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lake; and his return from the lower world, in other words. his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the warder of the dead. Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to bring the season with him. Deities of vegetation, who are supposed to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived.3

A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as "cow-born," “bull,” “bull-shaped," "bull-faced," "bull-browed," "bullhorned," "horn-bearing," "two-horned," "horned." He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull. His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape, or with bull horns; and he was painted with horns. Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity. On one statuette he appears clad in a bull's hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down

1 Pausanias, ii. 37. 5 sq.; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; id., Quaest. Conviv. iv. 6. 2.

2 Himerius, Orat. iii. 6, xiv. 7.

3 For Dionysus, see Lenormant in Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. des Antiquités, i. 632. For Osiris, see Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 65.

4 Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; id., Quaest. Graec. 36; Athenaeus, xi. p. 476 A; Clemens Alexandr. Protrept. ii. 16; Orphica, Hymn xxx. vv. 3. 4, xlv. 1, lii. 2, liii. 8; Euripides, Bacchae, 99; Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 357; Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 31; Lucian, Bacchus, 2. The title Eipaprns applied to Dionysus (Homeric Hymns, xxxiv. 2; Porphyry, De

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abstinentia, iii. 17; Dionysius, Perieg. 576; Etymolog. Magnum, p. 371. 57) is etymologically equivalent to the Sanscrit varsabha "a bull," as I am informed by my friend Mr. R. A. Neil. 5 Euripides, Bacchae, 920 sqq., 1017.

6 Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; Athenaeus, .c.

7 Diodorus, iii. 64. 2, iv. 4. 2; Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30.

8 Diodorus, .c.; Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 209; Philostratus, Imagines, i. 14 (15).

9 Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, ii. pl. xxxiii.; Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. des Antiquités, i. 619 sq., 631; Roscher, Ausführl. Lexikon, i. col. 1149 sqq.

behind.1 Again, he is represented as a child with clusters. of grapes round his brow, and a calf's head, with sprouting horns, attached to the back of his head. On a red-figured vase the god is portrayed as a calf-headed child seated on a woman's lap.3 At his festivals Dionysus was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull's foot. They sang, "Come hither, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!" According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans; and the Cretans, when they acted the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth. Indeed, the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites. When we consider the practice of portraying the god as a bull or with some of the features of the animal, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and the legend that it was in bull form that he had been torn in pieces, we cannot doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival the worshippers of Dionysus believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.

Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names was Kid."8 At Athens and at Hermion he was worshipped under the title of "the one of the Black Goatskin," and a legend ran that on a certain occasion he had appeared clad in the skin from which he took the title. In the wine-growing district of Phlius, where in autumn the plain is still thickly mantled with the red and

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8 Hesychius, s.v. Εριφος ὁ Διόνυσος, on which there is a marginal gloss ὁ μικρὸς αἴξ, ὁ ἐν τῷ ἔαρι φαινόμενος, ἤγουν ὁ πρώϊμος ; Stephanus Byzant. s.v. 'Ακρώρεια.

9 Pausanias, ii. 35. 1; Schol. on Aristophanes, Acharn. 146; Etymolog. Μαξη. s... ̓Απατούρια, γ. 118. 54 594. ; Suidas, s.v. 'Απατούρια and μελα valyida Aióvvrov: Nonnus, Dionys. xxvii. 302. Compare Conon, Narrat. 39, where for Meλavoidŋ we should perhaps read Mελαναίγιδι.

golden foliage of the fading vines, there stood of old a bronze image of a goat, which the husbandmen plastered with goldleaf as a means of protecting their vines against blight.' The image probably represented the vine-god himself. To Το save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed the youthful Dionysus into a kid ; and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat. Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw, they must have believed that they were eating the body and blood of the god.

This custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine more in detail presently, belongs to a very early stage of human culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave their human attributes (which are always the kernel of the conception) as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so, the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves, still retain a vague and ill-understood connection with the anthropomorphic gods which have been developed out of them. The origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionally slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for the former

1 Pausanias, ii. 13. 6. On their return from Troy the Greeks are said to have found goats and an image of Dionysus in a cave of Euboea (Pausanias, i. 23. 1).

