ments are glaringly opposed to the character and conduct of Diomedes, who had shortly before contended triumphantly against two of the immortals, Aphrodite and Ares, and had even rushed undauntedly upon Aineas when under the immediate and visible protection of Apollon himself. The careful reader of the Homerik Poems will, however, be struck by the perfect harmony of the whole representation and the wonderful consistency of the author.1 Diomedes pursues Kypris because Athene has ordered him to do so,2 and because he knows her to be a strengthless divinity. Encouraged by this success, he is emboldened to oppose Apollon, but receives a terrible check, and is reminded of the dissimilarity of the races of men and of gods. He retires appalled, and Athene, afterwards finding him at some distance from the fight, chides him as being inferior to Tydeus, his sire, and urges him to attack Ares with her immediate personal assistance, by means of which he escapes death, and wounds the god.5 The powers of Diomedes has been much overvalued alike by the timid Helenos, who was suitably promoted in mediaeval times as Bishop of Troy, and by many moderns. Throughout the whole episode the Argeian warrior is merely the instrument of Athene, his father's patroness;7 and she, having returned to the abode of Zeus, the son of Tydeus, is naturally very undesirous to fight with the gallant Glaukos until assured that the latter is a mortal like himself. Apollon's warning is yet ringing in his ears, and he bethinks him of the fate of Lykourgos. It would have been a strange artistic blunder had the poet really per mitted any Hellenik hero seriously to vie with his protagonist Achilleus, 'much the best of the Achaioi;' and in the hour of their deepest distress the son of Peleus scornfully observes that Diomedes, by some erroneously supposed to be his rival in warlike prowess, cannot save them.1 These considerations, which in the main did not escape the ancient commentators, illustrate the perfect propriety of the introduction of the Episode of Lykourgos by Diomedes at the particular place and time in which it appears, and thus being satisfied that the passage is of equal authority and antiquity with its immediate surroundings, we may next proceed to consider its statements. And first, it is no Ogygian legend of remote antiquity which is referred to by the king of Argos. Nestor, in his youth, had personally known Dryas, the father of Lykourgos, and classes him among that band of heroes, Peirithoös, Kaineus, Exadios, and Polyphemos, king of the Lapithai, whom the old man declares were superior to all men whom he had seen or was likely to see." Hence the incident is represented as having taken place in times then comparatively recent. We next notice the extraordinary delineation of the god, the reality of whose divinity is at the same time most fully acknowledged; he is represented as a terrified child, or even infant, and yet as having allies or protectors so powerful that the opposition of Lykourgos is hopeless, and his temporary success only the more delusive. Zeus, god amongst gods, acknowledges the raving stranger as his son, and personally avenges him with the full assent of the other divinities; and the strong son of the mighty Dryas, and his fellow-sufferer, Pentheus, remain for ages as monuments of the wrath and power of Dionysos. Dionysos flies to Thetis, 'the recon 1 Il. xvi. 74. 2 Il. i. 263. 3 Il. xiv. 325. 4 Cf. Ais. Lykourgeia; Soph. Antig. 955; Eur. Rhesos. 972. 1 ciler between the conflicting creeds,' who, in like manner, 'received to her bosom '2 another Oriental divinity, Hephaistos, when, like Dionysos, a temporary outcast from Aryan regions. The son of Semele requites the kindness of Thetis by the gift of the golden urn in which the bones of Achilleus were placed, and which was made by his brother Semite Hephaistos. It will be observed that Dionysos is not expressly stated to be, but is represented as if he were, a child or infant. Here are two distinct ideas (1) that of the god as youthful, in consequence of his cult being yet of recent introduction; and (2) that of the god as ever fresh and young as connected with all green and growing things,5 as representative of the powers of reproduction and resurrection, as Orthagoras and Erikapeios, in a word, as the 'puer aeternus,' or Ever-Youth. The Thrakian Edonoi, over whom Lykourgos is said to have ruled, were celebrated for their devotion to the Dionysiak cult, and, as Niebuhr notes, (the southern coast of Thrace is one of the countries in which the nobler kinds of wine were produced at a very early period.' As to the most holy mount of Nysa, we shall find that wherever the Bakchik cult prevailed, whether in Thrake, Boiotia, Euboia, Naxos, or elsewhere, this name is found,10 and that, therefore, it is not originally connected with any particular Hellenik locality.11 Such being the principal incidents of this remarkable myth, how is it to be understood? It may be boldly affirmed that the legend is inexplicable unless received historically, i.e., that it more or less truthfully commemorates certain actual historical facts; which 9 are (1) the foreign, i.e., Aristoph. Ek. 916. 