'We possess only what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a stranded vessel.' That Semitic influence, still very perceptible in Hellenik history, although so coldly admitted by some, and so boldly denied by others, would, had we the materials of antiquity, have been far more apparent; but fortunately sufficient traces of it remain to enable us to construct, to a considerable extent, an account of its early progress, as the fragments of colouring found in ancient churches recall to the skilled restorer the period when the shades of the walls corresponded with the hues of the windows. That Zagreus is a phase of the mystic Dionysos, is sufficiently well known,1 and his intimate connection with the venerable Earth-mother, De-meter, will become more apparent when we consider the combined cult of Demeter and Iakchos in the historical Eleusinian Mysteries.2 But it will be observed that Zagreus is represented as a Zeus Hypsistos, Jupiter the Highest, god of gods; and so, Dionysos, although in Aryan regions, son of the Aryan Zeus, whom he was unable to dethrone, is himself a Zeus, but in Hellas only the Zeus of Nysa. His place in the Aryan pantheon, into which he was admitted as a stranger divinity, was much lower than the one occupied by him in the land where his cult first originated, and hence, he might easily be regarded esoterically by his worshippers as being far greater than he appeared by comparison with other deities of the earlier Aryan religion, and so, in the Bakchai the barbarian Chorus declare that he is inferior to none of the gods.'4 Only one other allusion to him is preserved amongst the few surviving fragments of the Kyklics. Isaac Tzetzes, cir. A.D. 1150, author of the Commentary on the Kassandra of Lykophron, mentions that the writer of the Epik poem called the Kyprian

1 Inf. IX. vi. Zagreus.

2 Ibid. VI. ii.

3 Cf. Diod. Sik. iii. 64.

4 V. 777.

Verses, who may have been Stasinos of Kypros, related the story of Roio, the beloved of Apollon and the daughter of Staphylos the Argonaut, son of Dionysos and Ariadne. Roio was shut up in a chest by her father, and thrown into the sea, a repetition of the legend which related that Semele had been so treated by Kadmos on his discovery of her intrigue with Zeus. The chest was cast up on the shore of Euboia, and broken by the waves; and Roio, saved from the sea, called her newborn son Anios, the Ben-oni or Son of Sorrow. Anios became the father of three daughters, Oino, Spermo, and Elais, to whom Dionysos gave the magic power of producing any quantity of wine, corn, and oil, with which they supplied the Achaioi during the first nine years of the Troian War. The general purport of the myth is sufficiently evident. Staphylos or Bunch-of-grapes, is the father of Roio, the Flowing-wine, beloved by Apollon, whose genial rays ripen the fruit. Then follows the familiar idea of the outraged and revengeful sire who, like Kadmos or Akrisios, shuts the frail fair one in a chest and casts her into the sea. The child is naturally Anios, the Son of Sorrow, but he is the great grandson of Dionysos, and, his mother's troubles being over, the genial element re-appears in the story, and his daughters, Oino, wine, Spermo, seed, and Elais, oil, support the Achaian host before Troia. Dionysos, it will be observed, is not merely the father of Wine alone. Seed and Oil are equally his daughters, for he is the lord of the producing vitality of the venerable Earth-mother. The principle of explaining legends from the signification of the names of personages mentioned in them is frequently both sound and serviceable, but may easily be overstrained. Thus Eumolpos may, in the abstract, be merely a general term for a Poet or Good-singer, and Homeros for a Stitcher-together of lays and ballads; but

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Argos is not necessarily the Land of Whiteness, nor Lykia that of Light, in any aërial or heavenly sense.1

Subsection VIII-Eikon of the Homerik Dionysos.

The Homerik Dionysos appears as the son of Zeus, and Semele daughter of Kadmos; as a stranger opposed and injured on his first entry into the regions of the West; as enrolled among the cycle of Aryan and Hellenik divinities, to which he did not originally belong;2 as a god apparently feeble, yet potent to revenge himself; and as locally connected with Naxos, Thrake, and the Boiotik Thebai. He is a charm or soothing joy to mortals, and crowned with the deathless ivy can grant life to his votaries, himself the dark-eyed, smiling, blooming, and eternal youth. Women minister in his orgies, and the wine is consecrated in his worship. The green earth-mantle is his robe of freshness and beauty, adorned with the embroidery of flowers which chaplet the brows of Dionysos Antheus, and he breathes of sunny skies, pure air, ever-verdant meadows, and flowing streams. Father is he of grape-clusters, of corn, and wine, and oil, and of the fatness of the earth beneath. But, like Janus, he has another face. The dark and smiling eyes can deepen and intensify till they burn and scorch with the fierce rays of Dionysos Pyropos. The perfect vigour of the beautiful youth can develope into the fierce bound of the savage beast of prey, Dionysos Omestes, the Rawflesh-eating; Dasyllios, the apparently innocent rustic deity, can also appear as Agrionios, the ruthless and savage. This curious two-fold character, this face at

1 Cf. De Quincy on the conclusions to be drawn from the meanings of Hellenik names. Works, v. 316 et

seq.

