6 further, what is the meaning of the Hymn itself? and why should men be represented as being desirous to carry him away to distant lands? How simple is the answer to such questions from the historical point of view. We need not suppose, contrary to possibility and apart from evidence, that on account of the legend of the ancient Hymn, every town invented tales about the god's travels; but just as the territorial contests of Poseidon, otherwise inexplicable, illustrate the introduction of his cult into fresh regions and the opposition which it encountered there, so the travels of Dionysos symbolised the progress of his worship throughout the world, until at length he arrives in Thebai, the first of Hellenik cities of the continent reached by him; and there finds himself unhonoured and his cult violently opposed. Even Mr. Cox himself admits, as we have seen,2 that the opposition of the Theban Pentheus to the cultus of Dionysos is among the few indications of historical facts exhibited in Hellenic mythology.' But while thus interpreting Euripides in an historic sense, we are not bound to accept in all its details his historical account of the Dionysiak cult; to suppose, for instance, that it was originally identical with the worship of the Phrygian Kybele, or that Lydia was the point from whence it passed over into Hellas. So, again, when he speaks of the cities of maritime Asia as inhabited by a mingled population of Hellenes and Barbarians, he is evidently thinking more of his own times than of the mythical era of Pentheus, as the earliest Hellenik colonies in Asia Minor were according to tradition, founded subsequently to the Dorik conquest of the Peloponnesos." Seven eastern regions are mentioned by the god as having been visited by him, Lydia, Phrygia, Persia, Media, Baktria, Arabia, and maritime Asia, and the names are not 1 Vide Poseidon, xxi. 2 Sup. II. i. 1. Cf. Tyrrell, The Bacchae of Euripides, Introduction, xxxiii. note 2. 2 uninteresting, as they appear to contain the Euripidear theory of the localities in which the Dionysiak cult obtained. He refers its origin, as Bunsen observes, 'to the fanatical physiolatries of Asia Minor,'1 and consequently Lydia, Phrygia, and Asia, are three of the places visited by Dionysos; and the poet apparently mentions Persia, Media, and Baktria, the first of which was the dominant Oriental power, chiefly to show that the worship of the god had penetrated deep into the regions of the extreme East. Euripides can scarcely have possessed any definite knowledge, even traditional, of any Dionysiak ritual in immediate connection with either of the three last-mentioned countries. The mention of Baktria is somewhat singular, but there seem to have been various early Hellenik traditions of the ancient greatness of that kingdom; and the Baktrians, who were noted for their valour, had come in contact with the Hellenes in consequence of the invasion of Khshayarsha (Xerxes). But the poet's list is more remarkable for its omissions than for what it contains. As the Baktrians are mentioned, we should naturally have expected that the Indians, most distant of men, and who fought by their side at Plateia, would have been also included, more especially since one of the most famous epithets of Dionysos is Indoletes, the Indian-slayer, while his renowned campaign against the Indians has been celebrated by numerous writers from the age of Euripides to that of Rabelais. Thus Antimachos, whose Thebais I have already referred to," writing a few years earlier, related how Dionysos, after three years' absence in India, entered Thebai in triumph on an elephant, and from that circumstance instituted the Trieteris, or Triennial Festival, performed in his honour, 1 God in Hist. ii. 235. 2 Cf. Rawlinson, Herodotus, iv. 166. 3 Cf. Herod, vii. 64, ix. 31. 65. 4 Vide inf. IX. vii. Indoletes. 6 Antimachos, apud Diod. Sik, iii. 6 and from which he is called Trieterikos.1 The mention of Arabia is interesting, and he subsequently alludes to Nysa, which, as he does not connect it with any particular locality, he may, like Antimachos, have supposed to be in Arabia.3 But the other Semitic countries, Kaldea, Assur, Aram, and Phoenicia, are unmentioned in consequence of his theory of a Dionysos Phrygian in origin. He also appears to have deliberately rejected the Kamic theory of Herodotos, with which he must have been familiar. It is amusing to notice the scepticism with which writers such as Strabo, who consider Dionysos to have been an individual man, naturally regard his traditional travels and exploits.5 The Mystic Rites, Teletai, connect the Dionysiak cult with that of the Eleusinian Demeter." Let Verses 64-177, Introductory Speech by the Chorus of Barbarian