DIONYSUS THE MYTHICAL GOD
The last chapter ended on a note of tragedy and despair. This one
opens with glad tidings and the promise of great joy. Hesiod tells us
that after the Promethean crime and all its consequences to man, only
Hope remained, and that Hope, too, was the gift of Zeus the Almighty
Benefactor.
But Hope was not the only mitigation of their suffering which
Zeus reserved to primeval men. And here we light again upon a new
interpretation of another section of the Prometheus myth which hitherto
has been passed over without comment by the majority of scholars.
It will be remembered that at the end of my own subdivisions of the
myth, I referred to the tradition that Zeus ultimately relented
and forgave Prometheus--in fact, that he sent one of his own sons,
Heracles, to release him from the torment of the eagle.
What is the psychological explanation of this? How do a people,
responsible through generations for an oral tradition in which a
supposed enemy of the race is subjected to infinite and miraculous
torture, come to suppose that their god has relented? How do they
arrive at the conclusion that the Arch-criminal can be forgiven by the
deity whom they trust as their benefactor and protector?
It seems to me that the answer is a simple one. They can do so only
when the evils to which this Arch-criminal gave rise appear to have
been overcome, modified, corrected, or neutralised. I suggest that,
as the ills and woes directly associated with the possession of
fire-production came to be relieved, the anger of the protecting deity
was conceived as dying down, as vanishing, so that it was possible
for his protégés to imagine that the severity of his punishment of
Prometheus must have a term. Hence the relenting of Zeus, and the
merciful mission of his son Heracles.
But how did the ills and woes come to be relieved?--I mean, of course,
the worst ills and woes that befell mankind after the unlimited use of
fire: disease, premature death, decline in sexual potency, etc., etc.,
not the ills to which C. O. Müller and Völcker allude--these could
scarcely have been relieved once a Promethean civilisation had been
established; but then, as I have shown, they were neither as alarming
nor as insufferable as the other ills.
I suggest that the ills and woes gradually abated from the moment when
Zeus gave his only begotten son by Semele, the god Dionysus, as a
Saviour to mankind.
From that time everything began to mend in the lives of the archaic
Greeks. From that time life became once more possible on earth; sexual
potency, the source of one of the greatest joys, was restored; disease
was overcome, and the disfigurement of faulty and arrested growth
passed away.
This is a bold interpretation of the great myth of Dionysus. Is it
possible that an analysis of the myth itself, and of the mysteries
attending the cult, will confirm its general validity? This remains to
be seen. In any case it covers most of the facts, includes most of the
mysteries, and in lucidity and plausibility leaves the other attempted
interpretations leagues behind.
We must now turn to the myth of Dionysus itself and deal with it
piecemeal as we dealt with the myth of Prometheus. But to begin with,
who was Dionysus?
His name tells us who he was. He was the son of Zeus. He is the only
god who is definitely connected with Zeus by name. In fact, so close
is the connection between father and son in this case, that like the
Christian god and the Saviour, they are frequently identified one
with another--a kind of one in two, two in one, identity, which found
expression in the earliest products of Greek art.[151] This is only a
further proof, if one were needed, of the perfect trust the ancient
Greeks had in their supreme deity, as a benefactor and bestower of
happiness, health and vigour.
1. According to common tradition, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and
Semele, and was born at Thebes. Hera, the sister and wife of Zeus,
having grown jealous of Semele, owing to her attraction for Zeus,
visited her in the disguise of a friend, an old hag, or Semele’s own
nurse, and prevailed upon her to request Zeus to appear to her in the
same glory and majesty in which he was accustomed to approach his own
wife Hera. To press her point Hera suggested that Zeus was a false
lover to Semele, and that this would be a means of testing his devotion.
2. Semele fell into the trap laid for her, and begged her lover Zeus
to appear before her as he appeared before his real wife--a very
human and comprehensible desire, which Hera showed some penetration
in suggesting. When all entreaties to desist from this request were
fruitless, Zeus is said to have ended by complying, and he appeared to
her in thunder and lightning.
