphitheos ~p.

Hêraklei/os b'~ ap. Sch. Ar., _Av._ 874; Str. 470; Hsch. s.v.), only

serves to bring out more clearly the opinion, unanimously held even

in antiquity, that the Thracians and the Phrygians were closely

related. Sabazios (besides being identified with Helios: Alex.

Polyh. l.c.; cf. Soph. _fr._ 523 N.), as the supreme and almighty

god of the Thracians, was even called ~_Zeu\s_ Saba/zios~ (Val. Max.

i, 3, 2), esp. on inss. (a few are given in Rapp, _Dionysoscult_

[Progr.] p. 21; cf. also ins. from Peiraeus ~Eph. Arch.~ 1883, p.

245; _Ins. Pergam._ i, 248, 33, 49: from Pisidia, _Papers of the

Amer. School at Athens_, ii, p. 54, 56. _Jovi Sabazio_, Orelli,

_Ins._ 1259). We even find ~Zeu\s Ba/kchos, Zeu\s Hê/lios~ (_BCH._

vi, 189).--The name ~Saba/zios~ was derived from ~saba/zein =

eua/zein, dia\ to\n geno/menon peri\ auto\n euasmo/n (theiasmo/n)~:

Sch. Ar., _Av._ 874; _Lys._ 388. So, too, ~Ba/kchos~ was on this

view only another way of expressing the same meaning; since this

name also was derived by the ancients from ~ba/zein = eua/zein~ (it

is really from the root ~wach (ache/ô) Ba/kchos~, with

"affrication"; a reduplicated form of it is ~wiwachos, I/akchos,

iache/ô, iakche/ô~; cf. Curtius, _Griech. Etym._^5, p. 460, 576).

Other names of the Thracian Dionysos are the following: ~Bassareu/s

(Ba/ssaros~, Orph., _H._ 45, 2), derived from ~bassa/ra~ the long

dress (made of skin?) worn by the ~Bassari/des = Thra/|kiai

ba/kchai~, _AB._ 222, 26 f.; Hsch. s.v. ~Bassa/rai~ and _EM._ s.v.

(the last compiled from Orion and Sch. Lyc. 771). Other accounts

(not contradicting in this point the statement of Hsch.) made it the

dress worn by the god himself: Sch. Pers. i, 101. (The ~Bassareu/s~

was generally described as bearded and even _senili specie_, like

the representation of Dionysos himself in the oldest Greek art:

Macr. i, 18, 9.) If ~Bassareu/s~ means "the wearer of the long

fox-skin" we should be strongly reminded of the--also Thracian--god

~_Za/lmolxis_ (Za/lmoxis)~, whose name was derived from ~zalmo/s =

dora\ a/rktou~ (Porph., _VP._ 14, though this comes only from

Antonius Diogenes 6), and probably means "he who is cloaked in the

bearskin" (see Fick, _Spracheinh. d. Indog. Europ._, p. 418; Hehn,

_Culturpflanz._ 428 E.T.).--~Gi/gôn~ a name of Dionysos, _EM._ 231,

28: perhaps a name given to the god in the city Gigonos mentioned in

the same passage, and the ~a/kra Gi/gônis~ at the western end of the

Thracian Chalkidike.--_EM._ 186, 32, is too short to be

intelligible: ~balia/; diapoi/kilos. kai\ to\n Dio/nuson

Thra=|kes.--Du/alos Dio/nusos para\ Pai/osin~, Hesych.]

[11\8: At any rate the people whom Thuc., Ephoros, and others call

Thracians and regarded as having been once settled in Phokis,

Boeotia, etc., are undoubtedly to be considered Thracians--and not

the impossibly honest and exemplary people, a creation of the fancy,

the "Thracians of the Muses", alleged to be quite distinct from the

real Thracian peoples, of whom we have heard so much since K. O.

{269} Müller (_Orchom._ 379 ff.) introduced the idea. Antiquity only

knew of one kind of Thracian. In the Homeric poems they are not so

different from the Greeks in civilization as they were in later

times, when we know them from the accounts of Herod. and Xen. For

all that they are the same people. They seem in the course of time

to have degenerated, or rather they have not shared in the progress

made by others and so have remained backward (even behind their

Phrygian relatives who wandered to Asia Minor and achieved a higher

culture under Semitic influence). In fact, like the Keltoi, they were

never able to get beyond a condition of semi-civilization.]

[12\8: ~mani/as epagôgo\n homokla/n~. Aesch. in the ~Êdônoi/~ ap.

Str. 470-1 (_fr._ 57), is the locus classicus for the music in the

_Thracian_ festival of Dionysos. Apart from this it is impossible to

distinguish in the accounts given by our ancient authorities,

between the strictly Thracian festival and the _ideal_ generalized

festival of Dionysos (not the mitigated ceremonial actually used in

the festival in Greece. They merge completely into each other.]

[13\8: ~saba/zein = eua/zein~, Schol. Ar., _Av._ 874; _Lys._ 388.]

[14\8: ~hai Ba/kchai sigô=sin~. Diogen., _Prov._ iii, 43.]

[15\8: Complete revolution round one's own axis, as in the dance of

a dervish, is known at least only in the more fanatic

dance-festivals of antiquity: ~strophê\n holosô/maton hô/sper hoi

_ka/tochoi_ dineu/ontes~, Heliod. 4, 17, p. 116, 1 Bk. ~_di/nêsis_

tô=n theophorê/tôn~ in Phrygia: Horus ap. _EM._ 276, 32. Crusius,

_Philol._ 55, 565, compares besides Verg., _A._ vii, 377 ff.; Alex.

Aphr., _Prob._, p. 6 Us. In the Spartan dance ~diamale/as~ (?)

Seilenoi and Satyrs appeared ~orchou/menoi hupo/trocha [peri/trocha~

acc. to Meineke: perhaps better]. Poll. 4, 104.]

[16\8: E., _Ba._ 116 ff., 664 ff. Thracian: assiduis Edonis fessa

choreis qualis in herboso concidit Apidano, Prop. 1, 3, 5 f.]

[17\8: Bassaris: Thracian acc. to Sch. Pers. i, 101; worn by

~ba/kchai~ Hsch. ~bassa/rai~. Lydian, too: ~ho/stis chitô=nas

bassa/ras te Ludi/as echei podê/reis~, A. ~en Êdônois~, _fr._ 59;

cf. Poll. 7, 59. "Perhaps a Phrygian word that has penetrated into

Lydia," Kretschmer, _Einleitung_, 390. The worship of Dionysos which

had also presumably come from Phrygia, was esp. popular in Lydia.]

[18\8: Familiar in the Bacchic ceremonial of Greece; but occurring

already in Thrace: Aesch. ~en Êdônoi/~ (dealing entirely with

Thracian customs) mentions the ~nebri/des~, and in the same place

has ~aigi/das~ as well (_fr._ 64).]

[19\8: The ~Ba/kchai~ of Macedonia and the ~Mimallo/nes~, in all

respects resembling the Thracian Bacchants, ~keratophorou=si kata\

mi/mêsin Dionu/sou~: Sch. Lyc. 1237 (~Laphusti/as keraspho/rous

gunai=kas~).]

[20\8: Mentis inops rapitur, quales audire solemus Threicias passis

Maenadas ire comis, Ov., _F._ iv, 457 f.]

[21\8: Thphr. _Ch._ 16 (28, p. 141 Jebb); Artemid. 2, 13, p. 106, 9

H.]

