Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/31

 CONNECTED WORSHIP OF DIONYSUS, DEMETER AND APOLLO. 13 this, that the Phoenician navigators, who visited every part of the Mediterranean, carrying their commerce and their language to the distant regions of Spain and Britain, succeeded, after some opposition, in establishing their own worship on the main land of northern Greece about the middle of the sixteenth century before our agra. In order that we may understand the true and original cha- racter of a religion, which the plastic fancy and eclectic liberalism of the Greeks modified by an intermixture of heterogeneous ele- ments, it will be necessary to consider the forms of faith and worship, which were cultivated by the Phoenicians and other Semitic tribes in the country from which they set forth on their voyages for the purposes of commerce or colonisation. Among the Semitic nations, as in all the most ancient com- munities of men, the Sun and Moon were the primary objects of adoration ^ The Sun, on account of his greater power and brightness 2, was worshipped as a male divinity under some one of the names Bel or Baal^ and Meleh, Molech^ Moloch^ Milkom, or Malchan, signifying " Lord" or "King" respectively^. The Moon, with her weaker light and the humidity which accompanied the period of her reign, was regarded as a female deity*, and wor- shipped as Asherah, the goddess of prosperity^, or Astarte, the bright star of heaven^. Each of these deities had its cheerful, as well as its gloomy aspect. The Sun, which ripens the fruit, also burns up vegetation. He is the god not only of generation but also of destruction. The Moon, which gives the fertilizing ^ The attributes and worship of these Semitic deities have been well discussed by F. W. Ghillany, die Menschenopfer der alien Hebrder, Niimberg, 1842, pp. 118 sqq. See also F. Nork, Bihlische Mythologie, Stuttgardt, 1842, Vol. i. pp. 12 — 137. 2 Macrob. Saturn, i. 21, 12 : significantes hunc deura solem esse, regalique potestate sublimera cuncta despicere, quia solem Jovis oculum appellat antiquitas. 3 See New Cratylus, § 479. That the sun-god was a king was an idea familiar to the Greeks also. Thus ^schylus, Persce, 228: rijXe jrpbs Svcrfiais dvaKTo% 'HXi'ou <pdt.va<xiJ.dTO}u. 5 n^LJ^X from "IK^N "to be happy," = 17 fiaKapia. Fuerst, however {Handworterh. I- P- 155)* renders it socia, conjux, i.e. of Baal, as the Phoenician "IDX (Osir) "the husband," is an epithet of the male god. ^ Gesenius, Thesaur. p. 1083: "nil fere dubito quin n^iriK^y idem sit quod iriDX Stella, /car' i^oxw stella Veneris, ita ut 'AcrTpodpxv, quomodo Astarte appellatur (Hero- dian. 5, 6, § 10), etymon bene referat." That Astarte was the Moon is distinctly stated by Lucian, de dea Syria, 4 : 'AcxTdpTrjv 5^ iyib doK^oj ^eXTjvairjv ip-fievai. And this is shown by her representation as a homed goddess : see the passages quoted by Gesenius, I. c.
 * Plutarch, Is. et Os. c 53; Macrob. Sat. I. [7, 53.