Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/87

Rh, are obviously ancient, and are constructed with a view to dactylic metre. We know that the early oracles spoke in verse. We know that there were sacred hymns in temples, quite distinct from our secular Homeric preludes. We have evidence that the Mysteries at Eleusis depended in part on the singing of sacred music.

The Mysteries are not mentioned by Homer. That does not mean that they are late: it means that they are either too sacred or else too popular. The discoveries of anthropologists now enable us to see that the Eleusinian Mysteries are a form of that primitive religion, scarcely differentiated from ' sympathetic magic,' which has existed in so many diverse races. The Mysteries were a drama. The myth of the Mother of Corn and the Maid, the young corn who comes up from beneath the earth and is the giver of wealth, was represented in action. At the earliest time we hear of, the drama included a vine-god, or perhaps a tree-god in general, Dionysus. This is corn-worship and vegetation-worship: it is not only early, but primitive.

There were other Mysteries, Orphic or Bacchic. The common opinion of antiquity and the present day is that the Bacchic rites were introduced to Greece from, abroad—the god of the Thracian brought, in spite of opposition, into Greece, If so, he came very early. But it seems more likely that Dionysus is rather a new-comer than a foreigner: he is like the new year, the spring, the harvest, the vintage. He is each year, in every place, a stranger who comes to the land and is welcomed as a stranger; at the end of his time he is expelled, exorcised, cut to pieces or driven away. At any rate he is early, and for the real religion of Greece he is of overwhelming