Chapter I: Legends Respecting the Gods (2)

Festivals at seed-time and harvest—at the vintage and at the opening of the new wine—were doubtless coeval with the earliest habits of the Greeks; the latter being a period of unusual joviality. Yet in the Homeric poems, Dionysos and Dêmêtêr, the patrons of the vineyard and the cornfield, are seldom mentioned, and decidedly occupy little place in the imagination of the poet as compared with the other gods: nor are they of any conspicuous importance even in the Hesiodic Theogony. But during the interval between Hesiod and Onomakritus, the revolution in the religious mind of Greece was such as to place both these deities in the front rank. According to the Orphic doctrine, Zagreus, son of Persephonê, is destined to be the successor of Zeus, and although the violence of the Titans intercepts this lot, yet even when he rises again from his discerption under the name of Dionysos, he is the colleague and coëqual of his divine father.

This remarkable change, occurring as it did during the sixth and a part of the seventh century before the Christian æra, may be traced to the influence of communication with Egypt (which only became fully open to the Greeks about B. C. 660), as well as with Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia. From hence new religious ideas and feelings were introduced, which chiefly attached themselves to the characters of Dionysos and Dêmêtêr. The Greeks identified these two deities with the great Egyptian Osiris and Isis, so that what was borrowed from the Egyptian worship of the two latter naturally fell to their equivalents in the Grecian system.[49] Moreover the worship of Dionysos (under what name cannot be certainly made out) was indigenous in Thrace,[50] as that of the Great Mother was in Phyrgia, and in Lydia—together with those violent ecstasies and manifestations of temporary frenzy, and that clashing of noisy instruments, which we find afterwards characterizing it in Greece. The great masters of the pipe—as well as the dythyramb,[51] and indeed the whole musical system appropriated to the worship of Dionysos, which contrasted so pointedly with the quiet solemnity of the Pæan addressed to Apollo—were all originally Phrygian.

[49] Herodot. ii. 42, 59, 144.

[50] Herodot. v. 7, vii. 111; Euripid. Hecub. 1249, and Rhêsus,
969, and the Prologue to the Bacchæ; Strabo, x. p. 470; Schol.
ad Aristophan. Aves, 874; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1069;
Harpocrat. v. Σάβοι; Photius, Εὐοῖ Σαβοῖ. The “Lydiaca” of Th.
Menke (Berlin, 1843) traces the early connection between the
religion of Dionysos and that of Cybelê, c. 6, 7. Hoeckh’s Krêta
(vol. i. p. 128-134) is instructive respecting the Phrygian
religion.

[51] Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, 9. Πᾶσα γὰρ Βάκχεια καὶ πᾶσα ἡ
τοιαύτη κίνησις μάλιστα τῶν ὀργάνων ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς αὐλοῖς· τῶν δ᾽
ἁρμονίων ἐν τοῖς Φρυγιστὶ μέλεσι λαμβάνει ταῦτα τὸ πρέπον, οἷον ὁ
διθύραμβος δοκεῖ ὁμολογουμένως εἶναι Φρύγιον. Eurip. Bacch. 58.—

Αἴρεσθε τἀπιχώρι᾽ ἐν πόλει Φρυγῶν
Τύμπανα, Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμὰ θ᾽ εὑρήματα, etc.

Plutarch, Εἰ. in Delph. c. 9; Philochor. Fr. 21, ed. Didot,
p. 389. The complete and intimate manner in which Euripidês
identifies the Bacchic rites of Dionysos with the Phrygian
ceremonies in honor of the Great Mother, is very remarkable. The
fine description given by Lucretius (ii. 600-640) of the Phrygian
worship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing.

From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the Homeric men, found their way into the Grecian worship: and there is one amongst them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions many persons guilty of private or involuntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile or to make pecuniary satisfaction; but he never once describes any of them to have either received or required purification for the crime.[52] Now in the time subsequent to Homer, purification for homicide comes to be considered as indispensable: the guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society of man or the worship of the gods until he has received it, and special ceremonies are prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydians and among the Greeks:[53] we know that it formed no part of the early religion of the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably suspect that they borrowed it from the former. The oldest instance known to us of expiation for homicide was contained in the epic poem of the Milesian Arktinus,[54] wherein Achillês is purified by Odysseus for the murder of Thersitês: several others occurred in the later or Hesiodic epic—Hêraklês, Pêleus, Bellerophôn, Alkmæôn, Amphiktyôn, Pœmander, Triopas,—from whence they probably passed through the hands of the logographers to Apollodôrus, Diodôrus, and others.[55] The purification of the murderer was originally operated, not by the hands of any priest or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king, who goes through the appropriate ceremonies in the manner recounted by Herodotus in his pathetic narrative respecting Crœsus and Adrastus.

[52] Schol. ad Iliad, xi. 690—οὐ διὰ τὰ καθάρσια Ἰφίτου πορθεῖται
ἡ Πύλος, ἐπεί τοι Ὀδυσσεὺς μείζων Νέστορος, καὶ παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ οὐκ
οἴδαμεν φονέα καθαιρόμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντιτίνοντα ἢ φυγαδευόμενον.
The examples are numerous, and are found both in the Iliad and
the Odyssey. Iliad, ii. 665 (_Tlêpolemos_); xiii. 697 (_Medôn_);
xiii. 574 (_Epeigeus_); xxiii. 89 (_Patroclos_); Odyss. xv.
224 (_Theoclymenos_); xiv. 380 (an _Ætôlian_). Nor does the
interesting mythe respecting the functions of Atê and the Litæ
harmonize with the subsequent doctrine about the necessity of
purification. (Iliad, ix. 498).

[53] Herodot. i. 35—ἔστι δὲ παραπλησίη ἡ κάθαρσις τοῖσι Λυδοῖσι
καὶ τοῖσι Ἕλλησι. One remarkable proof, amongst many, of the deep
hold which this idea took of the greatest minds in Greece, that
serious mischief would fall upon the community if family quarrels
or homicide remained without religious expiation, is to be found
in the objections which Aristotle urges against the community of
women proposed in the Platonic Republic. It could not be known
what individuals stood in the relation of father, son or brother:
if, therefore, wrong or murder of kindred should take place, the
appropriate religious atonements (αἱ νομιζόμεναι λύσεις) could
not be applied, and the crime would go unexpiated. (Aristot.
Polit. ii. 1, 14. Compare Thucyd. i. 125-128).

