fied with Dionysos, and representing the visible creation in its vitality. As the sun is the eye of the universe, the most prominent and remarkable object of the Visible, and as the mind looks out through the human eye, so the demiurgic Dionysos looks down through the great solar eye upon his worshippers and the world; and thus, being peculiarly associated with the sun, naturally appears as Pyropos the Fiery-faced, and Antauges the Sparkler. That all nations, and especially the children of the glowing East, should have solar gods and solar myths is natural and even necessary; but, at the same time, the kosmogonic aspect of the Uasar-Dionysos Myth is even vaster here than the solar, while the relations between Dionysos and Helios are fully explicable by the protagonistic position of the latter in the material universe, and the kosmic concept of the former as its animating essence, and allpervading daemon. Hence the poet, while saying that men call the Sun Dionysos, does not thereby absolutely identify the two; and he clearly distinguishes between them in his account of the enthroned worshipper and his dress.

But, as may be readily conceived, the idea of a solar, being simpler than that of a kosmogonic, deity, when Dionysos had become thus connected with the Sun, the light of the solar phase threw the broader conception somewhat into the shade. Dionysos the Demiurge was lost sight of, but his character is so far impressed upon Dionysos Pyropos, that the latter chiefly appears, not in an astral or purely solar phase, as being distinct and distant from the earth, but, as the lord of the changing seasons, whose power affects and alters the visible world on which he looks down. And so the poet tells us :

He has surnames for each of his changes, Manifold as the year rolls, and they suit with the change of the

seasons.

These names, as we have seen,1 are Zeus, Aïdes, Helios, and Dionysos, and all of them are said to belong to Iao, who, like Zagreus,2 is the highest of all gods.' But the Semitic Iao, of whom, according to the Klarian oracle, Zeus and the three other deities are but annual phases, is not merely a solar divinity, but the life-heat power of nature as imparted through the solar orb. The very fact that he is the highest of all gods shows this, for neither in Kaldea, Assur, Phoenicia, or Egypt, or in Aryan Hellas or India, does the Sun-god, merely as such, head the list of divinities. Joannes Laurentius, who from having been born in Lydia is commonly called Lydus, and who lived A.D. 490-560, in his work 'Peri Menôn' (De Mensibus), states that the Chaldaeans call God Iao,' and the name itself in the form Iau, occurs in the cuneiform inscriptions. Iao, in fact, somewhat corresponds in place and position with the Aryan Zeus, from whom he is, of course, utterly and absolutely distinct. And thus, as was noticed, all investigations into the nature and history of Dionysos tend to show how lofty is the place among divinities which he occupied in the Outer-world. No longer, as in the Homerik Olympos, an inferior personage, he is in Phoenicia Iao, and Zagreus highest of all gods;' and as the solar concept, as distinguished from the kosmogonic, becomes still stronger in the mind, the poet invokes him in the words: O brilliant Zeus; O Dionysos, sire of sea, sire of earth; O Helios, sire of all.' Phanes, the pervading demiurge, has here become centred in the most remarkable piece of visibility, 'that nebulous star we call the sun.' But all this is

1 Subsec. ii.

2 Vide sec. i. 7.

3 Cf. Movers, Phön. i. 550.

4 Trans. Soc. Bib. Archaeol. iii. 505. Cf. Bunsen's remark, 'Rawlinson thinks he has found the FireGod, Iah or Iao in the arrow

headed inscriptions.

'There are, moreover, many traces of an old name of God, Iau, which Greek form leads to Iahu, i.e. Iah with the archaic nominal ending U' (Egypt's Place, iv. 194).

5

Sec. i. 7.

essentially Semitic in thought and feeling; no purely Aryan bard could for an instant have confounded Zeus the All-father,

The constant heaven with its deep blue eyes,

with solar divinities. But the poet has come to regard the Sun as being the first and highest of gods, or rather perhaps, Semitically, as containing the spirit and intelligence of the first of divinities; and hence he applies to the Sun whatever names were given to the Supreme, Zeus, Iao, All-father, &c. And so, incidentally, we see that Dionysos ranks with these, and is second to none. In another passage he describes the god as keeping the visible world together, i.e., upholding all things by his power;' and in consequence, being called Phanes, the Spirit-of-the-Apparent, who gives surrounding matter, form, and shape, and Erikapaios, an epithet, apparently meaning Spring-time-garden-growth, or the vital force of life-heat of the vast visible world. It may possibly, however, be equivalent to Protogenes, Primeval, the one who first came to light.' Such is Dionysos, the Orphik Demiurge, the spirit of material visibility, a Kyklops giant of the universe with one bright solar eye.