3. Semele was apparently terrified and overpowered by the sight,
and being seized by the fire, she gave premature birth to a male
child.[152] Zeus, however, saved the child from the flames; he was
sewed up in the god’s thigh, and thus came to maturity.
4. Many stories are told about his education. It was entrusted to
various nymphs. Mystis, for instance, instructed him in the mysteries;
Macris, the daughter of Aristæus, is said to have received him from the
hands of Hermes and fed him with honey. When Dionysus had grown up,
Hera, still suffering from jealousy, threw him into a state of madness,
in which he wandered about through many countries. He is supposed to
have travelled through Egypt, Syria and Asia, preaching the Gospel of
the Vine wherever he went, in spite of occasional opposition of the
bitterest kind--and instructing those he met in its cultivation and
care.
5. Another important legend about him is to the effect that both as
Sabazius (Dionysus Sabazius) and as Zagreus, he was torn to pieces by
the Titans, who, in some accounts, are alleged to have been incited to
the deed by Hera. He is said to have been restored and cured by Rhea or
Demeter.
6. After he had made his divine nature known to all the world, he
led his mother out of Hades, called her Thyone, and rose with her to
Olympus.
Now though this is a very ancient myth,[153] we know that Dionysus was
adopted into the Hellenic pantheon very much later than the myth of
Prometheus. This, however, is only what we should have expected. The
salvation cannot precede the fall. Dionysus as the Saviour, or Releaser
of mankind, must appear at a time subsequent to man’s tribulation as
a result of his unlimited use of fire. Thus we find Dionysus called
variously:--
_Charidotes_, or the Joy-giver.
_Eleuthereus_, or the Bestower of Freedom.
_Hygiates_, or the Healer.
_Lampter_, or the Light.
_Liknites_, or the Purifier.
_Luaios_, or the Deliverer from Care.
_Lysios_, or the Releaser,[154] and
_Soter_, or the Saviour.
Truth to tell, the number of his epithets and the legends concerning
him would lead even the uninitiated to suspect that he is either the
embodiment of a variety of deities, all probably older than himself,
but connected with the same functions as those with which he is
connected; or else--and this is the belief to which I incline--that
although he represents a very old cult and worship, and a very old fact
as well (the fact of a remedy having been found for the ills resulting
from the unlimited use of fire), his name was probably changed through
the ages, just as that of Prometheus and Zeus may have been changed,
although denoting the same original ancestor; and the cult connected
with his name may have been influenced from time to time by Egyptian
as well as by Indian and Persian legends connected with parallel
deities. That different Greek tribes called him by different names,
and held fast to slightly different versions of the myth, would also
be sufficient to account for the numerous appellations, virtues and
adventures connected with the notion of his majesty and divinity.
The root-idea underlying all his virtues, however, was that he reigned
as the divinity and the protector of the fructifying moisture of
nature--the guardian deity of the productive, invigorating, overflowing
and intoxicating powers of life. In modern language, which is more
colourless and less figurative, he might aptly be surnamed, in memory
of Dr. Robert Bell, the protector of “nuclein,” or in memory of Funck,
the dispenser and custodian of “vitamines.”
I do not mean this as a joke. I firmly believe that, as far as modern
scientific jargon has any meaning at all, these epithets borrowed from
the modern science of dietetics reveal precisely what he signified to
the remote ancestors of the ancient Greeks. They worshipped him as a
bestower of mysterious strength and health, as a healer, as a θεὸς
σωτήρ against raging disease.[155] The fact that the frantic orgies
connected with his worship appear to have been introduced somewhat
late, is no argument against the antiquity of this god, as a deified
ancestor who discovered the panacea against most of the ills and woes
resulting from the unlimited use of fire.
It is contended, for instance, that he is not known to Homer as the
discoverer of wine; also, that the fanatical service of Dionysus,
although to some extent known to Homer, finds in him only a passing
mention. But if we are going to argue in this way from instances
of omission in works which in any case are alleged by some to be a
compilation of fragments, then, as I believe Mr. Robert Brown has
pointed out,[156] there is scarcely a myth or legend of Greek antiquity
that would survive the test.
