Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume II Part 23

The child of two serpents, Zagreus, was born, curious as it may seem, with horns on his head. Zeus brought him up in secret, but Hera sent the t.i.tans to kill him. According to Clemens Alexandrinus**** and other authorities, the t.i.tans won his heart with toys, including the bull-roarer or turn-dun of the Australians.**** His enemies, also in Australian fashion, daubed themselves over with pipeclay.****** By these hideous foes the child was torn to pieces, though, according to Nonnus, he changed himself into as many beasts as Proteus by the Nile, or Tamlane by the Ettrick.

* Roscher's Lexikon, p. 1046.

** Lobeck, Aglaoph., p. 547, quoting Callimachus and Euphoric

*** Ibid., p. 550.

**** Admon., p. 11; Nonnus, xxiv. 43; ap. Aglaoph., p. 555.

***** Custom and Myth, p. 39.

******Cf. Demosthenes, Pro. Or., 313; Lobeck, pp. 556, 646, 700.

In his bull-shape, Zagreus was finally chopped up small, cooked (except the heart), and eaten by the t.i.tans.* Here we are naturally reminded of the dismemberment of Osiris, Ymir, Purusha, Chokanipok and so many other G.o.ds and beasts in Egypt, India, Scandinavia and America. This point must not be lost sight of in the controversy as to the origin and date of the story of Dionysus Zagreus. Nothing can be much more repulsive than these hideous incidents to the genius, for example, of Homer.

He rarely tells anything worse about the G.o.ds than the tale of Ares'

imprisonment in the large bronze pot, an event undignified, indeed, but not in the ferocious taste of the Zagreus legend. But it need not, therefore, be decided that the story of Dionysus and the t.i.tans is later than Homer because it is inconsistent with the tone of Homeric mythology, and because it is found in more recent authorities. Details like the use of the "turn-dun" in the Dionysiac mysteries, and the bodies of the celebrants daubed with clay, have a primitive, or at least savage, appearance. It was the opinion of Lobeck that the Orphic poems, in which the legend first comes into literature, were the work of Onomacritus.**

On the other hand, Muller argued that the myth was really archaic, although it had pa.s.sed through the hands of Onomacritus. On the strength of the boast of the Delphian priests that they possessed the grave in which the fragments of the G.o.d were buried, Muller believed that Onomacritus received the story from Delphi.***

* Proclus in Crat., p. 115.

** Aglaoph., p. 616. "Onomacritum architectum istius mythi."

*** Muller's Proleg., English transl., p. 319.

Muller writes, "The way in which these Orphics went to work with ancient myths can be most distinctly seen in the mythus of the _tearing asunder of Bacchus_, which, at all events, pa.s.sed _through_ the hands of Onomacritus, an organiser of Dionysian orgies, according to Pausanias, an author of Orphean poems also, and therefore, in all probability, an Orphic".

The words of Pausanias are (viii. 37, 3), "Onomacritus, taking from Homer the name of the t.i.tans, established Dionysiac orgies, and represented the t.i.tans as the authors of the sorrows of the G.o.d".

Now it is perhaps impossible to decide with certainty whether, as Lobeck held, Onomacritus "adapted" the myth, and the Delphians received it into their religion, with rites purposely meant to resemble those of Osiris in Egypt, or whether Muller more correctly maintains that Onomacritus, on the other hand, brought an old temple mystery and "sacred chapter"

into the light of literature. But it may very plausibly be maintained that a myth so wild, and so a.n.a.logous in its most brutal details to the myths of many widely scattered races, is more probably ancient than a fresh invention of a poet of the sixth century. It is much more likely that Greece, whether at Delphi or elsewhere, possessed a legend common to races in distant continents, than that Onomacritus either invented the tale or borrowed it from Egypt and settled it at Delphi. O. Muller could not appeal to the crowd of tales of divine dismemberment in savage and civilised lands, because with some he was unacquainted, and others (like the sacrifice of Purusha, the cutting up of Omorca, the rending of Ymir) do not seem to have occurred to his memory. Though the majority of these legends of divine dismemberment are connected with the making of the world, yet in essentials they do resemble the tale of Dionysus and the t.i.tans. Thus the balance of probability is in favour of the theory that the myth is really old, and was borrowed, not invented, by Onoma-critus.* That very shifty person may have made his own alterations in the narrative, but it cannot be rash to say with O. Muller, "If it has been supposed that he was the inventor of the entire fable, which Pausa-nias by no means a.s.serts, I must confess that I cannot bring myself to think so. According to the notions of the ancients, it must have been an unholy, an accursed man who could, from a mere caprice of his own, represent the ever-young Dionysus, the G.o.d of joy, as having been torn to pieces by the t.i.tans." A reply to this might, no doubt, be sought in the pa.s.sages describing the influx of new superst.i.tions which are cited by Lobeck.** The Greek comic poets especially derided these religious novelties, which corresponded very closely to our "Esoteric Buddhism" and similar impostures. But these new mysteries and trumpery cults of the decayed civilisation were things very different from the worship of Dionysus Zagreus and his established sacrifices of oxen in the secret penetralia of Delphi.***

* Lobeck, Aglaoph., p. 671.

