we hear the cry“ Rise! our life, our spirit is come back, the darkness is gone, the light draws near!" we are carried at once to the Homeric hymn, and we hear the joyous shout of all the gods when Phoibos springs to light and life on Delos.' 'Of gods,' says Pausanias, ‘the Eleans especially revere Dionysos,' 2 and then he tells how that at the Elean Dionysiak Festival of the Thyia three empty vessels are brought into the temple of the god and left there; and though all the doors are made fast and sealed, yet, wonderful to say, the vessels are found next day filled with wine. This remarkable fact he had from very respectable persons who knew it of their own knowledge (for unfortunately he was unable to be present personally on the occasion), and we may well believe it, but the symbolism is exceedingly interesting. Elis, where Dionysos was especially revered, was, as noticed,3 the locality where he was invoked as the Axiotauros or Worthy Bull, the Axiokersos or Worthy-horned-god of Samothrake. The Kabeiroi or Great Ones of Samothrake were three in number, and if the Worthy-horned-god had an empty bowl left in his shrine, it is only natural to suppose that his female 'reflection,' as the Assyrian Inscriptions would have called her, namely, Axiokerse the Worthy-horned-goddess, was honoured with another, and Axieros the Worthy-lord, with the third.5 Axiokerse we have just seen at Brauron as Artemis Taurike the Goddess-of-the-bull, for this epithet has in reality no connection with the Taurik Chersonesos; and we find her in Sparta as Orthia the Phallic, to whom men were sacrificed, until Lykourgos introduced instead the custom of scourging, which was carried out with great severity.7 The wine vessels in the Elean temple correspond in the 1 Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, i. 103. 2 Paus. vi. 26. 3 Sup. IV. iii. 2. Aglaoph. 1221. mystic symbolism with the missing god; but at length, unseen and unnoticed, he returns to earth; nature arises from the death of winter, and blooms again with everfresh luxuriance, and the vessels in the temple, itself an image of the kosmic house of the universe, become filled with wine or the life-blood of the world. 6 Orchomenos, where the Agrionia was celebrated, is the scene of the mythic childhood of Dionysos when brought up by Athamas and Ino,1 and fortunately we are able, by the aid of the light thrown by the present upon the underlying significance of Hellenik mythology, to observe the earlier stages of the Dionysiak ritual, if not its actual introduction there. The mythic Athamas, a son of Aiolos, ruled Orchomenos, and a portion of the Athamantik legend is thus related by Herodotos:-On the arrival of Khshayarsha 2 at Alus in Achaea, his guides, told him the tale known to the dwellers in these parts concerning the temple of the Laphystian Jupiter, how that Athamas the son of Aeolus took counsel with Ino and plotted the death of Phrixus; and how that afterwards the Achaeans, warned by an oracle, laid a forfeit upon his posterity, forbidding the eldest of the race ever to enter into the court-house. If one comes within the doors, he can never go out again, except to be sacrificed. Further, they told him, how that many persons, when on the point of being slain, are seized with such fear that they flee away and take refuge in some other country; and that these, if they come back long afterwards, and are found to be the persons who entered the court-house, are led forth, covered with chaplets, and in a grand procession, and are sacrificed.' 4 The children of the race of Athamas, or a portion of them, were thus devoted to Zeus the Glutton, so called on account of the human sacrifices 1 Apollod. iii. 4. 2 Xerxes. 3 Zeus Laphystios, or the Glutton. 