[22\8: Snakes and daggers are found in the hands of the ~mimallo/nes

kai\ bassa/rai kai\ ludai/~ in the train of Ptol. Philad.:

Kallixenos ap. Ath. 198 E. Snakes and ~thu/rsoi~ belong to the

paraphernalia of the ~e/nochoi toi=s Orphikoi=s kai\ toi=s peri\

to\n Dio/nuson orgiasmoi=s gunai=kes~ in Macedonia, and of the

~Klô/dônes kai\ Mimallo/nes~ who ~polla\ toi=s Êdôni/si kai\ tai=s

peri\ to\n Hai=mon _Thrê/|ssais ho/moia_ drô=sin~, Plu., _Alex._ 2

(in connexion with the snake of Olympias. She was especially given

to the Thrako-Dionysian mysteries: cf. the letter of Olympias to

Alexander, Ath. 659 F).--~thu/rsoi~ of the Macedonian ~Mimallo/nes~:

Polyaen. 4, 1; Sch. Pers. 1, 99.--"Even now" the thyrsos wands are

decked with ivy in the _Thraciae populis sollemnibus sacris_, Plin.,

{270} _NH._ xvi, 144.--The ~na/rthêx~ of the thyrsos is really a

shepherd's staff: Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii, p. 14 P.]

[23\8: Eur., _Ba._ 735 ff. and frequently.]

[24\8: ~katochai\ kai\ enthousiasmoi/~ in the Thrako-Macedonian

worship of Dionysos: Plu., _Alex._ 2. (The Mimallones _imitantur

furorem Liberi_, Sch., Pers. i, 99.) ~hoi tô=| Sabazi/ô| ka/tochoi~:

Porph. ap. Iamb. _de Myst._ 3, 9, p. 117, 16. ~ba/kchos; ho

maniô/dês~, Eust. ~d~ 249; ~b~ 16. ~Klô/dônes~ is the name given to

the ~maina/des kai\ ba/kchai apo\ tou= _kato/chous_ ginome/nas

klô/zein~, _EM._ 521, 50. ~hoi ka/tochoi toi=s peri\ to\n Dio/nuson

orgiasmoi=s~, Plu., _Is. et Os._ 35, p. 364 F.]

[25\8: ~hoi bakcheuo/menoi kai\ korubantiô=ntes enthousia/zousi

me/chris a\n to\ pothou/menon _i/dôsin_~, Philo, _Vit. Cont._ 2, ii,

p. 473 M.]

[26\8: So too the wild shaking and whirling-round of the head, which

acc. to innumerable literary and pictorial descriptions was a

regular feature of the Bacchic dance and cult, must have

contributed--and was so intended--to bring about the condition of

ecstasy and frenzy (~rhipsau/cheni su\n klo/nô|~, Pi., _fr._ 208;

~kra=ta sei=sai~, E., _Ba._ 185, etc.).--How such fanatic shaking of

the head, if kept up for along time, is by itself sufficient, in

persons naturally predisposed to it, to bring on complete religious

~e/kstasis~, may be learnt from a remarkable account in Moreau _du

hachisch_, p. 290 ff., derived from personal observation in the

East.]

[27\8: The object of the trieteric festival of Dionysos (repeated

every second year) held in so many places in Greece (cf. Weniger,

_Dionysosdienst in Elis_, Progr. 1883, p. 8) was to celebrate the

_presence_ of the god. This is clearly shown by D.S. 4, 3, 2, who

also attributes the trieteric festival to the Thracians: ~tou\s

Boiôtou\s kai\ tou\s a/llous He/llênas kai\ _Thra=|kas_ . . .

katadei=xai ta\s trietêri/das thusi/as Dionu/sô| kai\ to\n theo\n

nomi/zein kata\ to\n chro/non tou=ton poiei=sthai ta\s para\ toi=s

anthrô/pois _epiphanei/as_~. At this time women and maidens

celebrated ~tê\n _parousi/an_ tou= Dionu/sou~. (In the archaic song

of the Elean women the Bull-god is thus called upon: Plu., _QG._ 36,

299 A; _Is. et Os._ 35, p. 364 F; whereupon the Eleans believed that

~to\n theo/n sphisin epiphoita=n es tô=n Thui/ôn tê\n heortê/n~:

Paus. 6, 26, 1.)--For Bakchos amongst the dancers see E., _Ba._ 185

ff., 306 f., and often. At the trieteric festival at Delphi

~Dio/nusos . . . Parnaso\n kata\ **pêda=| choreu/ei parthe/nois su\n

Delphi/sin~, E., _Hypsip._ _fr._ 752. And so often in poetry: see

Nauck on S., _OT._ 213; _Ant._ 1126 ff.--Thracian trieteric

festival: tuo motae proles Semeleia thyrso Ismariae celebrant

repetita triennia bacchae, Ov., _M._ ix, 641 f.; tempus erat, quo

sacra solent trieterica Baccho Sithoniae celebrare nurus; nox

conscia sacris, etc., vi, 587.]

[28\8: ~aphanismo/s~ followed by ~epipha/neia~ of Dionysos

represent, as we frequently learn, the varying relationship of the

god with mankind. These are alternating and periodically repeated,

and they are reflected in the trieteric period of the festivals. It

is customary to explain this disappearance and return of the god as

an allegorical typification of the destruction and restoration of

vegetation. There is no reason at all to believe this, except for

those who regard the doctrines of the Greek "Religion of Nature" as

infallible axioms. The god is simply, and in the literal sense of

the words, regarded as removed for a time from the world of men,

during which period he is in the world of spirits. In the same way

Apollo, according to the Delphic legend, is carried away from the

human world for certain periods: he lives during that time among the

Hyperboreans, whose land is inaccessible to mortal foot or ship. We

ought not to be afraid to make use of the light thrown on these

matters by parallel legends of the temporary disappearance {271} of

gods among uncivilized peoples (the god may be sometimes asleep or

under constraint; cf. Plu., _Is. et Os._, 69 fin. 378 F); cf. what

we are told in Dobrizhoffer's _Gesch. d. Abip._ ii, p. 63 (E.T.),

about the beliefs held by the Abipones of Paraguay; or, again, what

is said of the negro races of West Africa, according to whom the god

normally lives in the depths of the earth, but at regularly

recurring intervals comes up to visit men; whereupon the members of

a mystical society build him a house, receive his oracles, etc.;

Réville, _Rel. des peuples non-civil._ i, 110-11. Thus Dionysos,

too, is for a time in the underworld, in the world of spirits and

the _souls_. This is clearly presupposed by the festival at Lerna,

in which Dionysos is called up out of the bottomless spring Alkyonia

by which there was an entrance to Hades (just as the inhabitants of

Kos every year ~anakalou=ntai~ Hylas out of his spring, i.e. from

the underworld: H. Türk, _De Hyla_, p. 3 f.; Welcker, _Kl. Schr._ i,

12; and see Maass, _Litt. Ztg._ 1896, 7-8). Hence also in Lerna a

lamb was offered as a victim ~tô=| pulao/chô|~, i.e. to Hades

himself, and was thrown into the spring (Plu., _Is. et Os._ 35, p.

368 F, quoting Sokrates ~peri\ tô=n Hosi/ôn~; _Smp._ 4, 6, 2, p. 671

E; Paus. 2, 36, 7; 37, 5-6). Because he is in the realm of the dead

a pragmatical myth represented him as slain by Perseus and thrown

into the spring of Lerna: Lob., _Agl._ 574. In Delphi, too,

something was known of the death and reawakening of Dionysos, but we

have in Orph., _H._ 53, a quite unambiguous expression of the real

conception, acc. to which D. "rested in the house of Persephone",

and appears again in the upper world at the time of the trieteric

festival when he ~egei/rei~ his ~kô=mon, eua/zôn kinô=n te

chorou/s~. We may be all the more certain that the same idea is to

be attributed to the trieteric festival in Thrace, since the same

belief exactly occurs again in the legend of the Thracian (Getic)

god Zalmoxis (see below)--he was believed to have disappeared into

his infernal kingdom among the spirits and souls and to have made

periodical returns to the world of the living. The reason why

Dionysos, as worshipped both in Thracian and Greek trieteric

festivals, stops for a time in the underworld of the souls, is clear

enough: that too was his realm. We can now understand why it is that

Dionysos is also ruler over the souls and can be called ~Zagreu\s,

Nukte/lios, Isodai/tês~: i.e. he is simply given names of Hades

himself (Plu., _E ap. D._ ix, p. 389 A). His real character of master

of the souls and spirits (~a/nax, hê/rôs~), as it had been

originally in the Thracian cult, was thus **preserved, in spite of

much alteration in its Greek form, partly in Greek local cults,

partly in the Orphic cult of Dionysos.--There is a legend which is

based on a reminiscence of this periodic disappearance of Dionysos

to the underworld, viz. the thoroughly Greek story of his descent on

a single occasion into Hades in order to bring back Semele.