[54] See the Fragm. of the Æthiopis of Arktinus, in Düntzer’s
Collection, p. 16.

[55] The references for this are collected in Lobeck’s
Aglaophamos. Epimetr. ii. ad Orphica, p. 968.

The idea of a special taint of crime, and of the necessity as well as the sufficiency of prescribed religious ceremonies as a means of removing it, appears thus to have got footing in Grecian practice subsequent to the time of Homer. The peculiar rites or orgies, composed or put together by Onomakritus, Methapus,[56] and other men of more than the ordinary piety, were founded upon a similar mode of thinking, and adapted to the same mental exigencies. They were voluntary religious manifestations, superinduced upon the old public sacrifices of the king or chiefs on behalf of the whole society, and of the father on his own family hearth—they marked out the details of divine service proper to appease or gratify the god to whom they were addressed, and to procure for the believers who went through them his blessings and protection here or hereafter—the exact performance of the divine service in all its specialty was held necessary, and thus the priests or Hierophants, who alone were familiar with the ritual, acquired a commanding position.[57] Generally speaking, these peculiar orgies obtained their admission and their influence at periods of distress, disease, public calamity and danger, or religious terror and despondency, which appear to have been but too frequent in their occurrence.

[56] Pausanias (iv. 1, 5)—μετεκόσμησε γὰρ καὶ Μέθαπος τῆς
τελετῆς (the Eleusinian Orgies, carried by Kaukon from Eleusis
into Messênia), ἔστιν ἅ. Ὁ δὲ Μέθαπος γένος μὲν ἦν Ἀθηναῖος,
τελετῆς τε καὶ ~ὀργίων παντοίων συνθέτης~. Again, viii. 37,
3, Onomakritus Διονύσῳ ~συνέθηκεν~ ὄργια, etc. This is another
expression designating the same idea as the Rhêsus of Euripidês,
944.—

Μυστηρίων τε τῶν ἀποῤῥήτων φάνας
Ἔδειξεν Ὀρφεύς.

[57] Têlinês, the ancestor of the Syracusan despot Gelô,
acquired great political power as possessing τὰ ἱρὰ τῶν χθονίων
θεῶν (Herodot. vii. 153); he and his family became hereditary
Hierophants of these ceremonies. How Têlinês acquired the ἱρὰ
Herodotus cannot say—ὅθεν δὲ ἀυτὰ ἔλαβε, ἢ αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο
οὐκ ἔχω εἶπαι. Probably there was a traditional legend, not
inferior in sanctity to that of Eleusis, tracing them to the gift
of Dêmêtêr herself.

The minds of men were prone to the belief that what they were suffering arose from the displeasure of some of the gods, and as they found that the ordinary sacrifices and worship were insufficient for their protection, so they grasped at new suggestions proposed to them with the view of regaining the divine favor.[58] Such suggestions were more usually copied, either in whole or in part, from the religious rites of some foreign locality, or from some other portion of the Hellenic world; and in this manner many new sects or voluntary religious fraternities, promising to relieve the troubled conscience and to reconcile the sick or suffering with the offended gods, acquired permanent establishment as well as considerable influence. They were generally under the superintendence of hereditary families of priests, who imparted the rites of confirmation and purification to communicants generally; no one who went through the prescribed ceremonies being excluded. In many cases, such ceremonies fell into the hands of jugglers, who volunteered their services to wealthy men, and degraded their profession as well by obtrusive venality as by extravagant promises:[59] sometimes the price was lowered to bring them within reach of the poor and even of slaves. But the wide diffusion, and the number of voluntary communicants of these solemnities, proves how much they fell in with the feeling of the time and how much respect they enjoyed—a respect, which the more conspicuous establishments, such as Eleusis and Samothrace, maintained for several centuries. And the visit of the Kretan Epimenidês to Athens—in the time of Solôn, and at a season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having offended the gods—illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new orgies[60] and rites of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing high in the favor of the gods and reputed to be the son of a nymph. The supposed Erythræan Sibyl, and the earliest collection of Sibylline prophecies,[61] afterwards so much multiplied and interpolated, and referred (according to Grecian custom) to an age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong to a date not long posterior to Epimenidês. Other oracular verses, such as those of Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities: the sixth century before the Christian æra was fertile in these kinds of religious manifestations.

[58] See Josephus cont. Apiôn. ii. c. 35; Hesych. Θεοὶ ξένιοι;
Strabo, x. p. 471; Plutarch, Περὶ Δεισιδαιμον. c. iii. p. 166; c.
vii. p. 167.

[59] Plato, Republ. ii. p. 364; Demosthen. de Coronâ, c. 79,
p. 313. The δεισιδαίμων of Theophrastus cannot be comfortable
without receiving the Orphic communion monthly from the
Orpheotelestæ (Theophr. Char. xvi.). Compare Plutarch, Περὶ τοῦ
μὴ χρᾶν ἔμμετρα, etc., c. 25, p. 400. The comic writer Phrynichus
indicates the existence of these rites of religious excitement,
at Athens, during the Peloponnesian war. See the short fragment
of his Κρόνος, ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 989—

Ἀνὴρ χορεύει, καὶ τὰ τοῦ καλῶς·
Βούλει Διοπείθη μεταδράμω καὶ τύμπανα;

Diopeithês was a χρησμόλογος, or collector and deliverer of
prophecies, which he sung (or rather, perhaps, recited) with
solemnity and emphasis, in public. ὥστε ποιοῦντες χρησμοὺς αὐτοὶ
Διδόασ᾽ ᾄδειν Διοπείθει τῷ παραμαινομένῷ. (Ameipsias ap. Schol.
Aristophan. _ut sup._, which illustrates Thucyd. ii. 21).

