Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/249

Rh of the Greeks make statues of Dionysus in the form of a bull."

Dionysus was not only an animal-god, or a god who absorbed in his rites and titles various elder forms of beast-worship. Trees also stood in the same relation to him. As Dendrites, he is, like Artemis, a tree-god, and probably succeeded to the cult of certain sacred trees; just as, for example, St. Bridget, in Ireland, succeeded to the cult of the fire-goddess and to her ceremonial. Dionysus was even called, "the god in the tree," reminding us of Artemis Dendritis, and of the village gods which in India dwell in the peepul or the bo tree. Thus Pausanias tells us that, when Pentheus went to spy on the Dionysiac mysteries, the women found him hidden in a tree, and there and then tore him piecemeal. According to a Corinthian legend, the Delphic oracle bade them seek this tree and worship it with no less honour than the god (Dionysus) himself. Hence the wooden images of Dionysus were made of that tree, the fig tree, non ex qnovis ligno, and the god had a ritual name, "The fig-tree Dionysus." In the idols the community of nature between the god and the fig tree was expressed and commemorated. An unhewn stump of wood was the Dionysus idol of the rustic people.

Certain antique elements in the Dionysus cult have now been sketched; we have seen the god in singularly close relations with animal and plant worship, and have