Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/310

288 288 HISTORY OF THE tory of Demeter and Cora was anted, like a play, by priests ami priestesses; though, probably, only with mimic action, illustrated by a tew significant sentences of a symbolic nature, and by the singing of hymns. There were also similar mimic representations in the worship of Bacchus ; thus, at the Anthesteria at Athens, the wife of the second Archon, who bore the title of Queen, was betrothed to Dionysus in a secret solemnity, and in public processions even the god himself wa3 represented by a man*. At the Boeotian festival of the Agrionia, Dionysus was supposed to have disappeared, and to be sought for among the mountains; there was also a maiden (representing one of the nymphs in the train of Dionysus), who was pursued by a priest, carrying a hatchet, and personating a being hostile to the God. This festival rite, which is frequently mentioned by Plutarch, is the origin of the fable, which occurs in Homer, of the pursuit of Dionysus and his nurses by the furious Lycurgns. But the worship of Bacchus had one quality which was, more than any other, calculated to give birth to the drama, and particularly to tragedy ; namely, the enthusiasm which formed an essential part of it. This enthusiasm (as we have already remarked!) proceeded from an impassioned sympathy with the events of nature, in connexion with the course of the seasons; especially with the struggle which Nature seemed to make in winter, in order that she might break forth in spring with renovated beauty : hence the festivals of Dionysus at Athens and elsewhere were all solemnised in the months which were nearest to the shortest dayj. The feeling which originally prevailed at these festivals was, that the enthusiastic participators in them be- lieved that they perceived the god to be really affected by the changes of nature; killed or dying, flying and rescued, reanimated or returning, victorious and dominant ; and all who shared in the festival felt these joyful or mournful events, as if they were under the immediate influence of them. Now the great changes which took place in the religion, as well as in the general cultivation of the Greeks, banished from men's minds the conviction that the happy or unhappy events, which they be- wailed or rejoiced in, really occurred in nature before their eyes. Bac- chus, accordingly, was conceived as an individual, anthropomorphic, self-existing being ; but the enthusiastic sympathy with Dionysus and his Plutarch, Nic. 3. Compare the description of the great Bacchic procession under Ptolemy Philadelphus in Athen. v. p. 196, sq. + Ch. 2. § 4. % In Athens the months succeeded one another in the following order : — Posel- deon, Gamelion (formerly Lenteon), Anthesterion, Elaphebolion ; these, according to Boeckh's convincing demonstration, contained the Bacchic festivals of the lesse°r or country Dionysia, Lenaea, Anthesteria, the greater or city Dionysia. In Delphi, the three winter months were sacred to Dionysus (Plutarch de Ei ap. Delphos, c. 9.), and the great festival of Trieteiica was celebrated on Parnassus at the time of the shortest day.
 * A beautiful slave of Nicias represented Dionysus on an occasion of this kind :