[60] Plutarch, Solôn, c. 12; Diogen. Laërt. i. 110.

[61] See Klausen, “Æneas und die Penaten:” his chapter on the
connection between the Grecian and Roman Sibylline collections
is among the most ingenious of his learned book. Book ii. pp.
210-240; see Steph. Byz. v. Γέργις.

To the same age belong the χρησμοὶ and καθαρμοὶ of Abaris and his
marvellous journey through the air upon an arrow (Herodot. iv.
36).

Epimenidês also composed καθαρμοὶ in epic verse; his Κουρήτων
and Κορυβάντων γένεσις, and his four thousand verses respecting
Minôs and Rhadamanthys, if they had been preserved, would let us
fully into the ideas of a religious mystic of that age respecting
the antiquities of Greece. (Strabo, x. p. 474; Diogen. Laërt. i.
10). Among the poems ascribed to Hesiod were comprised not only
the Melampodia, but also ἔπη μαντικὰ and ἐξηγήσεις ἐπὶ τέρασιν.
Pausan. ix. 31, 4.

Amongst the special rites and orgies of the character just described, those which enjoyed the greatest Pan-Hellenic reputation were attached to the Idæan Zeus in Krête, to Dêmêtêr at Eleusis, to the Kabeiri in Samothrace, and to Dionysos at Delphi and Thebes.[62] That they were all to a great degree analogous, is shown by the way in which they unconsciously run together and become confused in the minds of various authors: the ancient inquirers themselves were unable to distinguish one from the other, and we must be content to submit to the like ignorance. But we see enough to satisfy us of the general fact, that during the century and a half which elapsed between the opening of Egypt to the Greeks and the commencement of their struggle with the Persian kings, the old religion was largely adulterated by importations from Egypt, Asia Minor,[63] and Thrace. The rites grew to be more furious and ecstatic, exhibiting the utmost excitement, bodily as well as mental: the legends became at once more coarse, more tragical, and less pathetic. The manifestations of this frenzy were strongest among the women, whose religious susceptibilities were often found extremely unmanageable,[64] and who had everywhere congregative occasional ceremonies of their own, apart from the men—indeed, in the case of the colonists, especially of the Asiatic colonists, the women had been originally women of the country, and as such retained to a great degree their non-Hellenic manners and feelings.[65] The god Dionysos,[66] whom the legends described as clothed in feminine attire, and leading a troop of frenzied women, inspired a temporary ecstasy, and those who resisted the inspiration, being supposed to disobey his will, were punished either by particular judgments or by mental terrors; while those who gave full loose to the feeling, in the appropriate season and with the received solemnities, satisfied his exigencies, and believed themselves to have procured immunity from such disquietudes for the future.[67] Crowds of women, clothed with fawn-skins and bearing the sanctified thyrsus, flocked to the solitudes of Parnassus, or Kithærôn, or Taygetus, during the consecrated triennial period, passed the night there with torches, and abandoned themselves to demonstrations of frantic excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the god: they were said to tear animals limb from limb, to devour the raw flesh, and to cut themselves without feeling the wound.[68] The men yielded to a similar impulse by noisy revels in the streets, sounding the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying the image of the god in procession.[69] It deserves to be remarked, that the Athenian women never practised these periodical mountain excursions, so common among the rest of the Greeks: they had their feminine solemnities of the Thesmophoria,[70] mournful in their character and accompanied with fasting, and their separate congregations at the temples of Aphroditê, but without any extreme or unseemly demonstrations. The state festival of the Dionysia, in the city of Athens, was celebrated with dramatic entertainments, and the once rich harvest of Athenian tragedy and comedy was thrown up under its auspices. The ceremonies of the Kurêtes in Krête, originally armed dances in honor of the Idæan Zeus, seem also to have borrowed from Asia so much of fury, of self-infliction, and of mysticism, that they became at last inextricably confounded with the Phrygian Korybantes or worshippers of the Great Mother; though it appears that Grecian reserve always stopped short of the irreparable self-mutilation of Atys.

[62] Among other illustrations of this general resemblance, may
be counted an epitaph of Kallimachus upon an aged priestess,
who passed from the service of Dêmêtêr to that of the Kabeiri,
then to that of Cybelê, having the superintendence of many young
women. Kallimachus, Epigram. 42. p. 308, ed. Ernest.

[63] Plutarch, (Defect. Oracul. c. 10, p. 415) treats these
countries as the original seat of the worship of Dæmons (wholly
or partially bad, and intermediate between gods and men), and
their religious ceremonies as of a corresponding character: the
Greeks were borrowers from them, according to him, both of the
doctrine and of the ceremonies.

[64] Strabo, vii. p. 297. Ἅπαντες γὰρ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἀρχηγοὺς
οἴονται τὰς γυναῖκας· αὐταὶ δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας προκαλοῦνται ἐς
τὰς ἐπὶ πλέον θεραπείας τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ἑορτὰς, καὶ ποτνιασμούς.
Plato (De Legg. x. pp. 909, 910) takes great pains to restrain
this tendency on the part of sick or suffering persons,
especially women, to introduce new sacred rites into his city.

[65] Herodot. i. 146. The wives of the Ionic original settlers at
Miletos were Karian women, whose husbands they slew.

The violences of the Karian worship are attested by what
Herodotus says of the Karian residents in Egypt, at the festival
of Isis at Busiris. The Egyptians at this festival manifested
their feeling by beating themselves, the Karians by cutting their
faces with knives (ii. 61). The Καρικὴ μοῦσα became proverbial
for funeral wailings (Plato, Legg. vii. p. 800): the unmeasured
effusions and demonstrations of sorrow for the departed, some
times accompanied by cutting and mutilation self-inflicted by the
mourner was a distinguishing feature in Asiatics and Egyptians
as compared with Greeks. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 22,
p. 123. Mournful feeling was, in fact, a sort of desecration of
the genuine and primitive Grecian festival, which was a season
of cheerful harmony and social enjoyment, wherein the god was
believed to sympathize (εὐφροσύνη). See Xenophanes ap. Aristot.
Rhetor. ii. 25; Xenophan. Fragm. 1. ed. Schneidewin; Theognis,
776; Plutarch, De Superstit. p. 169. The unfavorable comments
of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in so far as they refer to the
festivals of Greece, apply to the foreign corruptions, not to the
native character, of Grecian worship.

