M. Salomon Reinach gives the following explanation of Greek myths
in connection with the sacrificial meal: "The primitive sacrifice of
the god, usually accompanied by the eating of the god in fellowship,
was preserved in their religious rites, and when its meaning had
been forgotten numerous legends were invented to account for it. In
order to understand their origin it is necessary to remember that the
primitive worshippers masqueraded as the god and took his name. As
the object of the totem sacrifice is to make the participants like
the god and confer his divinity on them, the faithful endeavoured to
increase the resemblance by taking the name of the god and covering
themselves with the skins of animals of his species. Thus the Athenian
damsels celebrating the worship of the bear Artemis dressed themselves
in bear-skins and called themselves bears; the Maenads who sacrificed
the doe Penthea were clad in doe-skins. Even in the later rites the
devotees of Bacchus called themselves Bacchantes. A whole series of
legends can be interpreted as semi-rationalistic explanations of the
sacrificial meal. Actaeon was really a great stag sacrificed by women
devotees who called themselves the great hind and the little hinds;
he became the rash hunter who surprised Artemis at her bath, and was
transformed into a stag and devoured by his own dogs. The dogs are
a euphemism; in the early legend they were the human devotees of the
sacred stag who tore him to pieces and devoured him with their bare
teeth. These feasts of raw flesh survived in the secret religious
cults of Greece long after uncooked meat had ceased to be consumed
in ordinary life. Orpheus (ophreus, the haughty), who appears in
art with the skin of a fox on his head, was originally a sacred
fox devoured by the women of the fox totem-clan; these women call
themselves Bassarides in the legend, and bassareus is one of the
old names of the fox. Zagreus is a son of Zeus and Persephone who
transformed himself into a bull to escape from the Titans, excited
against him by Hera; the Titans, worshippers of the divine bull,
killed and ate him; Zagreus was invoked in his worship as the 'good
bull,' and when Zagreus by the grace of Zeus was reborn as Dionysus,
the young god carried on his forehead the horns which bore witness
to his animal nature. Hippolytus in the fable is the son of Theseus
who repels the advances of Phaedra, his stepmother, and was killed by
his runaway horses because Theseus, deceived by Phaedra, invoked the
anger of a god upon him. But Hippolytus in Greek means 'One torn to
pieces by horses.' Hippolytus is himself a horse whom the worshippers
of the horse, calling themselves horses and disguised as such, tore to
pieces and devoured. Phaethon (The Shining One) is a son of Apollo,
who demands leave to drive the chariot of the sun, drives it badly,
nearly burns up the world, and finally falls and perishes in the
sea. This legend is the product of an old rite at Rhodes, the island
of the sun, where every year a white horse and a burning chariot were
thrown into the sea to help the sun, fatigued by his labours." [371]