3 situate near the mouth of the Hypanis, not very far from Odessa, and was proudly called by the inhabitants Olbia,2 the Prosperous.' It was also known as Borysthenis, Miletopolis, as being a colony from Miletos in Ionia, and lastly as Sabia or Sauïa. Hence Canon Rawlinson conjectures with great probability that the cult introduced by the Milesian colonists was that of the Phrygian bacchus,' the horned Sabazios or Sabos, who stands by Dionysos as Jupiter by Zeus, representing the same being or concept as regarded by two different nations. To suppose that the Hellenik Dionysos was derived from the Phrygian Sabazios would be as reasonable as to imagine that the Latin Jupiter was the son of the Hellenik Zeus. The two are in each case identical, alike in origin and practically in cult. At some remote period the phallic, horned, solar, serpent-crowned, nocturnal, kosmogonic, dying, and reviving, divinity, known in Phrygia as Sabazios, was introduced there from regions more purely Semitic, in the same way that Dionysos appeared in Hellas as a stranger from the Outer-world. Sabazios was said to have first yoked oxen, and hence to have been represented with horns; his sacreds were performed in secret and at night. In comparatively late times his cult, as that of a distinct divinity, was introduced at Athenai, but was always profligate and discreditable." Bunsen says Sabazios is the god Sbat,' the seventh planet, Hadal or Saturn, connected with the horned Kronos or Karnos; and Lydus, when speaking of Dionysos, observes 'The Chaldeans call God Iao,8 and in the Phoenician language he is often called Sabaoth." 7 6 3 Rawlinson, Herodotus, iii. 58, Note 1. 4 Diod. iv. 4. Cf. Aristoph. Sphekes, 10, Lysist. Iao, 388, Ornith. 875; Cic. De Legibus, ii. 15. Egypt's Place, iv. 291-298. 7 Vide inf. IX. iii. 8 Sup. II. iii. 2. • Peri Menon, iv. 38. 6 as we have seen, is identical with Dionysos, and Sbat, Sabaoth, or Tsebaoth the Lord of Hosts,' or Sabazios, is the same being, the two together forming the divinity 'Jehovah Sabaw, Iao Sabao," the Abraxas, or rather Abrasax, of the Gnostics.2 Serpents,' remarks the Rev. G. W. Cox, 'played a prominent part in the rites of Zeus Sabazios, whose worship was practically identical with that of the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis. The epithet Sabazios, which, like the words Adonai and Melkarth, was imported into Greek mythology, is applied not less to Dionysos than to Zeus.4 The reason of the confusion in idea between Zeus and Sabazios is extremely simple. Each, in his own Pantheon, is the protagonistic divinity and king of the gods; hence, according to the easy logic of antiquity, which in one point of view is correct, they are regarded as identical. But Dionysos, Sabazios, Iao, Tammuz, and Adonis, are in reality identical; being not merely similar and corresponding divinities, but actually various phases of the same concept. The root of the name Sabazios has also been said to be a Persian word sebs, signifying omnia viriditate induens; this meaning agrees remarkably well with Dionysos as the Spirit of Kosmic Life, but whether there is a real connection between the two words I am unaware.7 1 Cooper, Serpent Myths. of Anct. Egypt, 17. 2 C. W. King, The Gnostics and their remains, 81. 3 Vide inf. VI. i. 2. 4 Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, ii. 128, Note. 6 5 SECTION III. DIONYSOS IN HELLAS. The following singular story is a remarkable illustration of the Eleusinian cult of Dionysos. Dicaeus, the son of Theocyeds, an Athenian, declared, that after the army of Xerxes had, in the absence of the Athenians, wasted Attica, he chanced to be with Demaratus the Lacedaemonian in the Thriasian plain, and that while there he saw a cloud of dust advancing from Eleusis, such as a host of 30,000 men might raise. As he and his companion were wondering who the men, from whom the dust arose, could possibly be, a sound of voices reached his ear, and he thought that he recognized the mystic hymn to Bacchus. Now Demaratus was unacquainted with the rites of Eleusis, and so he enquired of Dicaeus what the voices were saying. Dicaeus made answer-" O, Demaratus ! beyond a doubt some mighty calamity is about to befall the king's army! For it is manifest, inasmuch as Attica is deserted by its inhabitants, that the sound which we have heard is an unearthly one, and is now upon its way from