Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/248

234 far that, when PentHeus disturbed His mysteries, the king was torn piecemeal by the women of his own family. The pious acquiescence of the author of the so-called Theocritean idyll in this butchery is a curious example of the conservatism of religious sentiment. The connection of Dionysus with the bull in particular is attested by various ritual epithets, such as "the bull," "bull-born," "bull-horned," and "bull-browed." He was also worshipped with sacrifice of he-goats; according to the popular explanation, because the goat gnaws the vine, and therefore is odious to the god. The truth is, that animals, as the old commentator on Virgil remarks, were sacrificed to the various gods, "aut per similitudinem, aut per contrarietatem," either because there was a community of nature between the deity and the beast, or because the beast had once been sacred in a hostile clan or tribe. The god derived some of his ritual names from the goat as well as from the bull. According to one myth, Dionysus was changed into a kid by Zeus, to enable him to escape the jealousy of Hera. "It is a peculiarity," says Voigt, "of the Dionysus ritual that the god is one with his offering." But though the identity of the god and the victim is manifest, the phenomenon is too common in religion to be called peculiar. Plutarch especially mentions that "many