Elsewhere his disappearance into the realm of the spirits gave rise

to the legend of his escape and flight to the Muses; this was spoken

of in the _Agrionia_ at Chaironeia (Plu., _Smp._ 8 Praef.).]

[29\8: Cf. Eur., _Ba._ 920 ff., 1020 f.]

[30\8: ~tauro/phthoggoi d' hupomukô=ntai/ pothen ex aphanou=s

phoberoi\ mi=moi~: A. ~Êdônoi/~ describing the Thracian worship of

D. (_fr._ 57). This was "certainly intended to increase for the

participants in the festival the feeling of the god's presence and

thus to add to the wildness of their orgies", as Rapp, _Dionysosc._,

19, very rightly observes. The invisible bellowing bull is the god

himself. (Dionysos appears as a bull to the insane Pentheus: E.,

_Ba._ 920 ff.).--"The Batloka, a tribe in the Northern Transvaal,

hold a yearly festival of the dead in which {272} hidden magicians

make weird sounds with flutes which the people take for the voice of

spirits; they say 'Modimo is there'." Schneider, _Relig. d. Afrikan.

Naturv._ 143.]

[31\8: The women taking part in the trieteric festival of the god

play the part of the ~maina/des~ in his train; D.S. 4, 3, 3.

Imitation of the ~Nu/mphai te kai\ Pa=nes kai\ Seilênoi\ kai\

Sa/turoi~ in the ~bakchei/a~: Pl., _Lg._ 815 C. What was afterwards

merely a piece of traditional ritual was originally without doubt a

real hallucination of the ~ka/tochoi~.--The idea that a throng,

~thi/asos~, of wood-spirits Satyrs and Seilenoi danced about the God

must also have been common in the Thracian cult (~sugchoreuetai\

Dionu/sou~, Ael., _VH._ iii, 40; ~ho tô=| Dionu/sô| parepo/menos

o/chlos~, Ath. 362 E. ~saua/dai~ (obviously related to ~Saba/zios~;

cf. Usener, _Götternamen_, 44 f.) was the name given to ~hoi

seilênoi/~ by the Macedonians, who in the practice of

Dionysos-worship were entirely dependent upon the Thracians. Hsch.

s.v., cf. Hdt. viii, 138 fin.]

[32\8: The ~bakcheu/ontes tô=| theô=|~ (i.e. Sabazios, Sabos) are

called ~sa/boi kai\ sa/bai kai\ saba/zioi~: Phot. ~sabou/s~; cf.

Eust., ~b~ 16, p. 1431, 46. Harp. (Phot.) s. ~sa/boi~; Phot.

~parasaba/zein~ (p. 383, 16 Pors.); Sch. Ar., _Av._ 874. This

identification of the god with his ecstatic worshippers belongs to

the Phrygian cult of Kybele as well. Just as the goddess is called

~Kubê/bê~ so ~ho katecho/menos tê=| mêtri\ tô=n theô=n~ is called

~Ku/bêbos~: Phot. ~Ku/bêbos, ku/bêbon~, Eust. ~b~ 16. Thus the

Greeks in calling the ecstatic worshippers of Bakchos by the name of

the god were only adopting the conceptions and vocabulary of the

Thracian religion of inspiration into their Dionysos-worship which

was modelled on the Thracian cult. ~Ba/kchos~ is their name for the

~orgiastê\s tou= theou=~ (etymologically connected is ~baba/ktês

[krau/gasos, ho/then kai\ Ba/kchos~ Hsch.] a Phrygian word for the

frenzied priest of Kybele: and therefore = ~Ku/bêbos~; cf. Ribbeck,

_Alazon_, p. 86). It appears that the ~ba/kchoi~ of Dionysos were

often called by the old Thracian name ~sa/boi~: ~sa/bous kai\ nu=n

e/ti polloi\ tou\s ba/kchous kalou=sin~, Plu., _Smp._ 4, 6, 2, p.

671 F (~Laphu/stioi~ is also a name given, after ~Dio/nusos

Laphu/stios~, to the ~Ba/kchoi~ who worship him: Lyc. 1237 with

Sch.).]

[33\8: ~Dio/nusos ôma/dios~ (Porph., _Abs._ ii, 55), ~ômêstê/s~

(Plu., _Them._ 13), ~laphu/stios, tauropha/gos~ (Soph. _fr._ 607

N.).--At other times we catch a glimpse of the idea that the god

himself is the torn and devoured bull (just as in many ancient

worships the proper victim of the god is the animal most homogeneous

with him): this is evidently the most primitive form of

~en-thousiasmo/s~, the primeval symbolism of a mystic worship that,

like all mysticism, desires to take personal possession of the God.]

[34\8: Dionysos himself also carries the thyrsos (as often in

sculpture): E., _Hyps. fr._ 752, etc.]

[35\8: See above, n. 19 (~ho bou/kerôs I/akchos~, Soph., _fr._ 874,

~tauro/kerôs theo/s~, E., _Ba._ 100). The Greek Dionysos is often

described as bull-shaped and horned: this, too, in imitation of

Thracian belief. It is _Sabazios_ whom they ~kerasti/an

pareisa/gousi~, D.S. 4, 4, 2; cf. 3, 64, 2. ~Hu/ê| tauroke/rôti~,

Euphor. _fr._ 14.--An allusion in D.S. 4, 4, 2, seems to suggest

that the god, the ~murio/morphos~, was also (like Attis) regarded as

a herdsman. Something of the sort may be referred to in the

unintelligible lines quoted by Cl. Al., _Prot._ ii, p. 14 P.,

apparently in connexion with the Sabazios mysteries. So Dionysos,

too, is sometimes thought of as a ~bouko/los~: ~poime/ni d'

agrau/lôn tau/rôn, Dio\s aigio/choio huie/i kissochi/tôni~ are words

used of him in [Orph.] _Lith._ 260. Again, in imitation of the god

himself his ~mu/stai~ are ~bouko/loi~ on the inscriptions from Asia

Minor (_Ins. Perg._ ii, 485-8) and Thrace, of {273} which R. Schöll

speaks, _de commun. et coll. Graecis_ (Satura philol. Saupp.), p.

178 ff. ~boukoliko/s~ occurs among the cult officials in the

_Iobakcheia_ at Athens: _Ath. Mitth._, 1894, p. 260, l. 122;

_archibucolos dei Liberi_ on inscriptions of the city of Rome.

~bouko/los~ and ~boukolei=n~ occur in connexion with Bacchic worship

as early as Kratinos, Aristoph., and Eurip.: ~nuktipo/lou Zagre/ôs

bou/tas~, E., _Cret. fr._ 472, 11 (acc. to Diels). See Crusius, _Rh.

M._ 45, 266 f.; Dieterich _de hymnis Orph._ (Marb. 1891), p. 3 ff.]

[36\8: The special flute-melodies going under the name of Olympos

were called _~thei=a~_ ([Pl.] _Min._ 318 B); ~_kate/chesthai_

poiei=~ (Pl., _Smp._ 215 C); ~homologoume/nôs poiei= ta\s psucha\s

_enthousiastika/s_~ (Arist., _Pol._ 1340a 10). Cic., _Div._ i, 114:

ergo et ei quorum animi, spretis corporibus, evolant atque excurrunt

foras, ardore aliquo incitati atque inflammati, cernunt illa

profecto quae vaticinantes praenuntiant: multisque rebus

inflammantur tales animi qui corporibus non inhaerent: ut ei qui

sono quodam vocum et Phrygiis cantibus incitantur. An unmistakable

description of what was meant by ~e/kstasis~ and Korybantic frenzy

(see below).]