[66] The Lydian Hêraklês was conceived and worshipped as a man in
female attire: this idea occurs often in the Asiatic religions.
Mencke, Lydiaca, c. 8, p. 22. Διόνυσος ἄῤῥην καὶ θῆλυς. Aristid.
Or. iv. p. 28; Æschyl. Fragm. Edoni, ap. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 135.
Ποδαπὸς ὁ γύννις; τίς πάτρα; τίς ἡ στολή;

[67] Melampos cures the women (whom Dionysos has struck mad for
their resistance to his rites), παραλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους τῶν
νεανίων μετ᾽ ἀλαλαγμοῦ καί τινος ἐνθέου χορείας. Apollodôr. ii.
2, 7. Compare Eurip. Bacch. 861.

Plato (Legg. vii. p. 790) gives a similar theory of the
healing effect of the Korybantic rites, which cured vague and
inexplicable terrors of the mind by means of dancing and music
conjoined with religious ceremonies—αἱ τὰ τῶν Κορυβάντων ἰάματα
τελοῦσαι (the practitioners were women), αἱ τῶν ἐκφρόνων Βακχείων
ἰάσεις—ἡ τῶν ἔξωθεν κρατεῖ κίνησις προσφερομένη τὴν ἐντὸς φοβερὰν
οὖσαν καὶ μανικὴν κίνησιν—ὀρχουμένους δὲ καὶ αὐλουμένους μετὰ
θεῶν, οἷς ἂν καλλιερήσαντες ἕκαστοι θύωσιν, κατειργάσατο ἀντὶ
μανικῶν ἡμῖν διαθέσεων ἕξεις ἔμφρονας ἔχειν.

[68] Described in the Bacchæ of Euripidês (140, 735, 1135,
etc.). Ovid, Trist. iv. i. 41. “Utque suum Bacchis non sentit
saucia vulnus, Cum furit Edonis exululata jugis.” In a fragment
of the poet Alkman, a Lydian by birth, the Bacchanal nymphs are
represented as milking the lioness, and making cheese of the
milk, during their mountain excursions and festivals. (Alkman.
Fragm. 14. Schn. Compare Aristid. Orat. iv. p. 29). Clemens
Alexand. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 9, Sylb.; Lucian, Dionysos, c. 3,
T. iii. p. 77, Hemsterh.

[69] See the tale of Skylês in Herod. iv. 79, and Athenæus, x. p.
445. Herodotus mentions that the Scythians abhorred the Bacchic
ceremonies, accounting the frenzy which belonged to them to be
disgraceful and monstrous.

[70] Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 69, p. 378; Schol. ad
Aristoph. Thesmoph. There were however Bacchic ceremonies
practised to a certain extent by the Athenian women. (Aristoph.
Lysist. 388).

The influence of the Thracian religion upon that of the Greeks cannot be traced in detail, but the ceremonies contained in it were of a violent and fierce character, like the Phrygian, and acted upon Hellas in the same general direction as the latter. And the like may be said of the Egyptian religion, which was in this case the more operative, inasmuch as all the intellectual Greeks were naturally attracted to go and visit the wonders on the banks of the Nile; the powerful effect produced upon them is attested by many evidences, but especially by the interesting narrative of Herodotus. Now the Egyptian ceremonies were at once more licentious, and more profuse in the outpouring both of joy and sorrow, than the Greek;[71] but a still greater difference sprang from the extraordinary power, separate mode of life, minute observances, and elaborate organization, of the priesthood. The ceremonies of Egypt were multitudinous, but the legends concerning them were framed by the priests, and as a general rule, seemingly, known to the priests alone: at least they were not intended to be publicly talked of, even by pious men. They were “holy stories,” which it was sacrilege publicly to mention, and which from this very prohibition only took firmer hold of the minds of the Greek visitors who heard them. And thus the element of secrecy and mystic silence—foreign to Homer, and only faintly glanced at in Hesiod—if it was not originally derived from Egypt, at least received from thence its greatest stimulus and diffusion. The character of the legends themselves was naturally affected by this change from publicity to secrecy: the secrets when revealed would be such as to justify by their own tenor the interdict on public divulgation: instead of being adapted, like the Homeric mythe, to the universal sympathies and hearty interest of a crowd of hearers, they would derive their impressiveness from the tragical, mournful, extravagant, or terror-striking character of the incidents.[72] Such a tendency, which appears explicable and probable even on general grounds, was in this particular case rendered still more certain by the coarse taste of the Egyptian priests. That any recondite doctrine, religious or philosophical, was attached to the mysteries or contained in the holy stories, has never been shown, and is to the last degree improbable though the affirmative has been asserted by many learned men.

[71] “Ægyptiaca numina fere plangoribus gaudent, Græca plerumque
choreis, barbara autem strepitu cymbalistarum et tympanistarum
et choraularum.” (Apuleius, De Genio Socratis, v. ii. p. 149,
Oudend).

[72] The legend of Dionysos and Prosymnos, as it stands in
Clemens, could never have found place in an epic poem (Admonit.
ad Gent. p. 22, Sylb.). Compare page 11 of the same work,
where however he so confounds together Phrygian, Bacchic, and
Eleusinian mysteries, that one cannot distinguish them apart.

Demêtrius Phalêreus says about the legends belonging to
these ceremonies—Διὸ καὶ τὰ μυστήρια λέγεται ἐν ἀλληγορίαις
~πρὸς ἔκπληξιν καὶ φρίκην~, ὥσπερ ἐν σκότῳ καὶ νυκτί. (De
Interpretatione, c. 101).

