Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/36

 18 THE CONNECTED WORSHIP OF DIONYSUS, was sustained, above all, as the giver of the grape, which made glad the heart of man, and stimulated him to all that was pleasant and joyous. In this capacity, he was worshipped in his Semitic home as Baal-Peor^ ; in Byblus, and other Semitic cities, he bore the name of Adonis^; and the Jews called him also Thammuz, from the name of the month July, in which his worship, as that of the glowing and triumphant Sun, was more especially celebrated^. In some parts of Asia Minor the Sun, as the fructifying principle, was worshipped as Priapus*, and though this deity was really another form of Dionysus, one of the mythological legends made him the son of Venus, and a doubtful father, either Dionysus or Adonis^. In Palestine, and wherever it appeared, the worship of Baal-Peor was accompanied by frightful immoralities®, and there is every reason to believe that the pure and divine religion of the Jews, which denounced the inhuman rites of Moloch, was based on a still more formal repudiation of the worship of a deity, for whose name the Israelites indignantly substituted the word Boslieth, signifying " shame ^." The sun-god, as the giver of life, was repre- sented under the more decent type of a serpent^ ; but the revolting emblem of the Phallus was openly displayed in every country to which this form of religion had penetrated^; it was a necessary accompaniment of the rural feast of Bacchus in Attica^"; till the last century it existed in all its most repulsive features in the heart of ^ yV^ ?y5 or 'liVS only (Numbers xxv. r sqq., xxxl. i6; Josh. xxii. 17). The name is represented by the Fathers as BeeXtpaycbp or Beljphegor {Etym. M. adv.; Hieron. in Os. c. 9). ^ Creuzer, Symb. II. pp. 472 sqq. The name is the common Semitic expression for ^ Ezeh. viii. 14. ■* Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 499. 5 Sckol. Apoll. M. I. 932. ^ Creuzer, Symbol, ii. 411. "^ e.g. Hosea ix. 10, "They went to Baal-Peor and separated themselves unto that shame, and their abominations were according as they loved." 8 For the serpent as the Orphic first principle, see Creuzer, Symbol. ll. 224; iv. 83, 85 ; for its use as a symbol of Saturn or Moloch, see Creuzer, ibid. III. 69; for its use in the worship of Bacchus and along with the Phallus, see Creuzer, ibid. iv. 137 ; Gerhard, Anthestenen, pp. 158, 160. It was, in fact, a type of the Agathodsemon (Creuzer, iv. p. 55), an Egyptian symbol (Lampridius, Heliogabal. 28), as such adopted by the Israelites {Numb. xxi. 8). Justin MartjT says rather too generally {Apol. i. 27, p. 71 a) : irapa Travri rCJv voixi^oiihwv Trap' vixlv deCov 6<pis aifi^oKov ixiya koI fivaTTj- piop dpaypd^erai, but from the context he seems to have understood its meaning. ^ See e.g. Herod, ii. 48. That these figures existed in Palestine may be inferred from I Kings xiv. 23; 2 Kings xvii. 10, xxiii. 14; Hos. x. i. For this worship in Italy, see Plin. ff. N. xxviii. 4, 7; August. Civ. Dei, vil. 21, 24, 2; Arnob. IV. 7.
 * my Lord," and is therefore nearly synonymous with Baal.
 * ? See e.g. Aristoph. Acharn. 243.