Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/52

 36 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. sacred carnival ; deep gorges and forest gloom being the stage on which it was enacted. We have taken advantage of the opportunity which offered itself here for giving some idea of these strange scenes, so as not to be obliged to refer to them again later on, when we meet on our path a whole series of works inspired by the Bacchanalia. The Greeks, it should be rernembered, in the palmiest days of their political and artistic existence, never lost their taste for the gross pleasures afforded by the orgies, nor the tradition of their origin ; for in their wildest transports they invoked, as occasion served, the Phrygian Cybele or the Thracian Dionysius. That which strictly belongs to Greek genius is to have been the first to feel, or at least to render, the beauty of the human form, as it revealed itself in the agitation and abandonment of the dance ; its lines, as those of the drapery, changing with each step ; the latter now clinging to the body, now filled with the breeze and carried over the shoulders of the dancers.