His worship is said to have been introduced from Thrace. This also is
not surprising. Other myths and legends, besides that of Dionysus came
along this northeastern route. The myth of Prometheus itself probably
came _viâ_ Thrace from the region of the Caucasus, nor is it unlikely
that the remote ancestors of the ancient Greeks followed this same
route.
What I feel certain about is this, that after generations, maybe
centuries, of intense suffering, following upon the unlimited use
of fire, a great man, born of a simple Greek maiden, appeared among
the Greeks, who, realising with a poet’s instinct, and not by means
of a scientist’s tedious, endless and elaborate studies, that all
his people needed was a corrective against debility, a cure for the
maladies which a deficiency of the vital juices of nature had created
in them, taught his fellows the virtues of the foodstuffs which their
bodies lacked; taught them the regenerating quality of the fermented
semi-germinated seed, whether of barley, oats, millet, or what not;
taught them the tonic and invigorating properties of the fermented
fruit of the vine and the ivy, and, above all, instructed them in the
life-giving principle of honey, fermented and unfermented.[157]
That the insignificant though real father of this great man was
ultimately buried in oblivion is not an insuperable objection; such
total eclipses of fathers is not an uncommon occurrence in the history
of geniuses. Who hears of the father of Confucius, or of Muhammed, or
of the real father of Jesus Christ? Once his greatness was established,
his father could have been none other than Zeus himself; because how
could so great a benefactor fail to be the offspring of the greatest
benefactor of all? Posterity, therefore, pre-dated his birth, made him
the son of Zeus, and ultimately deified him too. But that this process
of deification was gradual and not immediate, as in the case of the
clash of a superior with an inferior race, is shown by the fact that we
can trace his promotion from the rank of one of the minor deities to
one of the greatest of all. Indeed, this gradual promotion may account
for the fact that in the Homeric poems Dionysus does not appear as one
of the great divinities at all.
Let us now return to the myth and discuss it in subdivisions.
1 and 2.[158] As the reader will have observed, I take Dionysus to
be a divinity of the kind resulting from ancestor worship, and not,
like Zeus, as a divinity resulting from the deification of a member or
members of a superior race. It is obvious that as he came very much
later than Prometheus, he must have appeared long after all trace of
the original superior and inferior races had disappeared, and when one
had entirely absorbed the other. He was not, therefore, like Zeus,
a member of the superior race. He received post-mortem honours, and
was raised to the rank of the highest gods only centuries after his
death. In his case, therefore, there was a subsequent deification of
his parentage also. Thus, as I point out, his real father was probably
entirely forgotten, and when his pedigree had to be prepared, as he
was already too great to be conceived as having had a mortal father,
paternity was traced to Zeus. Likewise, Semele. She was, as I suggest,
probably a simple Greek maiden, just as the Virgin Mary was a simple
Jewish maiden. It was only subsequently that her pedigree was adjusted
to include the ancient family of Inachus of Argos, and Poseidon
himself, on the one side, and on the other, through Harmonia, the old
divinities of Samothrace, as her forebears.
The story of Hera’s jealousy of Semele may have had some foundation
in fact, although Hera could not have been the woman concerned. But
seeing that most women are jealous of one another, either for one
possession or another, the fact is really not important. _It is far
more likely that here we have a piece of fiction intercalated in the
story of Dionysus’s life in order to account for what follows._
3. This, as the reader will probably have divined already, is by
far the most important and most interesting subdivision of the
fable. Here, as in the case of the punishment of Prometheus, we
encounter the miraculous, and, as I have pointed out before, in such
cases it is impossible to apply the Spencerian, the euhemeristic,
or the anthropological method of interpretation. In the face of
the miraculous, psychology is the only science that can come to
our assistance. Let us therefore look into this story a little
more closely. We have seen that Hera could not have been the woman
concerned, because she only becomes a party to the domestic scandal
owing to the deification of Dionysus. But on the same principle Zeus
could not have been the lover concerned, because he was only made the
father of Dionysus owing to the stupendous greatness to which the
latter attained during his lifetime. Hera and Zeus, therefore, both
fall out of our story. But if Zeus falls out of the story, the facts
about the premature birth, the burning of Semele, and the saving of
Dionysus from fire, have no satisfactory explanation.