[37\8: i.e. those who are ~enthousiasmou= katakô/chimoi~, as

Aristotle knew them; certain ~manikai\ diathe/seis~ are known to

Plato. Somewhat similar is the ~phu/sis theia/zousa~ which according

to Demokritos [D. Chr. 36, 1] _fr._ 21 Diels, belongs to the

inspired poet.]

[38\8: The drunkenness of the Thracians and their ancient

cultivation of the vine are well known. They even brewed beer from

barley: Ath. 547 BC (cf. Hehn, _Culturpflanzen_, p. 121 E.T.). The

prophetai (prophesying in "enthusiasm") of a Thracian oracle

prophesied _plurimo mero sumpto_, Aristot. ap. Macr. 1, 18, 1.--Even

the women drank unmixed wine in Thrace: Pl., _Lg._ 637 E.]

[39\8: Mela, 2, 21 (and from him Solin. 10, 5, p. 75, 16 Mom.) says

of the Thracians epulantibus ubi super ignes quos circumsident

quaedam semina ingesta sunt, similis ebrietati hilaritas ex nidore

contingit (cf. [Plu.] _de Flu._ 3, 3). There can be no doubt that it

was hemp-seed (~ka/nnabis~) which had this effect. Hdt. iv, 74, says

expressly that the Thracians knew hemp. It was thus with a sort of

hashish that they intoxicated themselves (hashish is an extract of

_cannabis indica_). The Scythians did something similar: Hdt. tells

of their vapour-baths in tightly closed huts (iv, 75): they produced

a smoke by laying hempseeds on red-hot stones and--though Hdt. does

not say so--must necessarily have got into a state of wild

intoxication. This may have been a religious performance.

Drunkenness is generally regarded by savage tribes as a religiously

inspired condition. Further, the Scythian practice has the most

striking parallel in the use of "vapour-huts" among the North

American Indians, in which case the religious intention is certain

(see the account in Klemm, _Culturg._ ii, 175-8; J. G. Müller,

_Amerik. Urrelig._ 92). Hdt. i, 202, also mentions intoxication from

the fumes of certain "fruits" among the Massagetai; these last,

after they had completely bemused themselves, stood up to dance and

sing. The Thracians, too, may very well have used intoxication

through hashish-fumes as a means of exciting themselves to their

ecstatic religious dances.--The ancients were quite familiar with

the practice of inhaling aromatic smoke to produce religious

hallucinations: [Galen] ~ho/r. iatr.~ 187 (xix, p. 462 K)

~enthousiasmo/s esti katha/per exi/stantai/ tines epi\ (hupo\?)

_tô=n hupothumiôme/nôn_ en toi=s hieroi=s, <pha/smata~ (om. edd.)>

~horô=ntes ê\ tumpa/nôn ê\ aulô=n ê\ sumbo/lôn~ (scr. ~kumba/lôn~)

akou/ontes~; cf. odorum delenimento potest animus humanus externari,

Apul., _Ap._ 43.--For the use of smoke in the {274} Korybantic

ceremonies see below.--The ~gaga/tês li/thos hupothumiathei/s~ is

useful as an ~epilêptikô=n e/legchos~ (Dioscor. v, 145); it brings

on the convulsions of the victim of ~hiera\ no/sos~ (epilepsy)

[Orph.] _L._ 478 ff. (cf. further Damigeron, _de Lap._ 20, p. 179

Ab.; Plin., _NH._ 36, 141; and also Gal. xii, p. 203 K.).]

[40\8: Polak, _Persien_, ii, 245 ff.--We have only to read the

accounts derived from personal experience of the sensations and

hallucinatory states accompanying hashish-smoking--such as those

given, for instance, by Moreau (de Tours) _Du hachisch et de

l'aliénation mentale_ (Paris, 1845), esp. pp. 23 ff., 51 ff., 59

ff., 90, 147 ff., 151 ff., 369 ff.--to have a complete parallel to

the condition which underlay Bacchic excitement. There, too, is the

complete ~e/kstasis~ of the spirit, a waking dream-state, an

~oligochro/nios mani/a~. It only requires the special tone and

character given to the hallucinations and illusions by deep-rooted

religious or fanciful conceptions--and the external machinery for

cultivating such illusions--to make them an exact equivalent of the

delirious condition of the real ~ba/kchoi~ at the nightly festival

of Dionysos. (The helpless state of impressionability to

outward--e.g. musical--and inward influences is a marked feature of

the intoxication and _fantasia_ of hashish.) Other narcotics also

have similar effects (Moreau, p. 184 ff.).]

[41\8: Pl., _Ion_, 534 A (perhaps an allusion to the words of

Aischines Socr. in the ~Alkibia/dês~ [Aristid. _Rh._ ii, 23 f.

Dind.]).]

[42\8: E., _Ba._ 142 f., 706 ff. (144 ~Suri/as d' hôs liba/nou

kapno/s~).]

[43\8: Anaesthesia of the Bakchai: ~epi\ de\ bostru/chois pu=r

e/pheron oud' e/kaien~, _Ba._ 757 f.--suum Bacche non sentit saucia

volnus, dum stupet Edonis exululata iugis, Ov., _Tr._ 4, 1, 41 f.

qualis deo percussa maenas . . . atque expers sui volnus dedit nec

sensit, Sen., _Troad._ 682 ff. Similar insensibility to pain

(certainly not always feigned) was shown in their ekstasis by the

self-wounding _galli_ of Kybele, the priests and priestesses of Mâ

(Tibull. 1, 6, 45 ff.)--something of the sort is reported of the

prophets of Baal (1 _Kings_ xviii, 28). See in general on the

subject of anaesthesia and the ~orthô=s katecho/menoi hupo\ tô=n

theô=n~, Iamb., _Myst._ 3, 4, p. 110 Par. In the case of the

shamans, the Indian Yogis, the dervishes, and the natives of North

America the existence of such states of insensibility in religious

excitement has been actually observed.]

[44\8: ~katecho/menos ek tou= theou=~ (Pl., _Men._ 99 D; X., _Sym._

i, 10. ~katecho/menoi hô/sper hai ba/kchai~, Pl., _Ion_, 534 A;

_Sym._ 215 C. ~mane/nti te kai\ kataschome/nô|~, _Phdr._ 244 E. ~hê

d' aphro\n exiei=sa kai\ diastro/phous ko/ras heli/ssous', ou

phronou=s' ha\ chrê=n phronei=n, ek Bakchi/ou _katei/cheto_~, E.,

_Ba._ 1122 ff. ~ka/tochoi~ above, n. 24.]

[45\8: ~e/ntheo/s te gi/gnetai kai\ _e/kphrôn kai\ ho nou=s ouke/ti

en autô=| e/nestin_~, Pl., _Ion_, 534 B (where it is applied to the

inspired poet but properly belongs to the Bakchai).]

[46\8: ~e/kstasis, exi/stasthai~ is often used of the inspired

state. ~mai/nesthai, enthousia=n, e/ntheon gi/nesthai, ekstê=nai~

are all used in the same sense and apply to the "inspired" prophets

(~Ba/kides, Si/bullai~) and the poets: Arist., _Prob._ 30, 1, p.

954a, 34-9. ~exi/statai kai\ mai/netai~, Arist. _HA._ 6, 22, p.

