Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/44

xxxiv known, was an expansion of the choruses chanted at the Dionysic festivals, which rehearsed the vicissitudes of the solar god, in his progress through the heavenly signs. This circumstance exerted "an overruling effect upon the quality of the Athenian drama;""from this early cradle of tragedy arose a sanctity which compelled all things to modulate into the same religious key."

Peculiar interest moreover attaches to Dionysos, from his association with the mysteries which exerted so powerful an influence over the Grecian mind.

The story of Dionysos, embodying some of the main features of his worship, appears in the Iliad (vi. 132), invested, however, with ethical, not religious significance. "It is a remarkable circumstance that precisely those divinities, Demeter and Dionysos, whose truly religious influence was most profound and pervading in Greece, are all but unmentioned in Homer, and may be said, in fact, to be excluded from his scheme of the divine community." An interesting question arises as to the cause of this omission on the part of the great epic bard. Are we to imagine that the peculiar sanctity which attached to these divinities induced him deliberately to avoid the subject; or must we conclude that in the Homeric age their worship had not yet assumed that mysterious and impressive character which subsequently distinguished it? I confess I am unable to decide the question, but incline to the latter hypothesis.