Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/35

 DEMETER AND APOLLO. 17 Now it appears that Dionysus or Bacchus, the latter name and its synonym lacchus refen-ing to the outcries attending his worship, first appeared to the Greeks as a tauriform sun-god appeased by human victims As late as the classical days of the Greek drama it was customary to address him as appearing in the shape of a bull, or at least with the horns of that animaP. And many of his epithets pointed to the human blood which was shed at his altars. He was called 'H/^aSto? or 'D,fjLo<f)ar/o(, because he had human sacri- fices at Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos^, and his name Zaypev'^ is best explained by a similar reference*. Persian prisoners were solemnly offered up to him on the day before the battle of Salamis^ The Delphic oracle sanctioned the yearly sacrifice at Potniae in Boeotia of a beautiful boy to Dionysus, until, as in the story of Iphigenia, a kid was substituted for the victim ^ At the feast called '^Kcepeia, a scourging of women took the place of the human sacrifice to Dionysus at Alea in Arcadia, in the same way as the boys were whipped rather than slain in honour of Artemis Orthosia'. The Semitic sun-god and his Greek representative Dionysus were not only worshipped under the form of a wrathful and cruel Moloch, to whom the blood of human victims was an acceptable and even necessary offering. He appeared also as the god of gene- ration and reproduction, as the cause both of human life, and of that annual growth of the fruits of the earth ^, by which human life 1 See the passages quoted by Ghillany, Menschenopf. p. '225. ^ In the BacchcB of Euripides (1008) the chorus says to the god: (pdvridL ravpos, and we have in 1149: ravpov Trporjyqrripa avpLcpopds ^xw^. In the festival of Dionysus of Elis, he was greeted as d^ie ravpe, and invited to come /So^y ttoSl, i.e. with a blessing (Creuzer, Symholik, li. p. 204, IV. p. 56); and similarly he is bidden to approach Kadapaiu) TTodi in Sophocles, Antig. 1143. The authority for the Elean usage is Plutarch, Qu. Gr. xxxvi., who gives the hymn addressed to Bacchus by the Elean women as follows : iXBeiv -qpo) Atiwcre oKiov is vabu ayvbv <jvv Xapirecraiv es pabv ry ^oicp TTodl 6600V dra bis iwadovaLV d^ie ravpe. He adds the question, trbrepov 8ti Kai ^ouyevTj TTpocrayopedovaiv Kai ravpov rbv debv. Euripides defines Bacchus as ravpbKepws debs {Bacch. 100): and he was also called Tavpb/xopcpos, ^ovKepus, Kepaacpbpos, Kepa- To<pvris, XP^^^X^P^^J ^^^ ^^6 Vike. See on this subject F. Streber's elaborate paper, Ueber den Stier mit dem Menschengeskhte auf deni Munzen von Unteritalien und Sicilien, Munich Transactions for 1837, ii. pp. 453 sqq. 3 Porphyr. de Alst. ii. 55. 5 Plutarch, TTieniist c. 13. 6 Pausan. ix, 8. ^ Id. viii. 23. s With reference to the functions of Dionysus as the god of all ripe fruits, Plato calls the yevvaia bwupa, or fruits which may be eaten from the trees, as distinguished from the dypoiKos oirwpa, or fruits intended for ulterior applications, by the somewhat strange designation of iraidLd (not Taideia) Atovvaids ddrjaavpiaTos {Legg. 844 d). Hence Bacchus is called devdpirrjs ; Plut. Qu. Sympos. p. 675 F; Athen. ill. 78 B. D. T. G. 2
 * Creuzer, Symbol, iv. pp. 96 sqq.