577a, 12. The religious ~orgiasmoi/, eksta/sias psucha=s epa/gonti~:

Phintys ap. Stob., _Fl._ iv, 23, 61a, p. 593 H. ~e/kstasis~ is a

state in which the soul seems estranged from itself; when the

~oikei=ai kinê/seis ouk enochlou=ntai all' aporrapi/zontai~ (Arist.,

_Pa. Nat._ 464a, 25). The word became weak and commonplace enough in

later usage, but it was evidently meant, originally, to express the

"exit" of the "soul" from its body. In the same way the phrase used

of one who {275} goes off into a faint: ~to\n d' e/lipen psuchê/~

originally meant the same thing and was so understood, see above

(chap. i, n. 8). The same idea occurs again in _P. Mag. Par._, l.

725, p. 63 Wessely: ~ hupe/klutos d' e/sei tê=| psuchê=| kai\ ouk en

seautô=| e/sei ho/tan soi apokri/nêtai~ [the god conjured up].]

[47\8: ~e/kstasis estin oligochro/nios mani/a~ [Galen] ~ho/r. iatr.~

485 (xix, p. 462). ~mani/ê e/kstasi/s esti chro/nios~ Aretaeus,

_Chr. Pass._ 1, 6, p. 78 K.]

[48\8: ~Dio/nuson maino/lên orgia/zousi ba/kchoi, ômophagi/a| tê\n

_hieromani/an_ a/gontes, kai\ teli/skousi ta\s kreônomi/as tô=n

pho/nôn anestemme/noi toi=s o/phesin epololu/zontes eua/n~, Clem.

Al., _Protr._ ii, p. 11 P.]

[49\8: The ~enthousiô=ntes ek theou= tinos~ become like the god,

~lamba/nousi ta\ e/thê kai\ ta\ epitêdeu/mata (tou= theou=),

katho/son dunato\n theou= anthrô/pô| metaschei=n~, Pl., _Phdr._ 253

A. More boldly ~heautô=n eksta/ntas ho/lous _enidru=sthai_ toi=s

theoi=s kai\ enthea/zein~, Procl. _in _Rp.__ ii, 108, 23 Kr.--~ouk

e/kstasis ha/plôs hou/tôs esti/n, alla\~ (in its positive sense)

~epi\ to\ krei=tton anagôgê\ kai\ meta/stasis~, Iamb. _Myst._ 3, 7,

p. 114, 9 Parth.]

[50\8: ~e/ntheoi gunai=kes~ of the Bakchai, S. _Ant._ 963. ~hai

Ba/kchai ho/tan e/ntheoi ge/nôntai~--Aesch. Socr. ap. Aristid.,

_Rh._ (ii, 23 Dind.). ~e/ntheos ê/de hê mani/ê~ (the religious sort)

Aret., p. 84 K. The essential meaning of ~e/ntheon ei=nai~ (_plenum

esse deo_) is clearly defined in Sch., E., _Hip._ 141: ~e/ntheoi

le/gontai hoi hupo\ pha/smato/s tinos aphairethe/ntes to\n nou=n,

kai\ hup' ekei/nou tou= theou= tou= phasmatopoiou= katecho/menoi

kai\ ta\ dokou=nta kei/nô| poiou=ntes~. The ~e/ntheos~ is completely

in the power of the god; the god speaks and acts through him. The

~e/ntheos~ has lost his consciousness of himself; like the ~thei=oi

a/ndres~ (which phrase in Plato has the same meaning as ~e/ntheoi

a/ndres~) esp. the ~theoma/nteis, le/gousi me\n alêthê= kai\ polla/,

i/sasi d' oude\n hô=n le/gousi~, Pl., _Men._ 99 C. (Philo, _Spec.

Leg._ ii, p. 343 M., says of the inspired prophet: ~enthousia=|

gegonô\s en agnoi/a|, metanistame/nou me\n tou= logismou= . . .

epipephoitêko/tos de\ kai\ enô|kêko/tos tou= thei/ou pneu/matos kai\

pa=san tê=s phô/nês organopoiï/an krou/ontos ktl.~; cf. Iamb.,

_Myst._ 3, 4, p. 109.)]

[51\8: ~e/ntheoi ma/nteis~ (Bakides, Sibyllai Arist., _Prb._ 30, 2,

954a, 37. ~theoma/nteis~ Pl., _Men._ ad fin. ~mantikê\ kata\ to\

e/ntheon, ho/per esti\n entheastiko/n~ [Plu.] _Plac. Phil._ 5, 1, 1

[_Dox._, p. 415].]

[52\8: ~ma/ntis d' ho dai/môn ho/de~ (Dionysos)~; to\ ga\r

bakcheu/simon kai\ to\ maniô=des mantikê\n pollê\n e/chei; ho/tan

ga\r ho theo\s eis to\ sô=m' e/lthê| polu/s, le/gein to\ me/llon

tou\s memêno/tas poiei=~, E., _Ba._ 298 ff. Here the inner

relationship of the inspiration _mantikê_ and the "possession" which

took place in ecstatic frenzy is expressed with all possible

clearness (drunkenness is surely not referred to!). This is how

Plu., _Smp._ 7, 10, p. 716 B, also understood Eur. Prophesying

Mainads: ~maina/das thuosko/ous~ E., _Ba._ 224--~oudei\s e/nnous

epha/ptetai mantikê=s enthe/ou kai\ alêthou=s, all' ê\ kath' hu/pnon

tê\n tê=s phronê/seôs pedêthei\s du/namin ê\ dia\ no/son ê\ dia/

tina _enthousiasmo\n_ paralla/xas~, Pl., _Ti._ 71 E. ~nosê/mata

mantika\ ê\ enthousiastika/~ make inspired ~ma/nteis~ what they are:

Arist. _Prob._ 954a, 35. Such _mantikê_ takes place in the state of

furor, cum a corpore animus abstractus divino instinctu concitatur,

Cic., _Div._ i, 66. A famous case is that of Kassandra from whom the

deus inclusus corpore humano, non iam Cassandra loquitur, § 67; cf.

the Sibyl who prophesies ~mainome/nô| sto/mati~ (Heraclit. _fr._ 12

By. = 92 D.) and the Pythia at Delphi prophesying in a state of

~mani/a~. For the prophecy of Korybantic Phrygians possessed and

"frenzied", see Arrian ap. Eust., on D.P. 809.]

[53\8: Hdt. vii, 111 (for Hdt. the ~Bêssoi/~ seem to be a division,

perhaps a clan, of the Satrai. Polyb., Strabo, Pliny, Dio C., and

others know them as an independent Thracian tribe: ~pro/mantis gunê\

chre/ousa kata/per en Delphoi=si~--which means that she prophesied

in ecstasy, for that is what the Pythia at Delphi did. (See Sch.

Ar., _Plut._ 39; {276} Plu., _Def. Or._ 51, p. 438 B. Lucan vi, 166

ff., clearly describes the phenomena supposed to attend their

religious _ekstasis_: artus Phoebados irrupit Paean, mentemque

priorem expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere iussit pectore.

bacchatur demens aliena, etc.)]

[54\8: ~ho Thrê|xi\ ma/ntis Dio/nusos~, E., _Hec._ 1267. Rhesos

dwelling in Mt. Pangaios is ~Ba/kchou prophê/tês~, _Rh._ 972.

~aphike/sthai toi=s Leibêthri/ois para\ tou= Dionu/sou ma/nteuma ek

Thra/|kês~, Paus. 9, 30, 9. Aristoteles qui Theologumena scripsit,

apud Ligyreos (?) ait in Thracia esse adytum Libero consecratum, ex

quo redduntur oracula. Macr. 1, 18, 1. The wife of Spartacus,

herself a Thracian, was ~mantikê/ te kai\ ka/tochos toi=s peri\ tô=n

Dio/nuson orgiasmoi=s~, Plu., _Crass._ 8. Octavian in Thrace

consulted in Liberi patris luco barbara caerimonia, i.e. an oracle:

Suet., _Oct._ 94. Even in 11 B.C. the Bessoi still had a ~hiereu\s

tou= Dionu/sou~, Vologeses, who by means of prophesyings (~polla\

thei/asas~) and ~tê=| para\ tou= theou= do/xê|~ stirred up his

people to rebel against the Odrysai: D.C. 54, 34, 5. In 29 B.C. M.