Is it possible, then, that in addition to Zeus serving as the
putative father of Dionysus, he served another important purpose in
the myth--that is to say, his personality provided the necessary
stage-properties for accounting for an awkward though vital part of it,
for which no explanation could be found by those who, in the remote
prehistoric period of Greece, were responsible for the oral tradition
by which the whole story was transmitted to us?
Altogether the story is not satisfactory, and bears the stamp of having
been twisted into its present shape, or forced to account for what was
otherwise an incomprehensible though genuine fragment of the myth. For
if Zeus by appearing before Semele in all his glory consumes her, why
should he not consume Hera in the same way?
It is clear that some fact must here have required explanation and
that a rather clumsy story has been invented to explain it. Of course,
once Zeus is introduced as the father everything becomes possible;
nevertheless, there is the suspicion that his consuming glory is
required by the stage-manager to overcome a difficulty which is
certainly not either the premature birth of Dionysus or the death of
Semele. For both could have been achieved by more simple and less
miraculous means. Neither is the premature birth of Dionysus essential
to his life-story. As far as his subsequent career is concerned
it might never have occurred, except, perhaps, that it lent him
distinction in the eyes of the ancient world, as a person who had been
“twice born.” Semele’s death is also gratuitous. The life-story of the
hero appears to have been in no way affected by it. We are reduced
then to one fact--a fact for which all this domestic upheaval appears
to have been contrived as a clumsy explanation by a generation of men
who, though possessed of the leading features of the myth, were too
remote from the time in which Dionysus lived to be able to account
satisfactorily for them.
And what is this one fact?--Clearly it is this: _that Dionysus
was saved from fire_. In some mysterious way, for which it is now
difficult to account, the fable was amazingly and profoundly true in
this respect. Dionysus, surnamed _Hyes_, or the Lord of fertilising
moisture, the custodian and resuscitator of that precious principle
in nature, which fire and its unlimited use had killed for the remote
ancestors of the ancient Greeks, comes down through tradition as
himself having had a miraculous escape from fire. The connection, as we
are now able to see, is so true and so undeniable, and the confusion
of the person of the deity with the good or the bounties he dispenses
is so common in oral traditions,[159] that there can be no mistake
regarding the meaning here.
Dr. Kuhn, in his famous work on the Prometheus myth, is one of the few
scholars who sees an inevitable connection between the theft of fire
and the vivifying and invigorating drinks associated with the name of
Dionysus and Soma, although I must admit that he sees this connection
more on etymological than on anthropological grounds.[160]
However, here is the connection described plainly enough in the myth
itself--the fact that I had anticipated it by setting forth my reasons
for regarding Dionysus as the Saviour of the Greeks, after the worst
consequences of the unlimited use of fire had fallen upon them, merely
adds weight to the further evidence I shall proceed to adduce in the
sequel in support of my thesis.
The marvellous feature of this fable, however, is the manner in which
this essential fact about Dionysus has been preserved, apparently by
means of a most clumsy and transparent fiction.
(4) This section of the myth depends upon such a multitude of different
and frequently conflicting stories that it is difficult to interpret
it plainly. It all depends upon which stories or story you care to
concentrate.
On anthropological grounds I incline to the account given in the
twenty-sixth Homeric Hymn, because it is consonant with the principal
elements in the subsequent career of the great man. If a great medicine
chief, such as Dionysus probably was, is to be well versed in the
mysteries of nature’s most secret workings, he cannot study these
better than in forests and wooded glades. Here he has the life of the
birds, vegetation in its most luxuriant form, the small fauna of the
undergrowth, and above all honey. These he can study; using himself as
an experimental animal, he can learn the secret of proper dieting and
acquire the knowledge of plants and trees. The fact that one of his
most important epithets is _Dendrites_, Lord of the Trees, the fact,
too, that he is said to have been taught by Silenus, son of Pan, how to
control the wild beasts of the forest; as also his epithet _Brisaios_
(a name applied to Dionysus as the discoverer of honey),[161] all
point not only to his having grown up among the trees of the forest,
but also to his having been well versed in plant, tree and animal
life.[162] For as I have already suggested, I think, it was only the
wild honey, the honey to be found in tree-hives, that the remote
ancestors of the Greeks were able to obtain.
