more convincing soon spread beyond the limits of the first audience of thiasota or orgeones to whom they were addressed as we have already seen, the founder of a thiasus provided the sacred books which prescribed the ritual and gave its explanation, and the successful establishment of a thiasus probably depended largely on whether the myths were of a satisfactory and convincing character. Hence a wide circulation for those which commended themselves to the average Greek: they were essential to the successful propagation of the new worship. But explanatory myths were required not only to prove the fundamental identity of the new god with the old, but also to give a reason for the peculiar character of the purificatory and dedicatory rites and for the remarkable ritual of the sacrifice. Finally, the new teaching of hope with regard to the life to come had to be brought into some connection with the customary religion, to be grafted on it, if it was to grow. Now, the same tendency which made both Greeks and Romans take it for granted that in foreign deities they could detect their own gods under different names, made the religious Greek, who recognised Dionysus in Zagreus, take it for certain that the new teaching about the next life must have once formed part of his own religion, if only he could rediscover it, just as the new rites turned out to have been preserved in certain out-of-the-way sanctuaries. The only question was which of the great men of old had taught the doctrine. Plainly it must have been someone who had visited the other world, and so could speak on the subject with authority. That person could only have been Orpheus. The teaching therefore was the teaching of Orpheus; and from that position it was but an easy step to ascribe to Orpheus not only the substance but the actual words of any particular metrical myth which, owing to its popularity, had detached itself from the circle of worshippers for which it was originally intended and had circulated widely but anonymously. Such literature, of which inconsiderable fragments have survived to our own day, accordingly came to be known as Orphic, and the religious associations whose worship these myths were composed to explain and justify came to be spoken of as Orphic mysteries. In the second half of the sixth

century B.C., this literature was edited" in some sense or other at the court of Pisistratus (whose patronage of tragedy shows his favourable inclination to the cult of Dionysus) by Onomacritus. Then the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls spread from Lower Italy to Greece, and Pythagorean pantheism was imported into Orphic literature. The change thus brought about in the character and tendency of Orphic literature is important for the history of the mysteries, and especially (as we shall see in the next chapter) for the right comprehension of the public mysteries, the Eleusinia.

The tyranny of Pisistratus lasted from B.C. 560 to B.C. 527, and the literary activity of Onomacritus must accordingly be placed before the latter date. The floruit of Pythagoras is agreed to be about B.C. 530, and accordingly the Pythagorean brotherhoods can scarcely have spread from Lower Italy to Greece in time to have influenced Onomacritus in his work (whatever its nature) in connection with Orphic literature and the new movement. Now, before the appearance of Pythagoreanism in Greece, in Greece, the Orphic mysteries, whether disseminated by itinerant agyrtæ or taking local and permanent form in the shape of thiasi, were a religious innovation struggling for recognition; and the object of their adherents was to prove that the apparently new rites and new objects of worship, so far from being alien or offensive to the traditional religion and established gods, were fundamentally identical with them and more venerable forms of them. The proof of these statements consisted in the production of myths, of religious legends, associating the new deities and rites with the deities of the accepted Greek mythology. After the introduction of Pythagoreanism into Hellas, these very myths are themselves taken as a basis and are explained as allegorical or symbolical statements of a pantheistic philosophy. In the pre-Pythagorean period, that is to say, the object aimed at was religious and practical, namely, to secure the recognition and acceptance of the new rites and the new faith. But the aim of the later literature was philosophical and speculative, namely, to show that the Orphic myths led to some particular theory of the origin of man, of evil, or of the world. Now, these philosophical