Crassus had handed over to the Odrysai the piece of land occupied by

the Bessoi ~en hê=| kai\ to\n theo\n aga/llousi~, D.C. 51, 25,

5.--The spirit of the old Thracian ecstatic cult reappeared in the

character of the Bacchic worship introduced from Greece into Italy

whose excesses (in 186 B.C.) are narrated by Livy: 39, 8 ff.: among

these being viros velut mente capta cum iactatione fanatica corporis

vaticinari: 39, 13, 12.]

[55\8: Compare, for example, what we are told of the religious

dances of the Ostiaks (Erman, _Travels in Siberia_, ii, 45 f., E.

T., Cooley), the Haokah dance of the Dakota, the "medicine-dance" of

the Winnebago in North America (Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, iii,

487 ff., 286 ff.), the dance of voodoo negroes in Haiti (_Nouv.

annales des voyages_, 1858, iii, p. 90 ff.). For the violent

religious dances of the people in ancient Peru see Müller, _Amerik.

Urrelig._ 385; in Australia, R. Brough-Smith, _Aborigines of

Victoria_, i, 166 ff. (1878). Among the Veddas of Ceylon there was a

dance of the "devil's priests" (called Kattadias) dressed up as

demons: see Tennent, _Ceylon_, i, 540 f.; ii, 442.--In antiquity the

following have the closest relationship to the ecstatic cult of the

Thracians: the dance festivals in honour of the "Syrian Goddess", of

the Kappadocian Mâ, of the Phrygian Mountain Mother, and of Attis

(the last having much the same origin as the Thracian festival, but

being more strongly affected by Semitic influences, and perhaps by

the religious practices of the prehistoric inhabitants of Asia

Minor). Besides these we may remember the account given by

Poseidonios ap. Strabo, 198, D.P. 570 ff., of the excited nocturnal

festival celebrated in honour of "Dionysos" in an island at the

mouth of the Loire by the women of the Namnites (Samnites, Amnites)

~Dionu/sô| katecho/menai~ in the wildest delirium (~lu/tta~).]

[56\8: This is regularly the meaning of such excesses practised by

"magicians". The shaman (with his "soul") voyages out into the

spirit-world; see the remarkably vivid account of Radloff,

_Siberien_, ii, 1-67; and also Erman, _Zschr. f. Ethnologie_, ii,

324 ff.; A. Krause, _Tlinkitindianer_, p. 294 ff., 1885. So does the

Lapp magician (Knud Leem, _Lappen in Finmarken_ [E.T. in Pinkerton's

_Voyages_]). The Angekok enters into communion with his Torngak

(Cranz, _Hist. of Greenland_, i, p. 194, E.T., 1820); the Butio with

the Zemen (Müller, _Amerik. Urrelig._, 191 f.); the Piajes with the

spirits (Müller, 217). Thus, too, communication with the divine

"grandfather" of the people is established by means of dances, etc.,

among the Abipones (Dobrizhoffer, _Abipones_, ii, 64, E.T.). The

expulsion of the soul to visit the spirit-world is also practised

(in their convulsions) by the {277} magicians of the North American

Indians, the people of the Pacific Islands (Tylor, ii, 133), etc.

Such practices start out from a commonly held conception of the

nature of body and soul and of their relations with the unseen. The

magicians believe "that in their ecstatic condition they can break

through the barrier between this world and the next", Müller 397. To

facilitate this process they employ the various means alluded to of

stimulating their senses.]

[57\8: The most remarkable case of this is provided by the history

of a religious sect of our own day widely spread in Russia, who call

themselves "the Christs", i.e. sons of God. The sect was founded by

a holy man named Philippov in whose body God one day took up his

abode; after which the man spoke as the living God himself and gave

commandments. The sect particularly stood for the idea that the

divine dwells in mankind, Christ in men and Mary in women, and that

the sense of their presence can be awakened in men by the action of

the Holy Ghost, through the force of strong belief, by saintliness

and by religious ecstasy. To produce the ecstasy dances are held in

common. About midnight, after long prayers, hymns, and religious

addresses, the participators in the secret festival, both men and

women, dressed in strange costumes begin to dance. Soon the ranks

and circles of the dancers and singers break up; individuals begin

to turn round and round, revolving on their own axis with incredible

speed, balancing meanwhile on their heels. The excitement of the

dancing and leaping crowd grows continually greater. Finally one of

them calls out "He comes; He is near--the Holy Ghost". The wildest

ecstasy takes hold of every one. Details may be found in N. Tsakni's

_La Russie sectaire_, p. 63 ff. (cf. what is said in the same work,

p. 80 ff., of the religious dances of the Skopzes, and p. 119 f. of

the sect of the "Leapers").--All this is true _Bacchanalia

christiana_ and therefore mentioned here.]

[58\8: e.g. Mariner, _Tonga Islanders_, i, 108 (1817); Wrangel,

_Reise in Siberien_, i, 286 (i, 267 f., French trans.); Radloff,

_Siberien_, ii, 58. Even the respectable Cranz, whose own point of

view made it impossible for him to appreciate properly the Angekok

practices so clearly observed by him, admits that many of them

really saw visions that suggested "something supernatural" to them:

_Hist. of Greenland_, p. 197 E.T. Something similar is said about

ecstatically dancing dervishes by Lane, _Modern Egyptians_, ii,

197.]

[59\8: Magicians called by the name of the god (_Keebet_) among the

Abipones: Dobrizhoffer, ii, 248. Similar cases elsewhere: Müller,

77. In Tahiti the person inspired by the god so long as the

"inspiration" lasted (several days sometimes) was himself called

"god" or given the name of some particular god: Waitz, _Anthropol._

vi, 383. In the case of an African tribe dwelling on the banks of

Lake Nyanza the chief spirit sometimes takes temporary possession of

one of the magicians (man or woman) who then bears the name of the

spirit: Schneider, _Relig. d. Afrik. Naturv._ 151. Sometimes the

identity of the magician with the god is expressed by the wearing of

the god's distinguishing dress and imitation of his outward

appearance (in the manner of the Thracian ~Ba/kchoi~); cf. the

devil-dancers in Ceylon, etc.]

[60\8: When it acquires a more philosophical temper mysticism seeks

its unification with the highest (the ~e/llampsis tê=s phu/seôs tê=s

prô/tês~) more by means of the completest passivity of mind and

body. It employs the ~eis hautê\n xulle/gesthai kai\ athroi/zesthai~

of the soul (Plato), or its withdrawal from all that is finite and

particular (the _recojimiento_ of the Spanish mystics). The

profoundest quietude of spirit brings {278} about the unification

with the One behind all multiplicity; cf. the Neoplatonic mystics,

the Buddhists, etc. Sometimes both are found together; absorption

and passivity of the spirit side by side with wild excitement. Both

methods were practised by the Persian Sufis. Chardin, _Voyage en

Perse_, iv, 458 (cd. Langlés) says of them, cependant ils se servent

plus communément du chant de la danse et de la musique, disant

qu'ils produisent plus sûrement leur extase. It may be that the cult

of religious exaltation is always the real origin of these ecstatic

states. Though the cult sometimes falls into decay itself, its

offspring the ~e/kstasis~ survives.]

[61\8: In the language of these mystics the words mean: he knows

that the passionate longing for reunion with God, the Soul of the

universe, breaks down the individual personality and its

limitations--"for where Love awakes to life the Self dies, that

gloomy tyrant."]

[62\8: ~Ge/tai hoi athanati/zontes~, Hdt. Iv, 93-4

(~apathanati/zontes~, Plato and others, see Wesseling on D.S. i, p.

105, 32).]

