Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/293

 DIONYS1US AT THEBES 261 Aga<re, the remaining daughter of Kadmus, married Echion, one of the Sparti. The issue of these nuptials was Pentheus, who, when Kadmus became old succeeded him as king of Thebes. In his reign Dionysus appeared as a god, the author or discoverer of the vine with all its blessings. He had wandered over Asia, India and Thrace, at the head of an excited troop of female en- thusiasts communicating and inculcating everywhere the Bac- chic ceremonies, and rousing in the minds of women that impassioned religious emotion which led them to ramble in solitary mountains at particular seasons, there to give vent to violent fanatical excitement, apart from the men, clothed in fawn- skins and armed with the thyrsus. The obtrusion of a male spec- tator upon these solemnities was esteemed sacrilegious. Though the rites had been rapidly disseminated and fervently welcomed in many parts of Thrace, yet there were some places in which they had been obstinately resisted and their votaries treated with rudeness ; especially by Lykurgus, king of the Edonian Thra- cians, upon whom a sharp and exemplary punishment was inflicted by Dionysus. Thebes was the first city of Greece to which Dionysus came, ings in her temple. "It is not improbable (observes Diodorus) that the god dess was angry on both these accounts. For whether Aktaeon abused these hunting presents so far as to make them the means of gratifying his own desires towards one unapproachable in wedlock, or whether he presumed to call himself an abler hunter than her with whom the gods themselves will not compete in this department, in either case the wrath of the goddess against him was just and legitimate (6fj.oho-yov/iV7jv Kat diKaiav bpyjjv la^e Trpoc avrbv f] i?e6f). With perfect propriety therefore (Ka$6/lcw 6e irt&avuf) was he transformed into an animal such as those he had hunted, and torn to pieces by the very dogs who had killed them." (Didot. iv. 80.) Pausanias, a man of exemplary piety, and generally less inclined to scepticism than Diodorus, thinks the occasion unsuitable for a miracle or special interference. Having alluded to the two causes assigned for the dis- pleasure of Artemis (they are the two first-mentioned in my text, and dis- tinct from the two noticed by Diodorus), he proceeds to say, "But I believe that the dogs of Aktaeon went mad, without the interference of the goddess : in this state of madness they would have torn in pieces without distinction any one whom they met (Pans, ix. 2, 3. yc> 6s KOI uvev deov irei^opai. voaov Tiiiaaav kiripafalv TOV 'AnTaiuvof roijf Kvvaf)." He retains the truth of the final catastrophe, but rationalizes it, excluding the special intervention of Artemis.