The account in the twenty-sixth Homeric Hymn is as follows:--
“I begin to sing of ivy-crowned Dionysus, the loud-crying god, splendid
son of Zeus and glorious Semele. The rich-haired nymphs received him in
their bosoms from the lord his father, and fostered him and nurtured
him carefully in the dells of Nysa, where by the will of his father he
grew up in a sweet-smelling cave, being reckoned among the immortals.
But when the goddesses had brought him up, a god oft hymned, then began
he to wander continually through the woody coombes, thickly wreathed
with ivy and laurel.”
Sabazius is also said to have been reared by a nymph Nysa. I take
it that these nymphs are wood-nymphs or dryads. Nonnus, however,
deliberately says they were water-nymphs; but he is scarcely to be
relied upon. Pherecydes of Athens, on the other hand, calls them the
Dodonean nymphs,[163] and seeing that the oak-forest of Dodona is
famous, it is probable that wood-nymphs are meant. In any case the
probability is that Dionysus was an inhabitant of the woods throughout
his childhood and youth, for the reasons I have already stated. There
may even be truth in that part of the legend which implies that his
mother died at his birth, and he may have been abandoned in the woods
by his mother’s relatives on that account. This was not an unusual
procedure among primitive peoples, when a child was born whom nobody
wanted, particularly if the child had no proper father.
Whether Hera’s alleged continued hostility to him, owing to Semele’s
relationship to Zeus, is worth troubling about, now that Hera has
been dropped out of the fable, is very doubtful. I mean by this, that
I doubt whether there is any more in the legend of his having been
stricken mad by Hera, than an attempt on the part of oral tradition to
account for those rumours of madness which have been, I suppose, in all
ages, and will continue to be, associated with the early innovating
feats of a creative genius. Hera’s fictitious relationship to Semele
happens to offer a good setting for the explanation of these rumours of
early madness; hence, probably, they were accounted for in this way.
His wanderings through many countries--Egypt, Syria and Asia--may be
a true piece of history preserved by the myth, or it may simply be
an early attempt at explaining the parallel rites and observances of
a Dionysian nature, known to have been found in those parts of the
ancient world. That the cult of Dionysus spread from Greece is proved;
but its Egyptian and Indian counterparts can scarcely be regarded
as importations from Greece. Hosts of scholars, Creuzer among them,
have maintained the reverse. In my opinion the similarities are too
superficial to have any claim to identity based upon them. There was
probably inter-influence between all three--the Shiva of India, the
Osiris of Egypt, and the Bacchus of Greece--which in historical times
made them seem wondrously alike; but in its origin each had unique
features that distinguished it. A study of the Shiva of India and the
Osiris of Egypt is sufficient, I think, to establish the truth of this
contention.
The various legends relating to the opposition the doctrine of Dionysus
received while it was being spread are most probably founded on fact.
We have ample evidence even in modern times of the difficulty with
which a new doctrine makes any headway, and, as a rule, the bitterness
of the opposition is in equal ratio to the soundness of the innovating
creed. The accounts contained in various versions of the myth, of the
extreme hostility Dionysus encountered while attempting to spread his
credo abroad, are, therefore, probably based upon actual historical
truths, and only help to lend colour to the general plausibility of the
whole fable.
(5) We now come to subdivision five of the myth, which from my point
of view is almost as important as subdivision three. It brings into
prominence another link between the myth of Prometheus and that of
Dionysus. It will be remembered that Prometheus was a Titan; that, as
I have tried to show, his crime proved a disaster to mankind, and that
benevolent Zeus was conceived by his worshippers as being so deeply
outraged by their suffering and the cause of it that he subjected
the arch-criminal Prometheus to a supernatural form of torture.