[63\8: . . . ~oude/na a/llon theo\n nomi/zontes ei mê\ to\n

sphe/teron~ (the Zalmoxis just mentioned) Hdt. iv, 94 fin. There we

are told that the Getai ~pro\s brontê/n te kai\ astrapê\n

toxeu/ontes a/nô apeileu=si tô=| theô=|, oude/na ktl.~ If it were

true (as most people seem to think) that the god (~ho theo/s~)

threatened by the Getai during thunder was their own god Zalmoxis,

then it certainly is difficult, or, indeed, impossible, to

understand the point of explaining the threatening of this god by

the statement that they hold him for the only true god. The truth is

that the ~tô=| theô=|~ refers simply to the "sky" during a

thunderstorm. The usage is common in Greek and is only transferred

to the Getai by a rather awkward extension. This thundering ~theo/s~

is not Zalmoxis at all (hence Z. is not as some have thought a

"sky-god"). The Getai regarded Zalmoxis as the only god: the

Thunderer is no real god to them (at the most a bad demon or a

magician or something of the kind). To show that they are not afraid

of him they shoot arrows against him, probably in the hope of

breaking the thundercloud. (Parallels in other countries: Grimm, p.

1088; Dobrizhoffer, ii, 78. In India, Oldenberg, 491-4. Excitement

during an eclipse of the moon: Weissenborn on Livy, 26, 5, 9.

Reminiscence of such customs in the myth of Herakles: [Apollod.] 2,

5, 10, 5. From Hdt. by indirect channels comes Isig., _Mir._ 42 [p.

162 West.]; cf. also the account of D.C. 59, 28, 6 about

Caligula.--Pallad., _RR._ i, 35 [_contra grandinem_].)]

[64\8: ~athanati/zousi de\ to/nde to\n tro/pon . . . ou/te

apothnê/skein heôutou\s nomi/zousi, ie/nai te to\n apollu/menon

para\ Za/lmoxin dai/mona (hoi de\ autô=n to\n auto\n tou=ton

ounoma/zousi Gebele/ïzin)~, Hdt. iv, 94. Here, as regularly in Greek

use of the words, we must not understand by ~atha/naton ei=nai~ a

mere shadowy (if timeless) survival of the soul after death as in

the Homeric Hades. Such a belief if it had been held by the Getai

would not have struck Hdt. or his readers as remarkable in the

slightest degree. It must therefore imply an unending and fully

conscious existence, in this last respect resembling the life on

earth.]

[65\8: ~athanati/zousi de\ kai\ Te/rizoi (teretizoi~ Phot.) ~kai\

Kro/buzoi kai\ tou\s apothano/ntas hôs Za/lmoxi/n phasin

oi/chesthai~, Phot. Suid., _EM._ ~Za/molxis~. The Krobyzoi are a

well-known Thracian stock. The Terizoi are not elsewhere mentioned;

perhaps they may be placed in the neighbourhood of ~Ti/ristis,

Ti/rixis a/kra~ = C. Kaliakra (cf. C. Müller on Arrian, _P. Eux._

35); there we also hear of a ~Ti/ristis po/lis~, Ptolem. With this

Tomaschek also agrees (_D. alten Thraker_, _Ber. Wien. Ak._ 128, iv,

p. 97). In this case they would be neighbours of the Krobyzoi.]

{279}

[66\8: ~ouk apothnê/|skein alla\ metoiki/zesthai nomi/zontes~ is

what we hear of the Getai in Julian, _Caes._ 327 D. animas (putant)

non extingui sed ad beatiora transire, Mela, ii, 18.]

[67\8: ~. . . tou\s apothano/ntas hôs Za/lmoxi/n phasin oi/chesthai,

hê/xein de\ au=this. kai\ tau=ta aei\ nomi/zousin alêtheu/ein.

thu/ousi de\ kai\ euôchou=ntai hôs au/this hê/xontos tou=

apothano/ntos~, Phot. Suid., _EM._ ~Za/molxis~. Mela, ii, 18: alii

(among the Thracians) redituras putant animas obeuntium.]

[68\8: Hdt. iv, 95, Zalmoxis, a slave of Pythagoras in Samos, is set

free and comes back a rich man to his **poverty-stricken country. He

collects together the leading men of the race in a room, where he

entertains them and seeks to persuade them of the belief that

neither he nor they nor their descendants will die but that they

will all come after death to a place where they will enjoy all good

things in abundance. Thereupon he withdraws into a secret

underground chamber and lives there for three years. In the fourth

year he comes to light again and "the Thracians are persuaded of the

truth of what Zalmoxis had told them." This implies--though Hdt.

omits to say so, and so does [Hellan.] ~p. nom. barb.~ (following

Hdt.) ap. Phot., etc., s. ~Za/molxis~--that he had also promised

that he and his adherents should _return_ to earth alive after the

expiry of a definite period (three years). That such a belief in the

"return" of the dead was actually held by the Thracians is clear

enough from the quotations given in the last note. The story of

Zalmoxis' trick (which was perhaps intended humorously by its

inventors) seemed suspicious even to Hdt., but it is not pure

invention (any more than the analogous stories about Pythagoras,

Trophonios, and later Empedotimos): it is rather a euhemerist

version of a miraculous legend. The disappearance of Zalmoxis into a

subterranean chamber is a distortion of the belief in his permanent

abode in a hollow mountain-side, an ~antrô=de/s ti chô/rion~ in Mt.

Kogaionon of which Str. 298 speaks plainly enough. In that mountain

the god dwells; just as Rhesos ~krupto\s en a/ntrois tê=s

hupargu/rou chthono/s~ of Mt. Pangaios, dwells there as an

~anthrôpodai/môn~ [E.], _Rh._ 970; cf. chap. iv, n. 36. He lives

there undying like the ~Ba/kchou prophê/tês~, who has become a god,

to whom the tragedy obscurely alludes in ll. 972 f. as living on Mt.

Pangaios (this may perhaps refer to Lykourgos--see G. Hermann, _Op._

v, 23 f.--surely not to Orpheus as Maass, _Orpheus_, p. 68 [1895],

suggests). The obvious parallel is Amphiaraos and Trophonios in

their caves, and Orig., _Cels._ iii, 34 (see above, chap. iii, n.

13), puts them and Zalmoxis together. We may safely complete Hdt.'s

account of how the ~apollu/menoi~ of the Getai go away and have

everlasting life ~para\ Za/lmoxin dai/mona~ (iv, 94), by saying that

they reach this same hollow mountain, a subterranean place of

delight where they dwell with the god. Mnaseas compares Zalmoxis

with Kronos (_FHG._; Phot. Suid. _EM._, as before) and the similarity

doubtless resides in the fact that both rule over the spirits of the

blest in another world. But besides this the Thracian belief must

also have included the idea of a periodical appearance of the god in

the upper world. Hdt.'s story of the trick practised by Zalmoxis

shows this (the return of the souls to which the story also points,

is a sort of counterpart of this). Are we to suppose that the

~epipha/neia~ of the god was expected after the expiry of three

years (just as it was after two years in the Dionysos festival; see

above, n. 27)? We do not know whether these Thracian tribes

celebrated the ~epipha/neia~ of the god with "enthusiastic" worship.

Such an element in the cult of Zalmoxis seems to be suggested by the

fact that we hear of "physicians of Zalmoxis" (Pl., _Charm._ 156 D)

and of _mantikê_--which is generally closely bound up with

~iatrikê/~--{280} in the cult of this god. This must be the meaning

of calling Zalm. himself ~ma/ntis~: Str. 762, 297; cf. also the

otherwise valueless account of Ant. Diog. ap. Porph. _VP._ 14-15.

Finally, the enthusiastic character of the cult seems to be implied

in the identifying of the priest with the god by the Getai (as in

the similar cases mentioned above, notes 32 and 59). Thus, the high

priest is himself called "god": Str. 298 (he has authority over both

king and state: cf. the ~hiereu\s tou= Dionu/sou~ among the Bessoi,

above, n. 53; cf. Jordanes, _Get._ 71). This made it easy for the

"god" Zalmoxis, whom even Hdt. quite rightly regarded as ~dai/môn

tis Ge/tê|si epichô/rios~ (iv, 96) to be metamorphosed into a man of

the historical past (he is this in D.S. 1, 94, 2; Str. vii, 297; cf.

