Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/539

Rh feature in the later developements of the wandering wnne-god. It is unnecessary to trace these journeys in detail, for when the notion was once suggested, every country and even every town would naturally frame its own story of the wonderful things done by Dionysos as he abode in each. Thus he flays Damaskos alive for refusing to allow the introduction of the vine which Dionysos had discovered, and a false etymology suggested the myth that a tiger bore him across the river Tigris. But wherever he goes there is the same monotonous exhibition of fury and frenzy by which mothers become strange unto their own flesh and maidens abandon themselves to frantic excite- ment.^ All this is merely translating into action phrases which might tell of the manifest powers of the wine-god ; and the epithets applied to him show that these phrases were not limited merely to his exciting or maddening influences. In his gentler aspects he is the giver of joy, the healer of sicknesses, the guardian against plagues. As such he is even a lawgiver, and a promoter of peace and concord. As kindling new or strange thoughts in the mind, he is a giver of wisdom and the revealer of hidden secrets of the future. In this, as his more genuine and earlier character, he is attended by the beautiful Charites, the maidens and ministers of the dawn-goddess Aphrodite, who give place in the later mythology to fearful troops of raging Mainades or Bassarides, bearing in their hands the budding thyrsus, which marks the connexion of this cultus with that of the great restoring or revivifying forces of the world.^

The changes which come over the person of Dionysos are in The accordance with the natural facts indicated by his attributes. Weak D?^ysos. and seemingly helpless in his infancy, like Hermes or Phoibos himself, he is to attain in the end to boundless power ; ^ but the intervening ' In this aspect of his cosmical func- ter, and that this word was suggested tions he is Dionysos Kechenos, the by Kampe, which according to Diodoros gaping, open-mouthed lion, the tj-pe of was the name of a monster slain by the raging, devouring sun, Athamas Dionysos, this monster being the vast (Tammuz). — Brown, T/ie Unicorn, 28. serpent belted round the world. He worn by Dionysos and his followers false, the name Dionysos being really cannot be explained by any reference to the Semitic Dian-nisi, the equivalent his characteristics as the lord of the of the Egyptian Rhotamenti. Seep. 301. vintage and the vintage revels. The If, like Athamas, Palaimon, and many interpretation is found in the statement more, the name Dionysos is thus to be of Diodoros (i. 11), that it is simply the givenupasnon-Ar}-an, a strange Nemesis star-spangled robe of the night. — Brown, attends those who may think that the The Unicorn, 78. rending away of names supposed to be involved in the name, if Mr. Bro%vn be theory which sees in the great mass of right in saying that the Greek Nyssa, as mythology the thoughts of men on the meaning the post or turning-point on a jihenomena of the outward world and racecourse, becomes equivalent to Kamp- the course of the seasons and the year. If
 * The robe of fawn or leopard skin holds, however, that the inference was
 * This idea of power seems to be Greek weakens the groundwork of the