Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/538

506 played by the god is the influence which the grape exercises on man. Its juice may flow as a quiet stream, filHng the air with sweet odours ; but as men drink of it its aspect is changed, and it becomes Uke a wild beast urging them to their destruction. But the penalty thus inflicted upon the Tyrrhenian mariners is strictly for their evil treat- ment of the god, whose character is merely jovial, and by no means designedly malignant. Nor is the god himself invested with the majesty of the supreme Zeus, or of Phoibos or Poseidon, although the helmsman says that either of these gods may possibly have taken the form of the youthful Dionysos. But before we find ourselves in historical Hellas a complete change has taken place. Dionysos is now the horned Zagreos after his death and resurrection, and the myth of the son of Semele is anticipated or repeated by the legend of this child of Persephone, whom his father Zeus places beside him on his throne. In this, as in other cases, the jealousy of Here is roused, and at her instigation the Titans slay Zagreos, and cutting up his limbs,^ leave only his heart, which Athene carries to Zeus. This heart is given to Semele, who thus becomes the mother of Dionysos. This slaughter and cutting up of Zagreos is only another form of the rape of Perse- phone herself It is the stripping off of leaves and fruits in the gloomy autumn which leaves only the heart or trunk of the tree to give birth to the foliage of the coming year, and the resurrection of Zagreos is the return of Persephone to her mother Demeter. Hence- forth with Demeter, who really is his mother also, Dionysos becomes a deity of the first rank ; ^ and into his mythologj' are introduced a number of foreign elements, pointing to the comparatively recent influence exercised by Egypt and S}Tia on the popular Hellenic religion. The opposition of the Thrakian Lykourgos and the Theban Pentheus to the frenzied rites thus foisted on the cultus of Dionysos is among the few indications of historical facts exhibited in Hellenic mythology.

Dionysos In the Homeric hymn the Tyrrhenian mariners avow their in- de^er. ^° tention of taking Dionysos to Eg}-pt, or Ethiopia, or the Hyperbo- rean land ; and this idea of change of abode becomes the prominent

' The author of A/ani-inJ, t/u'/r Origin females, who weeping convey them to a and Destitty, notices the reproduction of tomb over which is built the abbey thcDionysosmythinChristianhagiology. church which bears his name. Dionysos

" Dionysos is cut to pieces by the experiences a wonderful restoration to Maenades on the top of mount Parnassus: life, and quits the coffin within which he Denis is put to death in the same had been confined : Denis rises again manner on the summit of Montmartre. from the dead, replaces his severed head, Dionysos is placed in a tomb, and his to the amazement of the spectators, and death is bewailed by women : the man- then deliberately walks away."

gled limbs of Denis are collected by holy * Grote, Hist. Greece, i. j j.