Jordanes, _Get._ 39). If the contemporary priest was called "god" it

might naturally be concluded that the "god" Zalmoxis was once only a

priest too.]

[69\8: Hermip. ap. Jos., _Ap._ i, 22.]

[70\8: In E., _Hec._ (1265 ff.) the Thracian Polymestor prophecies

to Hekabe that she shall become a dog after her death, ~pu/rs'

e/chousa de/rgmata~. Hekabe asks ~pô=s d' oi=stha _morphê=s_ tê=s

emê=s _meta/stasin_;~ Pol.: ~ho Thrê|xi\ ma/ntis ei=pe Dio/nusos

**ta/de~. It looks as if Eur. in this allusion to a belief in

metempsychosis was intending to give a realistic touch of Thracian

national character. He was well informed in such matters.]

[71\8: The connexion between Thracian Dionysos-worship and the

belief in immortality and cult of the dead is vouched for, acc. to

Rapp, _Dionysosc._ 15 ff., by the insc. found by Heuzey in Thracian

districts. An epitaph found at Doxato (near Philippi) says of one who

has died young (ll. 12 ff.): reparatus vivis in Elysiis. Sic

placitum est divis aeterna vivere forma qui bene de supero lumine

sit meritus.--nunc seu te Bromio signatae (see Anrich, _Antike

Mysterienwesen_, 123 f.) mystides ad se florigero in prato congregem

uti Satyrum, sive canistriferae poscunt sibi Naïdes aeque, qui

ducibus taedis agmina festa trahas . . . (_CIL._ iii, 686). It is

true that this remarkable fantasy contains nothing directly alluding

to specifically Thracian worship. On the other hand this is

certainly suggested and both the Thracian god and his connexion with

a cult of the dead is implied in the use of the local cult-title of

Dionysos in an offering made by Bythos and Rufus to the thiasi

Liberi patris Tasibasteni of 300 denarii ex quorum reditu annuo

rosalibus (and so at the yearly festival of the dead) ad monimentum

eorum vescentur. _CIL._ iii, 703; cf. 704. Even the conjunction by

E., _Hec._ 1265 ff., of the belief in palingenesia with the oracle

of the Thracian Dionysos seems to imply a connexion between that

belief and the cult of Dionysos.]

[72\8: ~polloi\ me\n narthêkopho/roi, pau=roi de/ te Ba/kchoi~ ap.

Pl., _Phd._ 69 C. The strict meaning of this Orphic verse (Lob.,

_Agl._ 813 ff.) is that out of the multitudes who take part in the

Bacchic festival only a few have any real right to call themselves

by the name of the god--as having become one with him through their

ecstasy and exaltation. A special morbid state was necessary for

that: the same state which in other circumstances made the real

shamans, Piajes, etc.]

[73\8: Even when their ~e/kstasis~ had ceased the ecstatic

worshippers still regarded as real the visions which they had

enjoyed in that condition: ~hoi=on sune/bê Antiphe/ronti tô=|

Ôrei/tê| kai\ a/llois existame/nois. ta\ ga\r phanta/smata e/legon

hôs geno/mena kai\ hôs mnêmoneu/ontes~, Arist. ~p. mnê/mês~, 1, p.

451a, 8. "Magicians who had subsequently been converted to

Christianity were still convinced of the reality of their earlier

visions: they thought they had seen something perfectly real." {281}

Müller, _Amerik. Urrelig._ 80. Add: Tylor, ii, 131; Cranz,

_Greenland_, p. 197.]

[74\8: See above, chap. i, p. 7 ff.]

[75\8: Hdt. v, 4 (speaking of the ~Trausoi/~. Hsch. has the same,

s.v. ~Trauso/s~). The story was then added to the regular list of

~no/mima barbarika/~ used for illustrating the variability of

~no/mos~. It was soon after told of the _~Kro/buzoi~_: Isig., _Mir._

27 (they were also regarded as strong adherents of a belief in

immortality; see above, n. 65); then of the ~Kausianoi/~: Nic. Dam.,

_Mir._ 18 West. Zenob., _Prov._ v, 25, p. 128, 5 L.-Schn.

(~Kau/sioi, Kausianoi/~). It occurs again in a fragment of some

collection of ~no/mima barbarika/~ written before the third century

(there is no reason to ascribe it to Aristotle) given by Mahaffy, _On

the Flinders Petrie Papyri, Transcript._, p. 29: ~Kausianoi=s de\

no/mimon tou\s me\n gignome/nous thrênei=n tou\s de\ teleutô=ntas

eudaimoni/zein hôs pollô=n kakô=n anapepaume/nous (kakô=n~ as above

or ~po/nô=n~ must be supplied to fill the gap; cf. the well-known

fragment of Eur. _Cresph._: ~echrê=n ga\r hêma=s . . .~ _fr._ 449,

which perhaps alludes to Hdt.'s account). It is told of Thracians in

general, or of some tribe not particularly named, by S. E., P. iii,

232; Val. Max. 2, 6, 12 (both clearly drawing on collections of

~no/mima barbarika/~); Mela, ii, 18; _AP._ ix, 111 (Archias). There

were thus three sources of the story: Besides Hdt.'s, two in which

either the Krobyzoi or the Kausianoi were named as the Thracian

tribe instead of Hdt.'s Trausoi.]

[76\8: ~ho/sôn kakô=n exapallachthei\s e/sti en pa/sê|

**eudaimoni/ê|~, Hdt. v, 4.]

[77\8: See Jul., _Caes._ 327 D, Mela, ii, 18. Likewise of the

~Kausianoi/~ in Anon. ap. Mahaffy (see n. 75), p. 29, 10-12. Iamb.,

_VP._ 173: as a result of the (Pythagorean) doctrine of immortality

taught by Zalmoxis ~e/ti kai\ nu=n hoi Gala/tai~ (because they had

been instructed by Zalm.; from a similar fabulous source comes

Hippol., _RH._ i, 2, p. 14, 93 D.-S.) ~kai\ hoi Tra/leis kai\

polloi\ tô=n barba/rôn tou\s hautô=n huiou\s pei/thousin hôs ouk

e/sti phtharê=nai **tê\n psuchê/n . . . kai\ ho/ti to\n tha/naton ou

phobête/on, alla\ pro\s tou\s kindu/nous eurô/stôs

hekte/on~.--~Tra/lleis~ Scaliger for the MS. ~tralis~, rightly as

far as sense goes. But we find the name ~TRALEIS~ given to the

Pergamene mercenaries called after the Thracian tribes: _Ins. Perg._

i, n. 13, 23, 59. These had already served as infantry in 331 in the

army of Alexander the Great: D.S. 17, 65, 1; cf. Hsch. ~Trallei=s~.

They were a south Thracian tribe: Plu., _Ages._ 16; _Ap. Lac._ 42;

Str. 649 (where read ~Tralle/ôn~); Tralli Thraeces, Liv. 38, 21, 2,

who elsewhere calls them Illyriorum genus, 27, 32, 4; 31, 35, 1. It

appears that a branch of the Thracian tribe of the Tralles reached

Illyria in their wanderings; there Theopompos, too, knew them:

Steph. Byz. ~Tralli/a~; cf. also s. vv. ~Bê=gis, Bo/louros~ (cf.

Tomaschek, _Sitzb. Wien. Ak._, 128, iv, p. 56 f.).]

[78\8: Appetitus maximus mortis, Mart. Cap. 6, 656. The Thracians

esp. are meant by Galen when he speaks of ~barba/rôn eni/ois~ who

entertained the belief ~ho/ti to\ apothnê/skein esti\ kalo/n~ (xix,

p. 704 K).]

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