Zeus, therefore, stands for the sound principle in Greek life, for
the beneficent power meaning well by man; Prometheus stands for the
reverse, for the malign power--the power that descends to any shift,
however base, in order to satisfy the blind Promethean ambition, which
is a fool’s notion of “Progress.” Zeus and Prometheus, therefore,
are properly opposed in the fable. But we have seen that Dionysus
also means well by mankind. We have seen that he also is a Saviour, a
bestower of bounties, a beneficent deity. We have also seen that he is
at times identified with Zeus himself. We should expect, therefore,
that as the representative of the good principle, like Zeus he would be
opposed to the Titans, and they to him. But is not this precisely what
this important subsection of the myth reveals? When Dionysus is said to
be destroyed, it is the Titans who are alleged to have destroyed him.
When Hera is depicted as casting about her for some ally with whom to
pursue her feud against her hated rival Semele and her seed, she is
described as appealing to none other than the Titans. The hostility
of these to Dionysus, and _vice versâ_, is taken for granted, it is
accepted without further explanation, as if it were inherent in the
nature of the two sides.
Once again, therefore, we encounter this Promethean spirit, as the
wrecker of mankind’s happiness on earth. In the first myth, it
manifested itself as a blind will to complication or to “Progress,” and
led to the poisoning of the human race. In the present Dionysian myth,
with which a wonderful corrective is introduced, neutralising the evil
effects of the first Promethean crime, another crime is perpetrated:
the Saviour of man, who has come to release humanity from the torments
resulting from the first Promethean “progressive” enterprise, is torn
into pieces by the Titans.
It is significant, too, that those who are alleged to have restored
Dionysus to life again, are two goddesses notoriously friendly to
man--Rhea, the mother, and probably lover of Zeus the All-benevolent,
and Demeter the great, bountiful goddess of corn.
Evidently the two myths contained from their very inception this common
factor, the hostility of the race of Titans to any power beneficent to
man; and oral tradition handed down the evidences of this hostility
without further explanation, because it was probably too well known in
early times to need any comment.
(6) From my point of view, except that it places on record the ultimate
apotheosis, or canonisation, of Dionysus and his mother Semele, this
part of the myth is not of very great interest. If the date of its
first appearance could be approximately determined, we should have
some indication of the time when the great medicine man Dionysus was
first deified; but otherwise, as the reader will perceive at once, it
neither assists me nor does it add very much to the general interest of
the myth. It again introduces the miraculous or supernatural element
to which, this time, we shall not go to the pains of applying any
psychological analysis.
* * * * *
Having disposed as briefly as possible of the outlines of the myth,
there now remain two tasks, as important as that just performed, before
I can leave Dionysus and round off my thesis. I must deal with the
general aspect of Dionysus as a deity, and with the cult connected with
his name.
I have spoken of Dionysus as the Saviour of mankind, and shown that
he was actually known in this aspect to the ancestors of the ancient
Greeks. I have also hinted at the reason why he was regarded as their
Saviour. But as this last point will receive elaboration later on, I
will not pause to deal further with it at present. Suffice it to say
that he discovered for them an art of life, including several important
additions to their diet, such as mead, the juice of the ivy-berry,
the fermented juice of the grape, and of partly germinated barley and
other grain,[164] with which it became possible for them to face the
future with more courage, spirit, and vigour, and to develop what
was undoubtedly a high civilisation, upon beginnings which, thanks
to Prometheus, were certainly unfavourable. He may also have taught
them how to ferment meat, mare’s milk, and the milk of cows. These new
additions to their diet corrected the poisoning and the deficiency
from which they were suffering owing to the exposure of these foods
to fire,--hence he was known as _Hygiates_, the great healer, and
_Luaios_, the releaser from ills and woes.
Owing to the fact that the juice of the grape when fermented yields by
far the most striking, most potent, and at the same time most abundant
product of all the natural sources which he tapped, it became, as I
have already said, the typical attribute of his divinity, and so much
overshadowed the other attributes that, particularly to the later
Christian world, he became known chiefly as the god of wine. Of course
there was another reason for the emphasis which, for the last two
thousand years, men have thought fit to lay upon this single aspect of
his godhead. The Christian religion is radically puritanical in tone.