2 Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 21. 'Dionysos was deified in the thirty

second year of the reign of Perseus, as Apollodorus says, in his [truly valuable] Chronology.'

3 Vide inf. IV. iii. 2; VIII. i. Omestes.

once grim and smiling, 'Dionysos, son of Zeus, a god at once most terrible and most gentle to mortals,'1 we shall see developed throughout his career; its closer consideration belongs to another stage of the enquiry. With reference to the introduction of the Dionysiak cult into Hellas, Mr. Gladstone well remarks: We cannot, perhaps, treat the Dionusos of Homer as the discoverer of wine, and father of its use, in Greece; for it is universal and familiar, while he appears to be but local and as yet strange. The novel feature, which connects itself with his name, seems to be the use of wine by women; and the effect produced, in an extraordinary and furious excitement, which might well justify not only jealousy, but even forcible resistance to demoralising orgies. It seems, then, as if this usage was introduced by immigrants of a race comparatively wealthy and luxurious, and was resisted by, or on behalf of, the older and simpler population.'2 Professor Mayor, commenting on Od. ix. 197, where allusion is made to the skin of excellent wine given to Odysseus by Maron, priest of Apollon, remarks: Neither here, nor in the vineyard of Alkinoös, nor in the vintage scene on the Shield of Achilleus, do we find Dionysos; hence he cannot have been the god of wine to Homer.'3 I think it will clearly appear that this inference is amply justified. There is one more incident in the description of the Homerik Dionysos which is not without a special significance. The poet never admits him to that wide heaven, the peculiar home and abode of Zeus Hypsistos,*

1 Eur. Bak. 860.

2 Juv. Mun. 319.

3 The Narrative of Odysseus, i. 108.

4 I have endeavoured to show (Poseidon, xxix.) that the customary Homerik formula for the Aryan divinities is ' 'the gods who possess the wide heaven.' Mr. Gladstone (Juv. Mun. 318) quotes Nagelsbach

to the effect that Homeros places neither Dionysos or Demeter in Olympos by any distinct declaration. As Demeter is unquestionably an Aryan divinity, this must seem an exception to the principle above suggested. Even if it be an exception, the reason of it is not far to seek, as it would seem to us to be a strange clashing of ideas to place Earth in

that clear blue aether which is far removed from the career and independent of the sway, alike of the terrestrial Dionysos and of the chthonian Zagreus, whose lurid torches, though for a time they may obscure, can never vie with, the pure beauty of its incorruptible stars.1

SECTION II.

THE DIONYSOS OF HESIODOS.

Subsection I.-Dionysos, son of Semele.

'To Zeus,' says the poet of Askra,2 Semele, daughter of Kadmos, bore a famous son Dionysos, the Muchcheering, an immortal though she was mortal. But now both are deities.' The Hesiodik account is thus in perfect accord with the Homerik; Dionysos is a Kadmeion, i.e. a Son of the East. The primary meaning of the word phaidmos, ' famous,' is that which is brought to light or made to appear, and hence that which strikes the eye remarkably. Some of its fellow words are phaino, 'to bring to light;' phane, a torch,' i.e. that-which-bringsthings-to-light; and Phanes, the Apparent-one, the Orphık Demiurge, who has made, and in making has brought to light, all created things which form his 'living

Heaven; but Demeter in Homerik idea probably had too much anthropic personality to make the concept incongruous, and as all the gods are said to possess Olympos (I. i. 606), it is likely that he regarded both Dionysos and Demeter as at times present there. The distinction is between the two formulas-'the gods who possess Olympos,' or the entire Pantheon; and the gods who possess the wide heaven,' or the Aryan members of it only.

1 The originally protagonistic solar phase of the god (Inf. sec. iii. 2, XII. i.) does not appear directly in Homeros, though clearly developed in the Hymns. In Phoenicia and Egypt the kosmogonic element became very pronounced, and consequently, to some extent, interfered with the former.

2 Theog. 940-2.

3 Polygethes (cf. Pind. Frag.

CXXX.