Herodotus seems to have believed that the worship and ceremonies of Dionysos generally were derived by the Greeks from Egypt, brought over by Kadmus and taught by him to Melampus: and the latter appears in the Hesiodic Catalogue as having cured the daughters of Prœtus of the mental distemper with which they had been smitten by Dionysos for rejecting his ritual. He cured them by introducing the Bacchic dance and fanatical excitement: this mythical incident is the most ancient mention of the Dionysiac solemnities presented in the same character as they bear in Euripidês. It is the general tendency of Herodotus to apply the theory of derivation from Egypt far too extensively to Grecian institutions: the orgies of Dionysos were not originally borrowed from thence, though they may have been much modified by connection with Egypt as well as with Asia. The remarkable mythe composed by Onomakritus respecting the dismemberment of Zagreus was founded upon an Egyptian tale very similar respecting the body of Osiris, who was supposed to be identical with Dionysos:[73] nor was it unsuitable to the reckless fury of the Bacchanals during their state of temporary excitement, which found a still more awful expression in the mythe of Pentheus,—torn in pieces by his own mother Agavê at the head of her companions in the ceremony, as an intruder upon the feminine rites as well as a scoffer at the god.[74] A passage in the Iliad (the authenticity of which has been contested, but even as an interpolation it must be old)[75] also recounts how Lykurgus was struck blind by Zeus for having chased away with a whip “the nurses of the mad Dionysos,” and frightened the god himself into the sea to take refuge in the arms of Thetis: and the fact, that Dionysos is so frequently represented in his mythes as encountering opposition and punishing the refractory, seems to indicate that his worship under its ecstatic form was a late phænomenon and introduced not without difficulty. The mythical Thracian Orpheus was attached as Eponymos to a new sect, who seem to have celebrated the ceremonies of Dionysos with peculiar care, minuteness and fervor, besides observing various rules in respect to food and clothing. It was the opinion of Herodotus, that these rules, as well as the Pythagorean, were borrowed from Egypt. But whether this be the fact or not, the Orphic brotherhood is itself both an evidence, and a cause, of the increased importance of the worship of Dionysos, which indeed is attested by the great dramatic poets of Athens.

[73] See the curious treatise of Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid.
c. 11-14. p. 356, and his elaborate attempt to allegorize the
legend. He seems to have conceived that the Thracian Orpheus had
first introduced into Greece the mysteries both of Dêmêtêr and
Dionysos, copying them from those of Isis and Osiris in Egypt.
See Fragm. 84, from one of his lost works, tom, v. p. 891, ed.
Wyttenb.

[74] Æschylus had dramatized the story of Pentheus as well as
that of Lykurgus: one of his tetralogies was the Lykurgeia
(Dindorf, Æsch. Fragm. 115). A short allusion to the story of
Pentheus appears in Eumenid. 25. Compare Sophocl. Antigon. 985,
and the Scholia.

[75] Iliad, vi. 130. See the remarks of Mr. Payne Knight _ad loc._

The Homeric Hymns present to us, however, the religious ideas and legends of the Greeks at an earlier period, when the enthusiastic and mystic tendencies had not yet acquired their full development. Though not referable to the same age or to the same author as either the Iliad or the Odyssey, they do to a certain extent continue the same stream of feeling, and the same mythical tone and coloring, as these poems—manifesting but little evidence of Egyptian, Asiatic, or Thracian adulterations. The difference is striking between the god Dionysos as he appears in the Homeric hymn and in the Bacchæ of Euripidês. The hymnographer describes him as standing on the sea-shore, in the guise of a beautiful and richly-clothed youth, when Tyrrhenian pirates suddenly approach: they seize and bind him and drag him on board their vessel. But the bonds which they employ burst spontaneously, and leave the god free. The steersman, perceiving this with affright, points out to his companions that they have unwittingly laid hands on a god,—perhaps Zeus himself, or Apollo, or Poseidôn. He conjures them to desist, and to replace Dionysos respectfully on the shore, lest in his wrath he should visit the ship with wind and hurricane: but the crew deride his scruples, and Dionysos is carried prisoner out to sea with the ship under full sail. Miraculous circumstances soon attest both his presence and his power. Sweet-scented wine is seen to flow spontaneously about the ship, the sail and mast appear adorned with vine and ivy-leaves, and the oar-pegs with garlands. The terrified crew now too late entreat the helmsman to steer his course for the shore, and crowd round him for protection on the poop. But their destruction is at hand: Dionysos assumes the form of a lion—a bear is seen standing near him—this bear rushes with a loud roar upon the captain, while the crew leap overboard in their agony of fright, and are changed into dolphins. There remains none but the discreet and pious steersman, to whom Dionysos addresses words of affectionate encouragement, revealing his name, parentage and dignity.[76]

[76] See Homer, Hymn 5, Διόνυσος ἢ Λῆσται.—The satirical drama
of Euripidês, the Cyclôps, extends and alters this old legend.
Dionysos is carried away by the Tyrrhenian pirates, and Silênus
at the head of the Bacchanals goes everywhere in search of him
(Eur. Cyc. 112). The pirates are instigated against him by the
hatred of Hêrê, which appears frequently as a cause of mischief
to Dionysos (Bacchæ, 286). Hêrê in her anger had driven him mad
when a child, and he had wandered in this state over Egypt and
Syria; at length he came to Cybela in Phrygia, was purified
(καθαρθεὶς) by Rhea, and received from her female attire
(Apollodôr. iii. 5, 1, with Heyne’s note). This seems to have
been the legend adopted to explain the old verse of the Iliad, as
well as the maddening attributes of the god generally.

There was a standing antipathy between the priestesses and the
religious establishments of Hêrê and Dionysos (Plutarch, Περὶ
τῶν ἐν Πλαταίαις Δαιδάλων, c. 2, tom. v. p. 755, ed. Wytt).
Plutarch ridicules the legendary reason commonly assigned for
this, and provides a symbolical explanation which he thinks very
satisfactory.