Bakchanals. • Who is beneath the roof? him be out of the way ("Procul, O procul este profani") and let everyone use well-omened words, for I will ever hymn Dionysos according to custom. O blessed one! whosoever being fortunate, knowing the mystic rites of the gods, lives piously, and has his soul imbued with Bakchik revelry, raving among the mountains with holy purifications; and observing the orgies of the Mighty Mother Kybele, and shaking the thyrsos crowned with ivy, serves Dionysos.'7 The natural connection between Dionysos and the Earth-mothers, Demeter, Rhea, and Kybele, has already been partially noticed, how the Demeter and Rhea of the West corresponded to, but were not originally identical with, the Kybele or Great Goddess-Mother of the East; and how Dionysos, as Associate of the Aryan goddess-mother, naturally becomes the Associate of the Semitic goddess-mother, a circumstance which, combined with the foreign nature of his worship, caused Euripides to incorrectly impute a Phrygian origin to the Dionysiak cult. Having related the death of Semele, and how Zeus enclosed the infant Dionysos in his thigh, the Chorus continue, And he brought him forth when the Fates had perfected the Bull-horned [Taurokeros] god, and crowned him with crowns of serpents, whence the thyrsos-bearing Mainades twine their hair around their prey.'2 We are here introduced to Dionysos as the horned, bovine god, whose dithyramb chanting votaries receive a bull as a prize, and who is identical with Zagreus Eukeraos, the Beautifully-horned. Thus Pentheus says to Dionysos, 'You seem like a bull, and horns seem to grow on your head. But were you ever a wild beast? for you look like a bull. Di. The god accompanies us; and now you see what you should see. In the stable Pentheus fastens up a bull, supposing he is binding Dionysos, and the Chorus call upon the latter to appear as a bull, or as a many-headed dragon, or a 1 Sup. III. i. 3. 2 Vs. 100-4. 4 Nonnos, vi. 209. 5 Vs. 920-4. 6 V. 618. 6 7 This is a non-Aryan characteristic, and reminds us of the non-Aryan Indian votaries of the Naga or sacred five- or seven-headed hooded snake, sculptured at Sanchi and Amravati (vide Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship). The mystic Kamic snake, 'Ruhak the great charmer,' is also sometimes represented as trikephalic. But Akkad is the original home of the Many-headed-serpent myth, and so we read in a very ancient Akkadian Hymn, 'The thunderbolt of seven heads, like the huge serpent of seven heads (I bear); like the serpent that beats the sea (which attacks), the foe in the face' (Records of the Past, iii. 128). M. Lenormant well compares the Akkadian serpent with the seven-headed Indian serpent Vasonki, which was doubtless derived from it (Les Prem. Civilisations, ii. 137; vide also his remarks in La Magie, 207). The 'Lernaeus turbâ flaming lion.' Oppianos the Syrian, cir. A.D. 210, in his Kynêgetika, or Poem-on-hunting, says that Pentheus himself was transformed into a bull, and the Bakchai into panthers, who tore him to pieces. The Eleian women at the festival of Dionysos used to chant a Hymn to the god, which ran, 'O Dionysos! come as a sea hero to the holy shrine, with the Graces, rushing to the shrine with bovine foot; and then,' says Ploutarchos,2 they twice sing "Worthy Bull.” › 8 And he asks whether they do it because the god is addressed both as ox-sprung and as a bull, for Dionysos, as he elsewhere tells us, was known among the Argeioi as Bougenes the Ox-sprung. So Clemens Alexandrinus, in his exposition of the Mysteries, says, 'Pherephatta (Persephone) has a child, in the form of a bull, as an idolatrous poet says, "The bull the dragon's father, and the father of the bull the dragon, on a hill the herdsman's hidden ox-goad," alluding, as I believe, under the name of the herdsman's ox-goad, to the reed wielded by the Bakchanals.' Now we learn from the Scholiast on the Argonautika of Apollonios of Rhodos, that Mnaseas the Grammarian of Alexandria, a disciple of Eratosthenes, in his work on the Delphik Oracles, called two of the mystic Kabeiroi of Samothrake Axiokerse and Axiokersos, evidently male and female divinities, whose names signify Worthy Horned Goddess and Worthy Horned God. Here, then, we have a short and simple proof of the Semitic origin of Dionysos. The 'worthy-horned god' of the Phoenician colony of Samothrake is identical with the 'worthy bull' of Elis and the capitum anguis' which, according to the Natural Phenomena Theory, represents the many-headed changing storm-clouds (Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, ii. 48), and which appears as merely a monster and unconnected with divinity, may very probably be a purely Aryan concept. 5 |