It differs from the Pagan cosmogony principally in the attitude it
has always adopted towards sex. Sex is sinful. Carnal knowledge is a
necessary evil. It is tolerated only because there appears to be no
means of circumventing it; but it is nevertheless deeply regretted by
the true Christian, and in his heart of hearts he regards it as the one
blot on the otherwise superb design of the universe.
Now to the Pagan, such an attitude towards sex was inconceivable. He
was, therefore, never obsessed by the purely bibulous aspect of his
great god Dionysus. He retained, until the end, the wider view of the
god, which I am attempting to make clear in this chapter, and by the
cult which he developed around Dionysus, he revealed the full meaning
which he ascribed to that god’s powers. Wine was, therefore, but one
among many ideas connected with the ancient Greek’s concept of the myth
and the cult associated with his name; hence, although the epithets
relating to this aspect of the divinity are the most numerous,[165]
their number is not a very trustworthy index to the relative importance
of the attribute they stand for.
Among the most striking we find:--
_Botryokosmos_: The Grape-decked.
_Choöpotes_: The Deep-Drinker.
_Komastes_: The Reveller.
_Lenaios_: The Lord of the Wine Press.
_Methydotes_: The Wine-giver.
_Oinops_: The Wine-flushed, and
_Theoinos_: The Wine-god.
The list of phallic epithets, or names relating to sexual potency, are
also numerous. Here are some of the more striking:--
_Aigobolos_: The Goat-smiter.
_Choiropsalas_: The Sow-seeker.
_Ephaptor_: The Caresser.
_Eukarpos_: The Fruitful.
_Gunaimanes_: The Erotic.
_Hymenios_: The God of Marriage.
_Karpios_: The Fruitful.
_Pantodynastes_: The All-powerful.
_Phales_: The God Phallus.
_Phlias_: The Flowing One.
_Polyparthenos_: The Maiden-loving.
_Priapos_: The Power of Reproduction.
_Taurogenes_: The Bull-sprung.
_Thyrsomanes_: The Thyrsos-maddening.
_Thyrsotinaktes_: The Thyrsos-shaker.
What do all these epithets mean? Why is so much importance ascribed
to Dionysus on the sexual side? Why was an erect phallus carried in
the processions of the Dionysian festivals? Why was there a phallus,
frequently carved out of fig-wood, carried in the baskets filled with
fruit, which were borne by the virgins known as Canephoria, who formed
part of the procession in the Dionysia?
“How monstrous!” cries the modern investigator, male and female. “How
unnecessarily gross!”--“If these horrible things had to be carried,
why select precisely a virgin to perform the office?--Surely some male
member of the working-classes of the period, a respectable married man
preferably, would have been willing, for a sum that did not require to
be princely, to bear these unmentionable objects in the procession! And
need they have been exposed among the fruit? Might they not have been
carried concealed in a hand-bag?”
So questions the modern mind, the cultivated mind of modern Europe,
the stupid mind of Western civilisation.
But to ask these questions is to misunderstand the whole meaning of the
Dionysian cult. Once this cult is understood, it is immediately clear
to the meanest modern intelligence, that if a respectable married man
of the working classes had been hired to bear this particular emblem in
the Dionysia, the whole rite would have become an absurdity, an empty
parade, a piece of modern buffoonery after the style of our celebrated
pageants,--that is to say, merely a pretext for an idle class to get
pleasantly busy, without incurring the stigma of doing hard productive
toil.
The fact that maidens carried these emblems, that the emblems
themselves were carved out of the wood of the fig-tree, in order
to convey the idea of fertility and reproduction, has never been
satisfactorily explained. In fact very little about the whole of the
great Dionysian myth has been satisfactorily explained. It is, of
course, on its sexual side, one of those “unpleasant” aspects of Greek
mythology which are slurred over as quickly as possible,--particularly,
I suppose, since there have been lady undergraduates at the
Universities. Nevertheless, you would have thought that a few venerable
old men between themselves, and unbeknown to their families, might have
endeavoured to arrive at the correct explanation.
