Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/310

300 300 On the Attic Dionysia, further informed by Philochorus (Athenaeus ii. p. 38.), that Amphictyon was the first who learnt from Bacchus the art of mixing wine with water in due proportions, so that men, who were before overpowered by the strength of the liquor, could hold their heads upright, and hence the king erected an altar to the upright Bacchus {opQo^ Atoi/f<jos) in the temple of the Seasons, as the nurses of the fruit of the vine : and hard by he raised an altar to the Nymphs, in commemoration of the mixture : for the Nymphs are said to be the nurses of Bacchus: and he ordained that after meals men should drink of the un- mixt wine, but only to taste it, for a sample of the power of he good god; and afterwards diluted as much as they would. Here it is evident (whatever may be thought of the interpreta- tion given to the epithet opOo^) that the worship referred to Amphictyon is that of the Limnaean god, which Thucydides also asserts to have been the most ancient. The institution of the Choes took place later, on the occasion of the arrival of Orestes, according to Apollodorus under Pandion, or, as Pha- nodemus determined it with greater attention to chronological accuracy, under Demophoon. But in the reign of Pandion the first, the same in which Ceres came to Eleusis, Bacchus again visited Attica. On this occasion he was received by Icarius, and bestowed on him the gifts which proved so fatal to him and to his daughter Erigone. The anger of the gods, which was provoked by her death, was appeased by rites which ever after distinguished the festival of the vintage (Apollo- dorus III. 14. 7. Hyginus Fab. 130 festum oscillatioms — , per vindemiarn. Astronom. ii. Arctophylax). This legend clearly relates to the rural Dionysia : in it the scene is laid in the country, in Icaria, and all turns upon the cultivation of the vine and the process of winemaking, while in that of Amphictyon it is the mixture and use of the liquor that con- stitute the motive of the tradition. It does not however follow that the rural tradition was of later origin than the worship of the Lenaean god, which could not be the fact ; but only that a distinguishing feature of the former was introduced at a com- paratively late period. Those rural rites are manifestly of the same kind with those which Pegasus introduced from Eleu- therae, as appears both from the similarity of the two legends (Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. ii. 242), and from the oracle men-