This hymn, perhaps produced at the Naxian festival of Dionysos, and earlier than the time when the dithyrambic chorus became the established mode of singing the praise and glory of that god, is conceived in a spirit totally different from that of the Bacchic Telatæ, or special rites which the Bacchæ of Euripidês so abundantly extol,—rites introduced from Asia by Dionysos himself at the head of a thiasus or troop of enthusiastic women,—inflaming with temporary frenzy the minds of the women of Thebes,—not communicable except to those who approach as pious communicants,—and followed by the most tragical results to all those who fight against the god.[77] The Bacchic Teletæ, and the Bacchic feminine frenzy, were importations from abroad, as Euripidês represents them, engrafted upon the joviality of the primitive Greek Dionysia; they were borrowed, in all probability, from more than one source and introduced through more than one channel, the Orphic life or brotherhood being one of the varieties. Strabo ascribes to this latter a Thracian original, considering Orpheus, Musæus, and Eumolpus as having been all Thracians.[78] It is curious to observe how, in the Bacchæ of Euripidês, the two distinct and even conflicting ideas of Dionysos come alternately forward; sometimes the old Grecian idea of the jolly and exhilarating god of wine—but more frequently the recent and imported idea of the terrific and irresistible god who unseats the reason, and whose _œstrus_ can only be appeased by a willing, though temporary obedience. In the fanatical impulse which inspired the votaries of the Asiatic Rhea or Cybelê, or of the Thracian Kotys, there was nothing of spontaneous joy; it was a sacred madness, during which the soul appeared to be surrendered to a stimulus from without, and accompanied by preternatural strength and temporary sense of power,[79]—altogether distinct from the unrestrained hilarity of the original Dionysia, as we see them in the rural demes of Attica, or in the gay city of Tarentum. There was indeed a side on which the two bore some analogy, inasmuch as, according to the religious point of view of the Greeks, even the spontaneous joy of the vintage feast was conferred by the favor and enlivened by the companionship of Dionysos. It was upon this analogy that the framers of the Bacchic orgies proceeded but they did not the less disfigure the genuine character of the old Grecian Dionysia.

[77] Eurip. Bacch. 325, 464, etc.

[78] Strabo, x. p. 471. Compare Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28.

[79] In the lost _Xantriæ_ of Æschylus, in which seems to
have been included the tale of Pentheus, the goddess Λύσσα
was introduced, stimulating the Bacchæ, and creating in them
spasmodic excitement from head to foot: ἐκ ποδῶν δ᾽ ἄνω Ὑπέρχεται
σπαραγμὸς εἰς ἄκρον κάρα, etc. (Fragm. 155, Dindorf). His tragedy
called _Edoni_ also gave a terrific representation of the
Bacchanals and their fury, exaggerated by the maddening music:
Πίμπλησι μέλος, Μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν (Fr. 54).

Such also is the reigning sentiment throughout the greater
part of the Bacchæ of Euripidês; it is brought out still more
impressively in the mournful Atys of Catullus:—

“Dea magna, Dea Cybele, Dindymi Dea, Domina,
Procul a meâ tuus sit furor omnis, hera, domo:
Alios age incitatos: alios age rabidos!”

We have only to compare this fearful influence with the
description of Dikæopolis and his exuberant joviality in the
festival of the rural Dionysia (Aristoph. Acharn. 1051 _seq._;
see also Plato. Legg. i. p. 637), to see how completely the
foreign innovations recolored the old Grecian Dionysos,—Διόνυσος
πολυγηθὴς,—who appears also in the scene of Dionysos and Ariadnê
in the Symposion of Xenophôn, c. 9. The simplicity of the ancient
Dionysiac processions is dwelt upon by Plutarch, De Cupidine
Divitiarum, p. 527; and the original dithyramb addressed by
Archilochus to Dionysos is an effusion of drunken hilarity
(Archiloch. Frag. 69, Schneid.).

Dionysos is in the conception of Pindar the Paredros or companion in worship of Dêmêtêr:[80] the worship and religious estimate of the latter has by that time undergone as great a change as that of the former, if we take our comparison with the brief description of Homer and Hesiod: she has acquired[81] much of the awful and soul-disturbing attributes of the Phrygian Cybelê. In Homer, Dêmêtêr is the goddess of the corn-field, who becomes attached to the mortal man Jasiôn; an unhappy passion, since Zeus, jealous of the connection between goddesses and men, puts him to death. In the Hesiodic Theogony, Dêmêtêr is the mother of Persephonê by Zeus, who permits Hadês to carry off the latter as his wife: moreover Dêmêtêr has, besides, by Jasiôn a son called Plutos, born in Krête. Even from Homer to Hesiod, the legend of Dêmêtêr, has been expanded and her dignity exalted; according to the usual tendency of Greek legend, the expansion goes on still further. Through Jasiôn, Dêmêtêr becomes connected with the mysteries of Samothrace; through Persephonê, with those of Eleusis. The former connection it is difficult to follow out in detail, but the latter is explained and traced to its origin in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr.

[80] Pindar, Isthm. vi. 3. χαλκοκρότου πάρεδρον Δημήτερος,—the
epithet marks the approximation of Dêmêtêr to the Mother of the
Gods. ᾗ κροτάλων τυπάνων τ᾽ ἰαχὴ, σύν τε βρόμος αὐλῶν Εὔαδεν
(Homer. Hymn, xiii.),—the Mother of the Gods was worshipped by
Pindar himself along with Pan; she had in his time her temple and
ceremonies at Thêbes (Pyth. iii. 78; Fragm. Dithyr. 5, and the
Scholia _ad l._) as well as, probably, at Athens (Pausan. i. 3,
3).

Dionysos and Dêmêtêr are also brought together in the chorus of
Sophoklês, Antigonê, 1072. μέδεις δὲ παγκοίνοις Ἐλευσινίας Δηοῦς
ἐν κόλποις; and in Kallimachus, Hymn. Cerer. 70. Bacchus or
Dionysos are in the Attic tragedians constantly confounded with
the Dêmêtrian Iacchos, originally so different,—a personification
of the mystic word shouted by the Eleusinian communicants. See
Strabo, x. p. 468.

[81] Euripidês in his Chorus in the Helena (1320 _seq._) assigns
to Dêmêtêr all the attributes of Rhea, and blends the two
completely into one.