4 Herod. vii. 197. offered to him;1 and this Being, who as a matter of course has no connection with Zeus the great Aryan Allfather,2 like Kronos or Saturnus, in accordance with the Molekh-ritual, devours his own offspring. Let us next consider the place of Athamas in mythic genealogy, and here, as the Aryan element is largely represented in the story, the Natural Phenomena Theory, in the able hands of Mr. Cox, affords great assistance. Athamas, a son of Aiolos and king of Orchomenos, at the command of Here, marries Nephele, and from this union spring two children, Phrixos and Helle; but he also loves Ino daughter of Kadmos, who becomes the mother of Learchos and Melikertes. The injured Nephele leaves the faithless king, and the angry Here strikes him with madness, in which state he slays Learchos, while Phrixos and Helle, who were to have been sacrificed through the intrigues of Ino, escape through the air upon a golden-fleeced ram, the gift of Hermes. Ino with her remaining child leaps into the sea, where their names and natures suffer a sea change,' Ino becoming Leukothee and Melikertes Palaimon. The deserted Athamas, driven from his home, is told that he must wander until he reaches some place where wild beasts receive him hospitably. At length at Alos he finds a place where wolves, lykoi, having slain a sheep, leave the flesh for him, and there he rests and founds a new dwelling-place. Perhaps in no legend in which the Semitic and Aryan elements are intermingled can they be more clearly distinguished, and their respective underlying significance more plainly revealed; and as every part of the myth is full of interest both in a general and also in a Dionysiak point of view, I shall examine it in detail. First, let us take the Aryan portion of the tale, which the Natural Phenomena Theory makes 1 Cf. Müller, Eumen. lv. 2 Cf. Paus. i. 24; where Laphys tios is alluded to as an obscure and foreign divinity. perfectly lucid. Athamas, at the command of Here the Gleaming Heaven,1 a peculiarly national divinity,2 and hence opposed to strangers and strange gods, marries Nephele the Cloud; and becomes the father of Phrixos, the Unsunlit-ether, and Helle, the air or ether when lighted up by Helios the Sun. But the Phoenician Ino, daughter of Kadmos the Oriental, and whom Athamas prefers to his Aryan consort Nephele, is hostile to the children of her rival; and they are rescued from her devices through the instrumentality of Hermes the lord of cloud and breeze, who sends the golden-fleeced ram or shaggy sunlit cloud, upon whose back they flee away; until the wearied Helle, deprived of her sun-strength, falls exhausted at sunset into the Hellespontos, while the colder and more vigorous Phrixos escapes to the far dwelling of the Kolchian king. Driven mad by the angry Here, the raging Athamas, like Herakles Mainomenos, slays his eldest Kadmeian child Learchos, for whose name no Aryan derivation is suggested, and Ino, to escape him, leaps into the sea with her remaining infant Melikertes. Who then is Athamas, and what does he represent? Evidently the Sun. As Mr. Cox observes, he is 'a being on whose nature some light is thrown by the fact that he is the brother of Sisyphos, the sun condemned, like Ixion, to an endless and fruitless toil.' He slays Learchos; and this action which, in the Semitic phase, implies amongst other things that human sacrifices were offered to him as to Zeus the Glutton,5 according to 6 the innocent Aryan symbolism, only signifies drought and the burning up by the scorching summer sun of his children the fruits of the earth, whom his genial beams have produced. The name Athamas, like Learchos or Melikertes, is not susceptible of an Hellenik explanation; and who then is this Athamas, in Ionic Tammas,'1 who scorches the earth and slays his children? Who but Tammuz, whose name has been explained as signifying the 'Strong one,' or the 'Consumer-who-makes-perfect,' i.e. by fiery purgation, but who is the Kaldean Tamzi, the Sun-of-life,' 2 the glowing and triumphant sun,' whose title is connected with the fierce summer heats of June and July? And Tammuz, like Dionysos with whom he is identical, for, as we have seen, Tammuz, Adonis, Iao, Sabazios, and Dionysos, are all one, is hated by the Aryan Here,1 and, like Dionysos, is a wanderer. In this point, as in almost every circumstance in the myth, the distinct and double symbolism, Aryan and Semitic, is clearly visible. In his Aryan aspect, the Sun wanders across heaven; in his Semitic, also over earth as the fierce Molekh-cult is carried along the shores of the Midland Sea. But the exiled Athamas or Tammuz is here wandering in an Aryan region, and so Aryan mythology enwraps him in its misty mantle. Wolves welcome him, but wolves, Lukoi, are other than they seem; like the Arktoi, or Bears of the Brauronia, they are but light-children sprung from Leukos the Brilliant, and so welcome the resplendent Athamas.5 At last the fugitive settles at |