7 Ovid. Metam. iv. 17. 8 Cf. Hor. Car. ii. 7. • Lectures upon Ancient Ethnography, i. 233. 10 Vide inf. VIII. i. Nysios. non-Hellenik, origin of Dionysos; (2) the introduction of his cult into the West; and (3) the violent but unsuccessful opposition which it excited. Whether Lykourgos was a real or an imaginary king of the Edonoi, or of any other kindred or neighbouring tribe, or whether, as has been conjectured, the name is that of a rival native deity 'worshipped perhaps with phallic rites like the Roman Luperci,' is quite immaterial; the purport and general bearing of the legend cannot be mistaken. I am not aware that anyone has attempted to explain it by the aid of the Natural Phenomena Theory, but any such attempt, if made would be about as rational as the assertion that the campaigns of Kudurlagamer2 represent astronomical allegories. Colonel Mure, who somewhat arbitrarily transfers the scene of the tale to Boiotia, very properly regards Lykourgos as 'a type of the resistance offered to the spread of those extravagant (Bakchik) orgies.'3 Mr. Gladstone remarks, 'What is most clear about Dionusos in Homer is, first, that his worship was extremely recent; secondly, that it made its appearance in Thrace; thirdly, that it was violently opposed on its introduction, a fact of which we have other records, as, for example, in the Bakchae of Euripides; and even Mr. Cox admits that the opposition of the Thrakian Lykourgos and the Theban Pentheus to the cultus of Dionysos is among the few indications of historical facts exhibited in Hellenik mythology.' In this brief Homerik sketch the god appears, somewhat as we are accustomed to see him in the Attik dramatists, as Bakcheios the Exciter-to-phrensy, accompanied by his attendant Bakchai (not the Nymphs his nurses), with their Thysthla or sacred implements, not merely the Thyrsoi. The circumstance, however, affords no proof of the 1 Mr. F. A. Paley, in loc. 2 Gen. xiv. 3 Crit. Hist. i. 151. 4 Juv. Mun. 319. 5 5 Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, ii. 294. spurious character and comparatively late date of the passage; but, on the contrary, illustrates at once the antiquity of Bakchik worship, and the fidelity with which earlier traditions were preserved to later ages. Nor, again, can it be said, that the pristine cult of the god was merely that of Dionysos Theoinos, giver of wine and lord of the vine, and that on this primitive Aryan idea the Semitic orgies of the East were grafted. Homeros is quite innocent of any such notion. It is not to an Aryan Dionysos metamorphosed into a Semitic Sabazios that the ruler of the Edonoi objects, but to Dionysos altogether, in origin and in growth. Again, the Dionysos of the Ilias in no way differs from the Dionysos of the Homerik Hymns. The god of each is the son of a Kadmeian, i.e., Oriental, not of a Boiotik, mother; is connected with the mysterious Nysa; is supposed to be weak, but in reality is most potent; is opposed and insulted, and terribly avenged. In each case his would-be oppressors are smitten with blindness; not the mystic blindness of the great poets and prophets, Teiresias, Thamyris, and others, but the blindness of Pentheus, which is unable to foresee the coming vengeance of the god, that heaven-sent mania under the impulses of which the guilty wretch fulfils his doom, according to the familiar saying, 'Quem vult perdere Deus prius dementat.' And so, we do not find Lykourgos represented in other legends as having been physically blinded, but merely has having been smitten with Bakchik madness, in which state he kills his son Dryas, supposing that he was pruning vines. Such, then, are the principal features in the Episode of Lykourgos; other points, more or less connected with it, I shall have occasion to notice again in the course of the enquiry; but let the reader always bear in mind the important fact which will receive 1 Apollod. iii. 5. |