theories differed, according to the taste and tendencies of the particular theoriser, in the speculations which they evolved out of the Orphic myths, but they all agree in taking the same myth for their basis; and this indicates that, before Pythagoreanism reached Greece, one of the religious legends that were invented to reconcile the new Orphic movement with the customary religion had been so successful that it had driven out all its competitors and had established itself as the orthodox explanation of the new worship. The myth or legend which could do that must, we may be sure, have had in it something of the charm which has enabled certain folk-tales and fairy-tales to find a home in every quarter of the globe, and to outlive the mightiest empires of the world. And as a matter of fact, the myth in question is a folk-tale, belonging to the type known to folk-lorists as the Transformation-Conflict, of which the oldest variant is the Tale of Batta, told in an Egyptian papyrus of the nineteenth century B.C., and the most familiar variant is that which occurs in the Arabian Nights. The wide distribution of the tale is proved by Mr. Hartland in the first volume of his learned Legend of Perseus, but as he does not give our variant, it shall be set forth here. The "motives" of the Orphic adaptation of the tale are several: to connect Zagreus with the traditional Greek mythology, to show his real identity under apparent difference with Dionysus, to prove that Zagreus is the real, original Dionysus, and not a new-comer or colourable imitation, and finally to explain the ritual of his worship.

Zagreus was the son of Zeus by Persephone, and even in his childhood the government of the world was destined. for him by Zeus. This promise aggravated the natural jealousy which since the time of Homer had been the most prominent feature in Hera's character; and she conspired with the Titans, the ancient enemies of Zeus, for the destruction of Zagreus. They accordingly disguised themselves by smearing their faces with clay, and made friends with the infant Zagreus. They showed him various things (which accordingly were shown in the sacred cist to his worshippers in the mysteries), and when he was engaged in looking at himself in the mirror which they had presented to

him, they fell upon him. Thereupon Zagreus goes through a series of transformations in his conflict with the Titans in his endeavours to escape from them; but finally, when he was in the shape of a bull, the Titans overpowered him, tore him piece-meal, and devoured his flesh (wherefore his worshippers also were to consume his flesh). The heart of Zagreus, however, was rescued by Athênê and conveyed by her to Zeus, who swallowed it; and so Zagreus was born again as "the new Dionysus," the son of Zeus and Semelê. This last incident-in which someone by swallowing a portion of the bodily substance of the hero becomes the parent of the hero in one of his re-births-has at first sight a fantastic, Oriental air; but it is a widespread incident in folk-tales, and must have been familiar to the average Greek, else it would not have proved so successful as an explanation of the fundamental identity of Zagreus and Dionysus.

Thus far we have been dealing with myth and with a genuine folk-tale. We now proceed to the philosophical speculations which individual thinkers endeavoured to read into this folk-tale, and we find ourselves in a very different atmosphere. Zeus in his anger smote the evil Titans with his thunderbolts, and reduced them to ashes. From those ashes sprang the human race. Hence the two elements in man, the Titanic and the Dionysiac, the evil and the divine, the material and the spiritual. Thus the folk-tale of early Orphic literature was made to afford a basis for the Pythagorean teaching of the opposition of the body to the soul, and the efforts of the latter to escape from imprisonment in the former and to rejoin the world-soul, the divine essence, which was sometimes by accommodation termed Ouranos, sometimes Zeus. In the same vein the Orphic myth of the dismemberment of Zagreus by the Titans was made to bear witness to Pythagorean pantheism: the body of Zagreus was the one reality, the divine essence of all things, which is robbed of its divine unity by the action of the Titanic or evil element and split up into the manifold of the phenomenal world. But the longing of the soul to escape from its fleshly prison, to merge itself in the divine essence and so shuffle off its individual existence, is a testimony at once to the original unity which existed before its harmony was broken by the

intrusion of evil, and to the ultimate destiny of the soul when purified.

It is, however, no part of our task to pursue further these speculations, which, indeed, are rather philosophical than religious. Rather we have to inquire how the original Orphic doctrine of the future life was modified by its fusion with Pythagoreanism. But to do this we must know what the Orphic doctrine, not later than the time of Onomacritus, was. That, however, is a question which can only be answered when we have some notion of the teaching on this subject associated with the great public mysteries, the Eleusinia. Meanwhile it is hoped that enough has been said to show how the new worship was grafted on to the old religion, and how the way was made easy for a man to join the new movement without ceasing to worship the state gods.