** Aglaoph., 625-630.

*** Lycophron, 206, and the Scholiast.

It may be determined, therefore, that the tale and the mystery-play of Dionysus and the t.i.tans are, in essentials, as old as the savage state of religion, in which their a.n.a.logues abound, whether at Delphi they were or were not of foreign origin, and introduced in times comparatively recent. The fables, wherever they are found, are accompanied by savage rites, in which (as in some African tribes when the chief is about to declare war) living animals were torn asunder and eaten raw. These horrors were a kind of representation of the sufferings of the G.o.d. O. Muller may well observe,* "We can scarcely take these rites to be new usages and the offspring of a post-Homeric civilisation". These remarks apply to the custom of _nebrismus_, or tearing fawns to pieces and dancing about draped in the fawn-skins.

Such rites were part of the Bacchic worship, and even broke out during a pagan revival in the time of Valens, when dogs were torn in shreds by the worshippers.**

Whether the antiquity of the Zagrean ritual and legend be admitted or not, the problem as to their original significance remains. Although the majority of heathen rites of this kind were mystery-plays, setting forth in action some story of divine adventure or misadventure,*** yet Lobeck imagines the story of Zagreus and the t.i.tans to have been invented or adapted from the Osiris legend, as an account of the mystic performances themselves. What the myth meant, or what the furious actions of the celebrants intended, it is only possible to conjecture.

* Lycophrony p. 322.

** Theodoretus, ap. Lobeck, p. 653. Observe the number of examples of daubing with clay in the mysteries here adduced by Lobeck, and compare the Mandan tribes described by Catlin in O-Kee-Pa, Londou, 1867, and by Theal in Kaffir Folk-Lore.

*** Lactantius, v. 19,15; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 211.

Commonly it is alleged that the sufferings of Dionysus are the ruin of the summer year at the hands of storm and winter, while the revival of the child typifies the vernal resurrection; or, again, the slain Dionysus is the vintage. The old English song tells how "John Barleycorn must die," and how potently he came back to life and mastered his oppressors. This notion, too, may be at the root of "the pa.s.sion of Dionysus," for the grapes suffer at least as many processes of torture as John Barleycorn before they declare themselves in the shape of strong drink.* While Preller talks about the _tiefste Erd-und Naturschmerz_ typified in the Zagrean ritual, Lobeck remarks that Plato would be surprised if he could hear these "drunken men's freaks" decoratively described as _ein erhabene Nat.u.r.dienst_.

* Decharme, Mythologie de la Grece, p. 437, Compare Preller, i. 572 on tiefste Naturschmerz, and so forth.

Lobeck looks on the wild acts, the tearing of fawns and dogs, the half-naked dances, the gnawing of raw bleeding flesh, as the natural expression of fierce untutored folk, revelling in freedom, leaping and shouting. But the odd thing is that the most civilised of peoples should so long have retained the manners of _ingenia inculta et indomita_.

Whatever the original significance of the Dionysiac revels, that significance was certainly expressed in a ferocious and barbaric fashion, more worthy of Australians than Athenians.

On this view of the case it might perhaps be maintained that the germ of the myth is merely the sacrifice itself, the barbaric and cruel dismembering of an animal victim, which came to be identified with the G.o.d. The sufferings of the victim would thus finally be trans.m.u.ted into a legend about the pa.s.sion of the deity. The old Greek explanation that the ritual was designed "in imitation of what befel the G.o.d" would need to be reversed. The truth would be that the myth of what befel the G.o.d was borrowed from the actual torture of the victim with which the G.o.d was identified Examples of this mystic habit of mind, in which the slain beast, the G.o.d, and even the officiating celebrant were confused in thought with each other, are sufficiently common in ritual.*

* As to the torch-dances of the Maenads, compare Roscher, Lexikon, p. 1041, and Mannhardt Wald und Feki Kult.i.ts, i.

534, for parallels in European folk-lore.

The sacrifices in the ritual of Dionysus have a very marked character and here more, commonly than in other h.e.l.lenic cults, the G.o.d and the victim are recognised as essentially the same. The sacrifice, in fact, is a sacrament, and in partaking of the victim the communicants eat their G.o.d. This detail is so prominent that it has not escaped the notice even of mythologists who prefer to take an ideal view of myths and customs, to regard them as symbols in a nature-worship originally pure. Thus M. Decharme says of the bull-feast in the Dionysiac cult, "Comme le taureau est un des formes de Dionysos, c'etait le corps du dieu dont se repaissaient les inities, c'etait son sang dont ils s'abreuvaient dans ce banquet mystique". Now it was the peculiarity of the Bac-chici who maintained these rites, that, as a rule, they abstained from the flesh of animals altogether, or at least their conduct took this shape when adopted into the Orphic discipline.* This ritual, therefore, has points in common with the usages which appear also to have survived into the cult of the ram-G.o.d in Egypt.** The conclusion suggested is that where Dionysus was adored with this sacrament of bull's flesh, he had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a bull-totem, and had inherited his characteristic ritual. Mr. Frazer, however, proposes quite a different solution.*** Ours is rendered plausible by the famous Elean chant in which the G.o.d was thus addressed: "Come, hero Dionysus, come with the Graces to thy holy house by the sh.o.r.es of the sea; hasten with thy bull-foot". Then the chorus repeated, "Goodly bull, goodly bull".****