Though we find different statements respecting the date as well as the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, yet the popular belief of the Athenians, and the story which found favor at Eleusis, ascribed them to the presence and dictation of the goddess Dêmêtêr herself; just as the Bacchic rites are, according to the Bacchæ of Euripidês, first communicated and enforced on the Greeks by the personal visit of Dionysos to Thêbes, the metropolis of the Bacchic ceremonies.[82] In the Eleusinian legend, preserved by the author of the Homeric Hymn, she comes voluntarily and identifies herself with Eleusis; her past abode in Krête being briefly indicated.[83] Her visit to Eleusis is connected with the deep sorrow caused by the loss of her daughter Persephonê, who had been seized by Hadês, while gathering flowers in a meadow along with the Oceanic Nymphs, and carried off to become his wife in the under-world. In vain did the reluctant Persephonê shriek and invoke the aid of her father Zeus: he had consented to give her to Hadês, and her cries were heard only by Hekatê and Hêlios. Dêmêtêr was inconsolable at the disappearance of her daughter, but knew not where to look for her: she wandered for nine days and nights with torches in search of the lost maiden without success. At length Hêlios, the “spy of gods and men,” revealed to her, in reply to her urgent prayer, the rape of Persephonê, and the permission given to Hadês by Zeus. Dêmêtêr was smitten with anger and despair: she renounced Zeus and the society of Olympus, abstained from nectar and ambrosia, and wandered on earth in grief and fasting until her form could no longer be known. In this condition she came to Eleusis, then governed by the prince Keleos. Sitting down by a well at the wayside in the guise of an old woman, she was found by the daughters of Keleos, who came hither with their pails of brass for water. In reply to their questions, she told them that she had been brought by pirates from Krête to Thorikos, and had made her escape; she then solicited from them succor and employment as a servant or as a nurse. The damsels prevailed upon their mother Metaneira to receive her, and to entrust her with the nursing of the young Dêmophoôn, their late-born brother, the only son of Keleos. Dêmêtêr was received into the house of Metaneira, her dignified form still borne down by grief: she sat long silent and could not be induced either to smile or to taste food, until the maid-servant Iambê, by jests and playfulness, succeeded in amusing and rendering her cheerful. She would not taste wine, but requested a peculiar mixture of barley-meal with water and the herb mint.[84]

[82] Sophocl. Antigon. Βακχᾶν μητρόπολιν Θήβαν.

[83] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 123. The Hymn to Dêmêtêr has been
translated, accompanied with valuable illustrative notes, by J.
H. Voss (Heidelb. 1826).

[84] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 202-210.

The child Dêmophoôn, nursed by Dêmêtêr, throve and grew up like a god, to the delight and astonishment of his parents: she gave him no food, but anointed him daily with ambrosia, and plunged him at night in the fire like a torch, where he remained unburnt. She would have rendered him immortal, had she not been prevented by the indiscreet curiosity and alarm of Metaneira, who secretly looked in at night, and shrieked with horror at the sight of her child in the fire.[85] The indignant goddess, setting the infant on the ground, now revealed her true character to Metaneira: her wan and aged look disappeared, and she stood confest in the genuine majesty of her divine shape, diffusing a dazzling brightness which illuminated the whole house. “Foolish mother,” she said, “thy want of faith has robbed thy son of immortal life. I am the exalted Dêmêtêr, the charm and comfort both of gods and men: I was preparing for thy son exemption from death and old age; now it cannot be but he must taste of both. Yet shall he be ever honored, since he has sat upon my knee and slept in my arms. Let the people of Eleusis erect for me a temple and altar on yonder hill above the fountain; I will myself prescribe to them the orgies which they must religiously perform in order to propitiate my favor.”[86]

[85] This story was also told with reference to the Egyptian
goddess Isis in her wanderings. See Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid.
c. 16, p. 357.

[86] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 274.—

Ὄργια δ᾽ αὐτὴ ἐγὼν ὑποθήσομαι, ὡς ἂν ἔπειτα
Εὐαγέως ἕρδοντες ἐμὸν νόον ἱλάσκησθε.

The same story is told in regard to the infant Achilles. His
mother Thetis was taking similar measures to render him immortal,
when his father Pêleus interfered and prevented the consummation.
Thetis immediately left him in great wrath (Apollôn. Rhod. iv.
866).

The terrified Metaneira was incapable even of lifting up her child from the ground; her daughters entered at her cries, and began to embrace and tend their infant brother, but he sorrowed and could not be pacified for the loss of his divine nurse. All night they strove to appease the goddess.[87]

[87] Homer, Hymn. 290.—

τοῦ δ᾽ οὐ μειλίσσετο θυμὸς,
Χειρότεραι γὰρ δή μιν ἔχον τρόφοι ἠδὲ τιθῆναι.

Strictly executing the injunctions of Dêmêtêr, Keleos convoked the people of Eleusis and erected the temple on the spot which she had pointed out. It was speedily completed, and Dêmêtêr took up her abode in it,—apart from the remaining gods, still pining with grief for the loss of her daughter, and withholding her beneficent aid from mortals. And thus she remained a whole year,—a desperate and terrible year:[88] in vain did the oxen draw the plough, and in vain was the barley-seed cast into the furrow,—Dêmêtêr suffered it not to emerge from the earth. The human race would have been starved, and the gods would have been deprived of their honors and sacrifice, had not Zeus found means to conciliate her. But this was a hard task; for Dêmêtêr resisted the entreaties of Iris and of all the other goddesses and gods whom Zeus successively sent to her. She would be satisfied with nothing less than the recovery of her daughter. At length Zeus sent Hermês to Hadês, to bring Persephonê away: Persephonê joyfully obeyed, but Hadês prevailed upon her before she departed to swallow a grain of pomegranate, which rendered it impossible for her to remain the whole year away from him.[89]

[88] Homer, H. Cer. 305.—

Αἰνότατον δ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπὶ χθόνα πουλυβότειραν
Ποίησ᾽ ἀνθρώποις, ἰδὲ κύντατον.

