Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/65

Rh has never been shown, and is to the last degree improbaole though the affirmative has been asserted by many learned men.

Herodotus seems to have believed that the worship and ceremonies of Dionysos generally were derived by the Greeks from Egypt, brought over by Kadmus and taught by him to Melampus: and the latter appears in the Hesiodic Catalogue as having cured the daughters of Proetus of the mental distemper with which they had been smitten by Dionysos for rejecting his ritual. He cured them by introducing the Bacchic dance and fanatical excitement: this mythical incident is the most ancient mention of the Dionysiac solemnities presented in the same character as they bear in Euripides. It is the general tendency of Herodotus to apply the theory of derivation from Egypt far too extensively to Grecian institutions: the orgies of Dionysos were not originally borrowed from thence, though they may have been much modified by connection with Egypt as well as with Asia. The remarkable mythe composed by Onomakritus respecting the dismemberment of Zagreus was founded upon an Egyptian tale very similar respecting the body of Osiris, who was supposed to be identical with Dionysos: nor was it unsuitable to the reckless fury of the Bacchanals during their state of temporary excitement, which found a still more awful expression in the mythe of Pentheus, torn in pieces by his own mother Agave at the head of her companions in the ceremony, as an intruder upon the feminine rites as well as a scoffer at the god. A passage in the Iliad (the authenticity of which has been contested, but even as an interpolation it must be old) also recounts how Lykurgus was struck blind by Zeus for having chased away with a whip "the nurses of the mad Dionysos," and frightened the god himself into the sea to take