M. Decharme publishes a cameo***** in which the G.o.d is represented as a bull, with the three Graces standing on his neck, and seven stars in the field. M. Decharme decides that the stars are the Pleiades, the Graces the rays of the vernal sun, and Dionysus as a bull the symbol of the vernal sun itself. But all such symbolical explanations are apt to be mere private conjectures, and they are of no avail in face of the ritual which, on the other hypothesis, is to be expected, and is actually found, in connection with the bull Dionysus. Where Dionysus is not absolutely called a bull, he is addressed as the "horned deity," the "bull-horned," the "horned child".******

* Lobeck, Aglaoph., i 244; Plato, Laws, vi. 782; Herodot, ii. 81. Porphyry says that this also was the rule of Pythagoras (Vita Pyth., 1630, p. 22).

** Herodot., ii. 42.

*** Golden Bough, vol. ii.

**** Plutarch, Qu. Or., 3d.

***** Op. cit., p. 431.

****** Clemens Alex., Adhort, ii. 15-18; Nonnus, vi. 264; Diodorus, iv. 4. 3. 64.

A still more curious incident of the Dionysiac worship was the sacrifice of a booted calf, a calf with cothurns on its feet.* The people of Tenedos, says aelian, used to tend their goodliest cow with great care, to treat it, when it calved, like a woman in labour, to put the calf in boots and sacrifice it, and then to stone the sacrificer and drive him into the sea to expiate his crime. In this ceremony, as in the Diipolia at Athens, the slain bull is, as it were, a member of the blood-kindred of the man who immolates him, and who has to expiate the deed as if it were a murder.** In this connection it is worth remarking that Dionysus Zagreus, when, according to the myth, he was attacked by the t.i.tans, tried to escape his enemies by a.s.suming various forms. It was in the guise of a bull that he was finally captured and rent asunder. The custom of rending the living victims of his cult was carried so far that, when Pentheus disturbed his mysteries, the king was torn piecemeal by the women of his own family.*** The pious acquiescence of the author of the so-called Theocritean idyll in this butchery is a curious example of the conservatism of religious sentiment. The connection of Dionysus with the bull in particular is attested by various ritual epithets, such as "the bull," "bull-born,"**** "bull-horned," and "bull-browed".*****

He was also worshipped with sacrifice of he-goats; according to the popular explanation, because the goat gnaws the vine, and therefore is odious to the G.o.d.

* aelian., H. A.t xii. 34.

** O. Muller, Proleg., Engl, transl., 322, attributes the Tenedos Dionysus rites to "the Beotic Achsean emigrants".

Gf, Aglaoph., 674-677.

*** Theocritus, Idyll, xxvi.

**** Pollux, iv. 86.

***** Athenaus, xi. 466, a.

The truth is, that animals, as the old commentator on Virgil remarks, were sacrificed to the various G.o.ds, "_aut per similitudinem aut per contrarietatem_" either because there was a community of nature between the deity and the beast, or because the beast had once been sacred in a hostile clan or tribe.* The G.o.d derived some of his ritual names from the goat as well as from the bull According to one myth, Dionysus was changed into a kid by Zeus, to enable him to escape the jealousy of Hera.** "It is a peculiarity," says Voigt, "of the Dionysus ritual that the G.o.d is one of his offering." But though the ident.i.ty of the G.o.d and the victim is manifest, the phenomenon is too common in religion to be called peculiar.*** Plutarch**** especially mentions that "many of the Greeks make statues of Dionysus in the form of a bull".

Dionysus was not only an animal-G.o.d, or a G.o.d who absorbed in his rights and t.i.tles various elder forms of beast-worship. Trees also stood in the same relation to him. As _Dendrites_, he is, like Artemis, a tree-G.o.d, and probably succeeded to the cult of certain sacred trees; just as, for example, St. Bridget, in Ireland, succeeded to the cult of the fire-G.o.ddess and to her ceremonial.*****

* Cf. Roscher, Lexikon, p. 1059; Robertson Smith on "Sacrifice," Encyc. Brit.

** Appolodorus, iii. 4, 9.

*** "Dionysos selber. Stier Zicklein ist, und als Zagreus- kind selber, den Opfertod erleidet." Ap. Roscher, p. 1059.