Eleusis to aid the Athenians and their confederates. Every year the Athenians celebrate this feast to the Mother and the Daughter; and all who wish, whether they be Athenians or any other Greeks, are initiated. The sound thou hearest is the Bacchic song, which is wont to be sung at that festival." They looked, and saw the dust, from which the sound arose, become a cloud, and the cloud rise up into the air and sail away to Salamis, making for the station of the Grecian fleet: Then they knew that it was the fleet of Xerxes which would suffer destruction.' Such was the tale told by Dicaeus the son of Theocydes; and he appealed for its truth to Demaratus and other eye-witnesses."2 Here Dionysos as the Associate of Demeter and Persephone, assists in the overthrow of the non-hero-worshipping Persians, across whose sunstricken plains Euripides erroneously asserted that he had come. As a divinity of Semitic origin, he is appropriately opposed to the godless Aryan invaders who plundered and burnt temples and sacred shrines. Another allusion of Herodotos to the Hellenik cult of Dionysos I have had already occasion to refer to, namely, the conduct of Kleisthenes despot of Sikyon, who abolished the rites performed in honour of Adrastos the Argeian hero, transferring his ritual to Melanippos, with the exception of the tragic choruses, which he assigned to Dionysos.3 The Dionysiak cult was, according to Herodotos, introduced into Hellas by the wise and famous Melampous son of Amytheon, a contemporary of Proitos, the fourteenth in the line of the mythic kings of Argos. 'He it was who introduced into Greece the name of Bacchus, the ceremonial of his worship, and the procession of the phallus. He did not, however, so completely apprehend the whole doctrine as to be able to communicate it entirely, but various sages since his time have carried out his teaching to greater perfection. Still it is certain that Melampous introduced the phallus, and that the Greeks learnt from him the ceremonies which they now practise. For I can by no means allow that it is by mere coincidence that the Bacchic ceremonies in Greece are so nearly the same as the Egyptian-they would then have been more Greek in their character, and less recent in their origin. Much less 16 The Athenians assert in their songs that they were assisted by the gods in the battles of Salamis and Marathon' (Paus. viii. 10). 6 can I admit that the Egyptians borrowed these customs or any other from the Greeks. My belief is that Melampous got his knowledge of them from Cadmus the Tyrian, and the followers whom he brought from Phoenicia into the country which is now called Boeotia."1 Again he says, 'The Greeks regard Hercules, Bacchus, and Pan as the youngest of the gods." To me it is quite manifest that the names of these gods became known to the Greeks after those of their other deities, and that they count their birth from the time when they first acquired a knowledge of them.' In these very important passages the great Father of History asserts, in perfect harmony with the Theologers and the Lyric and Tragic Poets, the non-Hellenik or foreign nature of the Dionysiak cult, and its comparatively recent introduction into Hellas. It is perfectly immaterial to the general argument whether such a personage as Melampous ever existed or not, and what amount of confidence is to be placed in the chronology of Herodotos; the main fact remains beyond all question that the latter, like all other Hellenik writers on the subject, believed that Dionysos and his cult came into Hellas from the Outer-world, i.e. was Barbarian in origin. Nor was this belief, in the case of Herodotos, merely an inherited tradition; actual researches in the East confirmed and established it to his mind beyond all doubt. His observations that had the Bakchik ceremonies been of Hellenik origin they would have been more Hellenik in character and less recent in their rise, and that the Hellenes counted the birth of gods from the time when they first acquired a knowledge of them, exhibit a far higher critical acumen and more judicious insight into 1 Herod. ii. 49. 2 The Homerik Hymn to Pan, the son of Hermes, quite confirms this statement of Herodotos. Probably Pan was so considered because his cult was in earlier times chiefly confined to Arkadia; cf. Paus, viii. 36, 54; Herod. vi. 105-6. Inf. VII. ii. 3 Herod. ii. 145. 4 Ibid. 146. |