2 Apollodorus, iii. 4. 3.

3 Ovid, Metam. v. 329; Antoninus Liberalis, 28; Mythogr. Vatic. ed. Bode, i. 86, p. 29.

4 Arnobius, Adv. nationes, v. 19. Cp. Suidas, 5.v. aizíšew. As fawns

appear to have been also torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus (Photius, Lexicon, s.v. veßpiše; Harpocration, S.. veẞpiswv), it is probable that the fawn was another of the god's embodiments. But of this there seems no direct evidence. Fawn-skins were worn both by the god and his worshippers (Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30). Similarly the female Bacchanals wore goatskins (Hesychius, s.r'. τραγηφόροι).

purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered to the deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose, the myth would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus is an example of a myth of the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because they injured the vine.1 Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god had divested himself of his animal character and had become essentially anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be regarded no longer as a slaying of the god himself, but as a sacrifice offered to him; and since some reason had to be assigned why the goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that this was a punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine, the object of the god's especial care. Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. And as the god is supposed to partake of the victim offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god's old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is represented as eating raw goat's blood; and the bull-god Dionysus is called "eater of bulls."3 On the analogy of these instances we may conjecture that wherever a god is described as the eater of a particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but the god himself.1

All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should appear in animal form. But the con

1 Varro, De re rustica, i. 2. 19; Virgil, Georg. ii. 380, and Servius, ad. I., and on Aen. iii. 118; Ovid, Fasti, i. 353 sqq.; id., Metam. xv. 114 sq.; Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30.

2 Euripides, Bacchae, 138 sq. : ȧyрevwv αἷμα τραγοκτόνον, ὠμοφάγον χάριν. 3 Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs,

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Hera aiyopayos at Sparta, Pausanias, iii. 15. 9; Hesychius, s.v. aiyopáros (cp. the representation of Hera clad in a goat's skin, with the animal's head and horns over her head, Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, i. No. 299 B); Zeus aiyopáros, Etymolog. Magnum, s.v. aiyopáyos,

p. 27. 52 (cp. Schol. on Oppianus, Halieut. iii. 10; L. Stephani, in Compte - Rendu de la Commission Impériale Archéologique pour l'année 1869 (St. Petersburg, 1870), pp. 16. 18); Apollo yopáyos at Elis, Athenaeus, viii. p. 346 B; Artemis κажрopáуos in Samos, Hesychius, s.2'. κаπрopάyos; cp. idem, s.v. Kрlopάyos. Divine titles derived from killing animals are probably to be similarly explained, as Dionysus aiyáßolos (Pausanias, ix. 8. 2); Rhea or Hecate κινοσφαγής (Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 77); Apollo AUKOKTÓvos (Sophocles, Electra, 6); Apollo σαυροκτόνος (Pliny, N'αι. Hist. xxxiv. 70).

sideration of this point had better be deferred till we have discussed the character and attributes of Demeter. Meantime it remains to point out that in some places, instead of an animal, a human being was torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus. This was the custom in Chios and Tenedos ;1 and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted.2 At Orchomenus, as we have seen, the human victim was taken. from the women of an old royal family. As the slain bull or goat represented the slain god, so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him. It is possible, however, that a legend of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to shod in buskins, and the mother cow was woman in child-bed. At Rome a she-goat was sacrificed to Vedijovis as if it were a human victim.5

§ 8. Demeter and Proserpine

For example, Dionysus was tended like a

The Greek myth of Demeter and Proserpine is substantially identical with the Syrian myth of Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian myth of Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek myth, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a goddess-Demeter-mourns the loss of a loved one— Proserpine who personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in summer to revive in spring. But in the Greek myth the loved and lost one is the daughter instead of the husband or lover of the goddess; and the mother as well as the daughter is a goddess of the corn.

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p. 224 sqq.; on Proserpine in the same character see Cornutus, De nat. deor. 28; Varro in Augustine, Civ. Dei, vii. 20; Hesychius, s.v. Pepoepóvela ; Firmicus Maternus, De errore prof. relig. 17. In his careful account of Demeter as a corn-goddess Mannhardt appears to have overlooked the very important statement of Hippolytus

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