I will deal with some of the attempts that have been made to explain
it, and at the same time submit my own explanation in the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] Pausanias, viii., 31-32. Speaking of the precincts sacred to
Demeter and Persephone at Megalopolis, he says: “And inside the
precincts is the temple of Friendly Zeus, the statue is like Dionysus
and is by the Argive Polyclitus. The god has buskins on, and a cup
in one hand, and in the other a thyrsus, and an eagle perched on the
thyrsus. This last is the only thing which does not harmonise with
the legendary Dionysus.” Translation by A. R. Shilleto, M.A. (Bohn’s
Classical Library).
[152] Some accounts say he was a six months’ child, others that he was
a seven-months’ child. The latter account is probably correct.
[153] Creuzer shows, I think, satisfactorily that a mysterious and
secret cult of Bacchus reached back into the remote prehistoric age
of Greece. See his _Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker_, vol.
iii., p. 142, where he concludes his argument with the following
words: “Immer bleibt der unumstössliche Satz stehen. Der älteste
Geschichtschreiber Herodotus, ein Forscher, der seinen geraden, hellen
Blick, wie seine grosse Einsicht allenthalben beurkundet, der in der
Streitfrage über das Alter der Orphischen Gedichte selbst als Zweifler
erscheint, dieser selbige Geschichtschreiber weiss sehr Vieles von
Lehren, von Geheimlehren, von Bacchischen Lehren zu sagen, die weit in
die Griechische Vorzeit zurückgehen.” See also p. 168, note.
[154] Pausanias mentions a temple at Thebes consecrated to Dionysus as
the Releaser or Deliverer (_Bœotia_, xvi., 4).
[155] At his oracle at Amphlicleia, in Phocis, Dionysus cured diseases
and is called ἰατρός or ὑγιατής.
[156] See his _Great Dionysiak Myth_, vol. ii.
[157] Wine only became the symbol of all these elixirs because it
happened to be the most potent drink. See Mr. Robert Brown’s remarks
on this, _op. cit._, vol. ii., p. 104: “But the Theoinos, or god of
a mystic drink of immortality, is an almost world-wide concept; and
wine signifies not merely grape-wine, but barley wine the juice of the
Haoma or Soma plant, or any other intoxicating or exciting drink which
by an artificial stimulus carries man for a time beyond himself, and
so seemed a type of immortality or conscious strength delivered from
weakness and languor.”
[158] The figures correspond to my arbitrary subdivision of the myth
above.
[159] The Soma of the Sanscrit Vedas is at once the drink and the god
himself. The Haoma of the Persians is also a divinity and a nectar.
Ceres was sometimes called “bread” and “corn,” while Bacchus sometimes
signifies wine.
[160] See his _Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertrankes_ (Berlin,
1859), p. 257, where he concludes: “Den ursprung des himmlischen feuers
sahen wir zweitens aber vielfältig in verbindung mit den vorstellungen
von einem himmlischen trank auftreten, als dessen älteste bezeichnung
wohl amrta und ambrosia aufzufassen sind.” It is interesting here to
note that a certain great mythologian of world-wide renown, whose
name I am unable to mention, when asked recently whether he saw any
connection between the myth of Prometheus and that of Dionysus, replied
that he saw absolutely none!
[161] Dr. W. H. Roscher, in a deeply interesting little pamphlet
entitled, _Nektar und Ambrosia_ (Leipzig, 1883), says that it is
possible that Dionysus should be regarded originally not as the god of
wine but of mead. See p. 10: “Möglicherweise ist Dionysos ursprünglich
als Gott nicht des Weines, sondern des Methes aufzufassen.”
[162] We have seen that he is supposed to have been fed on honey by
the daughter of Aristæus. Now, like Aristæus, he is regarded as the
patron-saint of bees. Aristæus was, of course, also alleged to have
taught men to hunt and keep bees, and is said to have been initiated
into the mysteries of Dionysus in Thrace.
[163] See Creuzer, _op. cit._, vol. iii., pp. 102-103.
[164] Barley and wheat were placed on the altar of the god in the time
of Pausanias.
[165] See L. R. Farnell, D.Litt., M.A., F.A.S., _The Cults of the Greek
States_, vol. v., p. 120.