Iao is, of course, a

(Dionysos), of the Autumn sun.1 Semitic name, and a strong Semitic tinge must have overspread the oracle of the Klarian god, if, indeed, he were identical with the Dorik Apollon, before such a response could have been possible. But how was it, then, that men called the Sun Dionysos as a surname? Apollon, as we know, is a purely Aryan and Ouranik divinity, distinct and separate from the Semitic and chthonian Dionysos. There could be no real, but only apparent, affinity between such opposite concepts. But Dionysos, as we have already seen, has undoubtedly a most important solar phase and aspect, and so Donaldson rightly asserts that he 'first appeared to the Greeks as a tauriform sun-god;'2 as in the Eumolpik verses we read 'Dionysos, with face of flame, glitters like a star with his rays.' , 3 And this solar phase and character of Dionysos at once explain how ancient philosophical investigators, ignorant of those laws of linguistic affinity which it is the triumph of modern research to have developed, and of the gaps which separate the concepts of Aryan and Semite, not unnaturally confounded divinities essentially distinct. To the ordinary philosopher, the creed of the multitude generally appeared gross and absurd. He regarded the gods as either the arbitrary creations of man's fancy, or as expressions denoting the forces of nature; or again, as the attributes of a great and unknown divinity. To believe in Apollon and Dionysos as distinct divine beings, would appear childish to a philosophical pagan, or perhaps to any pagan, of the age of Macrobius, A.D. 390. He would regard the two divinities as in reality merely two solar impersonations, and therefore as identical. But this view is historically considered incorrect, since (1) Pyropos, the Fiery-eyed, is not the entire Dionysos, but one only of his many phases; 1 Egypt's Place, iv. 193, note.

Theatre of the Greeks, 17.

3 Subsec. i. 6.

and (2) Apollon is an Aryan, Dionysos Pyropos a Semitic, study of the sun; they are distinct alike in origin and in line of thought.1

Subsection III.-Dionysos the Demiurge.

A very prominent feature of the Orphik Dionysos is that of the Demiourgos, or Maker-of-the-world, in fact, of the entire Kosmos. Thus the Orphik poet, speaking of the sacred dress to be worn in the Bakchik Mysteries, says:

To accomplish all these things, clad in a sacred dress

The body of God, a representation of the bright-rayed Helios, Let the worshipper first throw around him a crimson robe Like flowing rays resembling fire.

Moreover from above the broad all-variegated skin of a wild fawn

Thickly spotted should hang down from the right shoulder, A representation of the wondrously-wrought stars and of the vault of heaven.

And then over the fawn-skin a golden belt should be thrown, All-gleaming, to wear around the breast, a mighty sign

That immediately from the end of the earth the Beaming-one springing up

Darts his golden rays on the flowing of ocean,

The splendour is unspeakable, and mixed with the water
Revolving it sparkles with whirling motion circularly
Before God, and then the girdle under the unmeasured breast
Appears as a circle of ocean, a mighty wonder to behold."

Here we have a full-length portrait of the kosmogonic Dionysos. The sacred rites are proceeding; the principal worshipper, who in the symbolism represents the god himself, is in the Thronismos or State-of-enthronement, clad in the mystic dress, and surrounded by the chorus of votaries dancing in a ring. His crimson robe and peplos, with its flaming rays, symbolise the heat and Frag. vii.

1 Vide inf. subsec. iii.

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fierce beams of the sun, Dionysos Pyropos; and, had the mystic dress consisted of the peplos only, there might have been some foundation for the theory of the absolute unity of Helios and Dionysos. But this is merely the first article of the attire. Next, the all-variegated,1 much spotted, faun-skin, typifying the starry vault of heaven, is to hang down from the shoulder.2 Over the faun-skin is thrown a golden belt, typifying the Homerik oceancircle, when gleaming with splendour beneath the rays of Phaethon, the Bearning-sun, who corresponds with Dionysos Antauges, the Sparkler. The ocean-girdle, it will be observed, is placed in the symbolism without the stars, because they in Hellenik idea sink into it; and Okeanos is, like Poseidon Gaieochos, the Earth-encircler, and holds the Kosmos in his all-surrounding arms. Thus, the sacred dress typified sun, starry vault, and ocean, all indeed of matter that exists, except the earth; but this latter is not omitted from the mystery-play, for the worshipper himself is at once the earth and Dionysos, or the kosmogonic spirit of the world; sexless, or of both sexes, for the result is the same, clad in the woman's robe, peplos, and the man's belt, zoster. Hence the close affinity and the connected historic worship of Dionysos and Demeter, the Aryan Earth-mother, anthropomorphic, emerging into human form from the huge and shadowy Gaia. This Orphik Dionysos is truly a colossal concept, and let those who are inclined to condemn the study of Mythology as frivolous and unimportant endeavour to estimate the value and interest of the light which it throws alike upon the mind of man and the general history of the world. The great subject of Pantheism-the higher and the lower its truth and error, truth-that all things are in God; error-that God is in all things, as if Deity were 3 Frag. vii.

1 Vide inf. VIII. i. Aiolomorphos.

2 Cf. Diod. i. 11.

E

nought but animated and eternal matter, is and ever must be of the highest importance, especially in these days when Agnosticism exults in its ignorance, and a deepening Materialism finds constantly increasing favour with numerous sages. How apparently delicate are many of its distinctions, yet how important their differences! Thus with equal truth and beauty may the Deity, especially when considered anthropomorphically and in His more active operations, be figuratively represented as clad with the immediately surrounding visibility, not with the entire Kosmos, as with a garment,' from which, nevertheless, He must ever be kept distinct and separate in idea. He animates the All, not as soul does body from within, but, being essentially external and distinct in His infinity, He looks upon the whole world, not as His tabernacle, but as a very little thing.' It is not true, as the friend and pupil of Bolingbroke has asserted, that

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That changed thro' all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth as in the etherial frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;

that the Creator is but the animated creation, no more than the Platonik Soul of the World,' the Neo-Platonik Hippa. This is not God, but Dionysos. But,

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plainsAre not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

that is,

In contemplation of created things
By steps we may ascend to God,—

not find God indwelling in them.

1 God could have made other worlds.' S. Athanasios.

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Not of forming parts of one stupendous whole.'

Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and spirit with Spirit can

meet

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

For in Him we live, and move, and have our being;' we in Him the Creator, not He in us His creatures.

Worlds without number

Lie in His bosom like children.

He lies not concealed in them, as a principle of inherent vitality.

"This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all.' (Newton). And this is not Dionysos, but God. Such then is the root-idea of the Kosmogonic Dionysos.

But the Orphik poet, while thus pantheistically clothing Dionysos with the visible universe, is no mere crude materialist. He fully admits Mr. Martineau's canon, that 'mind is first and rules for ever,' and so, in another Fragment, he tells how the Demiurge, whom men call both Phanes, and Dionysos, and King Eubouleus the Wisecounselling, and the widely-known Antauges the Sparkler,' and whom others of the men who dwell on the earth call by other names, first came to light;' and how this mysterious power melted down,' i.e. resolved into form and shape, the divine ether that before was motionless, and lit it up for the gods to see, most beautiful to behold; '1 or, in other words, established order out of a pre-existing chaos. This demiurgic force is not external to the matter in and through which it works, and through which it becomes known as Phanes the Apparent,2 identi2 Cf. sup. sec. ii.

6

1 Orphik. Frag. vii.