Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/267

Rh into a vine, clung so closely round him that, failing to escape, he died. A similar incident is that of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who opposed the orgiastic ceremonies introduced by Dionysus among the women of Thebes, and, having been present watching one of these ceremonies, was mistaken for some animal of the chase, pursued, and slain by his own mother. At Orchomenus, the three daughters of Minyas refused to join the other women in their nocturnal orgies, and for this were transformed into birds. It was in accordance with this tradition that in after times, at the festival of the Agrionia, the priests of Dionysus pursued the women of the race of Minyas with drawn swords, and if they captured them, killed them, which incident, it will be seen, also justifies the title of wfirja-T^ applied to Dionysus. On the other hand, when the god was received hospitably he repaid the kindness by the gift of the vine, and of this the chief instance is that of Icarius of Attica, who lived in the time of King Pandion. But Icarius, instead of keeping secret the use of the vine, spread it among the herdsman and labourers, who, becoming intoxicated with the wine, slew him and threw him into a well or buried him under a tree, where his daughter Erigone found his grave, and in her despair hanged herself on the tree. In recollection of this it was the custom to hang small figures and masks on trees at the ceremony in her honour. The district of Icaria, though in Attica, was on the borders of Bœotia, which latter was the earliest and chief seat of the worship of Dionysus in Greece, with its famous festival on Mount Cithaerou. Festivals of the same ecstatic kind spread to Attica, to Mount Parnassus, and north to Thrace. But in Bœotia Dionysus was personally associated with so many festivals and incidents that he has more the appearance of a hero or deinigod than of a god, and it may have been from a sense of this that Herodotus (ii. 52) calls him the most recent of the gods. In Homer also he has a secondary character. To what extent the idea of his functions may have been derived from the Vedic god Soma cannot be determined, but the similarity between the two deities becomes the more striking when we remember how actively the worship of Dionysus was con ducted in Asia Minor, particularly in Phrygia and Lydia, where he was styled Sabazius, with the epithet also of /3ayatos, from which it is supposed his Greek name of Bacchos was derived. As Sabazius he was associated with the Phrygian goddess Cybele, and was followed in his expeditions by a thiasos of Centaurs, Pan, Satyrs, and Silenus. In Lydia his triumphant return from India was celebrated by an annual festival on Mount Tmolus, and it was in Lydia that he assumed the long beard and long robe which were afterwards given him in his character as the " Indian Bacchus." The other incidents in which he appears in a purely triumphal character are his transforming the Tyrrhene pirates who attacked him into dolphins, as told in the Homeric hymn to Dionysus, and as represented on the monument of Lysicrates at Athens, and his part in the war of the gods against the giants. The adventure with the pirates occurred on his voyage to Naxos, where he found Ariadne when she had been abandoned by Theseus. At Naxos Ariadne was associated with Dionysus as his wife, and their marriage was annually celebrated by a festival. (See .) Another phase in the myth of Dionysus originated in observing the decay of vegetation in winter, to suit which he was supposed to be slain and to join the deities of the lower world, in which connection e figured in the mysteries of Eleusis. This phase of his character was developed by the Orphic poets, he having here the name of Zagreus, and being no longer the Thebau god, but a son of Zeus and Persephone. The child was brought up secretly, watched over by Kuretes ; but the jealous Hera discovered where he was, and sent Titans to the spot, who, finding him at play, tore him to pieces, and cooked and ate his limbs, while Hera gave his heart to Zeus. To connect this with the myth of the Theban birth of Dionysus, it is said that Zeus gave the child s heart to Semele, or himself swallowed it and gave birth to the Theban god. Altogether there were, it was said, five different gods "Dionysus," each having different parentage. The conception of Zagreus, or the winter Dionysus, appears to have originated in Crete, but it was accepted also in Delphi, where his grave was shown, at which sacrifice was secretly offered annually on the shortest day. This feature of going away in the winter and returning at spring, which was common to Dionysus and Apollo, would commend the former god to the priests of Apollo at Delphi. Dionysus had further, in common with Apollo, the prophetic gift. Like Hermes, he was a god of the productiveness of nature, and hence Priapus was one of his regular com panions, while not only in the mysteries but in the rural festivals his symbol, the phallus, was carried about ostentatiously. His symbols from the animal kingdom were the bull, panther, ass, and goat. His personal attributes are an ivy wreath, the thyrsus (a staff with pine cone at the end), a drinking cup (canthams), and sometimes the horn of a bull on his forehead. Artistically he was repre sented mostly either as a youth of soft nearly feminine form, or as a bearded and draped man, but frequently also as an infant, with reference to his birth or to his bringing up in Nysa. The earliest images were of wood with the branches still attached in parts, whence he was called Dionysus Dendrites. He was figured also, like Hermes, in the form of a pillar or term surmounted by his head. The Greek colonists of Southern Italy (Magna Græcia) had taken with them the worship of Dionysus, and so successfully had it spread there that Sophocles (Antig. 1106) speaks of him as the god who rules in Italy. From Campania the joint worship of Dionysus (Liber), Demeter (Ceres), and Kore (Libera) was introduced into Kome, and a temple was erected to them, in obedience to the Sibylline books. But the mysteries which were held in connection with this worship were suppressed by the senate, In Campania Dionysus was styled Hebon, and conceived in the form of a bull with a human head. Libera, usually identified with Kore, corresponds rather to the goddess Hebe as worshipped at Phlius.  DIOPHANTUS. See, ..  DIPHTHERIA, (from St^^epa, a skin or membrane), the term applied to an acute infectious disease, which is accompanied by a membranous exudation on a mucous surface, generally on the tonsils and back of the throat or pharynx. Although popularly believed to be a newly dis covered disease, there is distinct evidence that diphtheria was known to the ancient physicians as a malady of great virulence. Under the name of the Malum Eynptiacum, Aretseus in the gives a minute description of a disease which in all its essential characteristics corresponds to diphtheria. In the, , and epidemics of diphtheria appear to have frequently prevailed in many parts of Europe, particularly in Holland, Spain, Italy, France, as well as in England, and were described by physicians belonging to those countries under various titles ; but it is probable that other diseases of a similar nature were included in their descriptions, and no accurate account of this affection had been published till M. Breton- neau of Tours in laid his celebrated treatise on the subject before the French Academy of Medicine. By him the term Le Diphtherite was first given to the disease. The subject has since been largely investigated both in Britain and on the Continent, where epidemics more or less extensive have been of common occurrence in recent times ; but while many important facts have been made out 