I

As the mysterious Ţao is a very important phase of Dionysos, and has of late been employed in the attempted injury of the ordinary belief in Yahveh, some further observations on his occult concept are here added. have already noticed that a groundless alarm arose in some orthodox quarters at certain supposed serious consequences which would arise from accepting the view of the genuine antiquity of the answer of the oracle of Apollon Klarios. Bishop Colenso thus comments on the view of Bishop Browne, Land 3 maintains the genuineness of

1 Vide inf. XII. i.

2 Sup. subsec. ii. note.

3 Theol. Tijdschr. March, 1868,

Yet in

In win

this oracle, since after the closest examination there appears not a trace in it of later Greek or of defective versification, of anything whereby the fictitious oracles of a later age always betray themselves.' Dr. Colenso then quotes Movers in support of the genuineness of the oracle, and gives Land's explanation of it as follows: Iao is the highest of all the gods, because he gives life to all, and his dwelling is in heaven which spreads over all. heaven he reveals himself specially by the Sun. ter, when the nights are longest, the god prefers to dwell in the Under-world as Zeus Chthonios, and rules over the shades in Hades. In the spring-time, when the grain harvest is at hand, all depends upon the weather, upon sufficient rain and sunshine; and the god is addressed as Zeus, as especially the god of heaven and of the weather. In the summer, he is the scorching Helios, which burns up everything, and is tempered by no cloud. Lastly, in the autumn, comes the ripeness of the fig, pomegranate, and above all of the grape, with its mysterious life-awaking juice; and now is the god known as the tender Iao, the spring of all beauty, love, and life.' This is a truly admirable interpretation of the oracle, and Dr. Colenso adds: 'It is obvious how closely this corresponds to the worship of Dionysos.' The genuine antiquity of the oracle being thus established beyond all reasonable doubts, do any evil consequences follow to ordinary belief? Certainly not. Yahveh or Jahve may have been, and indeed undoubtedly was, as the Bishop suggests, a very ancient name in the land of Canaan.' Il or El is a very ancient name of God in all the countries adjacent, and of course, long anterior to the time of Moses; but this circumstance is in no way prejudicial to religion. The identity of Yahveh and Iao, moreover, cannot be denied ; and Diodoros states that, amongst the Jews, Moses called God

The New Bible Commentary critically examined, i. 656,

Iao.1 We have the express testimony of Eusebios 2 that the Phoenicians called Yahveh Ieuo,3 and the identification of the two is frequently made in ancient writers.1 Fürst is probably often a very doubtful authority," but his observations on this question are well worthy of note. He says, the very ancient name of God, Yaho, in Hellenik Iao, appears to have been an old mystic name of the supreme god of the Semites. In the ancient religion of the Chaldaeans, whose remains are to be found amongst the Neo-Platonists," the highest divinity enthroned above the seven heavens, representing the spiritual-light principle, and also regarded as the Demiurge, was called Iao,7 who was like the Hebrew Yaho [i,e. Yahveh] mysterious, and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated only to the initiated. The Phoenicians had a supreme god, whose name was triliteral and secret. He was Iao.10 This Phoenician Yaho, a knowledge of whom spread farther, represented the Sun-god in a four-fold variety, according to the oracle of Apollon Klarios, i.e. he represented [the four-faced] Baal (according to an account in Eustathios), whose image was set up in the temple by Manassch.'11 The Chaldaeans, according to Cedrenus, adored the physical and intellectual light. The diffusion of this throughout the region of the seven planets was represented by the letters I A 2, the first of which represented

1 Diod. i. 94.

2 Euan, Apod. i. 6.

3 Cf. Gesen. Script. Ling. Phoe. 408; vide also the Phoenician myth of the sacrifice of the only son Ieoud; Cory, Anct. Fragments, 17; Bunsen, Egypt's Place, iv. 280 et seq.

4 Tacitus, Hist. v. 5, Plout. Symp. i. 4; Julianus (the Apostate), Orat. in Matrem Deorum, and his Christian opponents.

5 Vide Trans. Soc. Bib. Archaeol. iii. 105, note.

6 In illustration of this, vide inf. XI. iii.

9

7 Lydus, ut ante; Cedrenus, ut inf.

8 Proklos. In Tim. ii.

9 Sanchou. i. 8.

10 Cui litera trina

Confirmet sacrum nomen, cog

nomen et omen.'

Martianus Capella, Hymn to the Sun.

"Inf. VII. ii. Fürst, Lexicon : 'Jehovah.' A Gnostic gem given by Montfaucon, tome ii. part ii. pl. clix. fig. 2, represents a Janus-headed figure, and is inscribed IAW on

the reverse.