[89] Hymn, v. 375.

With transport did Dêmêtêr receive back her lost daughter, and the faithful Hekatê sympathized in the delight felt by both at the reunion.[90] It was now an easier undertaking to reconcile her with the gods. Her mother Rhea, sent down expressly by Zeus, descended from Olympus on the fertile Rharan plain, then smitten with barrenness like the rest of the earth: she succeeded in appeasing the indignation of Dêmêtêr, who consented again to put forth her relieving hand. The buried seed came up in abundance, and the earth was covered with fruit and flowers. She would have wished to retain Persephonê constantly with her, but this was impossible; and she was obliged to consent that her daughter should go down for one-third of each year to the house of Hadês, departing from her every spring at the time when the seed is sown. She then revisited Olympus, again to dwell with the gods; but before her departure, she communicated to the daughters of Keleos, and to Keleos himself, together with Triptolemus, Dioklês and Eumolpus, the divine service and the solemnities which she required to be observed in her honor.[91] And thus began the venerable mysteries of Eleusis, at her special command: the lesser mysteries, celebrated in February, in honor of Persephonê; the greater, in August, to the honor of Dêmêtêr herself. Both are jointly patronesses of the holy city and temple.

[90] Hymn, v. 443.

[91] Hymn, v. 475.—

Ἡ δὲ κιοῦσα θεμιστοπόλοις βασιλεῦσι
Δεῖξεν, Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διοκλέϊ τε πληξίππῳ,
Εὐμόλπου τε βίῃ, Κελέῳ θ᾽ ἡγήτορι λαῶν,
Δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν· καὶ ἐπέφραδεν ὄργια παισὶν
Πρεσβυτέρῃς Κελέοιο, etc.

Such is a brief sketch of the temple legend of Eleusis, set forth at length in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr. It is interesting not less as a picture of the Mater Dolorosa (in the mouth of an Athenian, Dêmêtêr and Persephonê were always the Mother and Daughter, by excellence), first an agonized sufferer, and then finally glorified,—the weal and woe of man being dependent upon her kindly feeling,—than as an illustration of the nature and growth of Grecian legend generally. Though we now read this Hymn as pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it was composed, it was genuine and sacred history. They believed in the visit of Dêmêtêr to Eleusis, and in the mysteries as a revelation from her, as implicitly as they believed in her existence and power as a goddess. The Eleusinian psalmist shares this belief in common with his countrymen, and embodies it in a continuous narrative, in which the great goddesses of the place, as well as the great heroic families, figure in inseparable conjunction. Keleos is the son of the Eponymous hero Eleusis, and his daughters, with the old epic simplicity, carry their basins to the well for water. Eumolpus, Triptolemus, Dioklês, heroic ancestors of the privileged families who continued throughout the historical times of Athens to fulfil their special hereditary functions in the Eleusinian solemnities, are among the immediate recipients of inspiration from the goddess; but chiefly does she favor Metaneira and her infant son Dêmophoôn, for the latter of whom her greatest boon is destined, and intercepted only by the weak faith of the mother. Moreover, every incident in the Hymn has a local coloring and a special reference. The well, overshadowed by an olive-tree near which Dêmêtêr had rested, the stream Kallichorus and the temple-hill, were familiar and interesting places in the eyes of every Eleusinian; the peculiar posset prepared from barley-meal with mint was always tasted by the Mysts (or communicants) after a prescribed fast, as an article in the ceremony,—while it was also the custom, at a particular spot in the processional march, to permit the free interchange of personal jokes and taunts upon individuals for the general amusement. And these two customs are connected in the Hymn with the incidents, that Dêmêtêr herself had chosen the posset as the first interruption of her long and melancholy fast, and that her sorrowful thoughts had been partially diverted by the coarse playfulness of the servant-maid Iambê. In the enlarged representation of the Eleusinian ceremonies, which became established after the incorporation of Eleusis with Athens, the part of Iambê herself was enacted by a woman, or man in woman’s attire, of suitable wit and imagination, who was posted on the bridge over the Kephissos, and addressed to the passers-by in the procession,[92] especially the great men of Athens, saucy jeers, probably not less piercing than those of Aristophanês on the stage. The torch-bearing Hekatê received a portion of the worship in the nocturnal ceremonies of the Eleusinia: this too is traced, in the Hymn, to her kind and affectionate sympathy with the great goddesses.

[92] Aristophanês, Vesp. 1363. Hesych. v. Γεφυρίς. Suidas,
v. Γεφυρίζων. Compare about the details of the ceremony,
Clemens Alexandr. Admon. ad Gent. p. 13. A similar license of
unrestrained jocularity appears in the rites of Dêmêtêr in Sicily
(Diodôr. v. 4; see also Pausan. vii. 27, 4), and in the worship
of Damia and Auxesia at Ægina (Herodot. v. 83).

Though all these incidents were sincerely believed by the Eleusinians as a true history of the past, and as having been the real initiatory cause of their own solemnities, it is not the less certain that they are simply mythes or legends, and not to be treated as history, either actual or exaggerated. They do not take their start from realities of the past, but from realities of the present, combined with retrospective feeling and fancy, which fills up the blank of the aforetime in a manner at once plausible and impressive. What proportion of fact there may be in the legend, or whether there be any at all, it is impossible to ascertain and useless to inquire; for the story did not acquire belief from its approximation to real fact, but from its perfect harmony with Eleusinian faith and feeling, and from the absence of any standard of historical credibility. The little town of Eleusis derived all its importance from the solemnity of the Dêmêtria, and the Hymn which we have been considering (probably at least as old as 600 B. C.) represents the town as it stood before its absorption into the larger unity of Athens, which seems to have produced an alteration of its legends and an increase of dignity in its great festival. In the faith of an Eleusinian, the religious as well as the patriotic antiquities of his native town were connected with this capital solemnity. The divine legend of the sufferings of Dêmêtêr and her visit to Eleusis was to him that which the heroic legend of Adrastus and the Siege of Thêbes was to a Sikyonian, or that of Erechtheus and Athênê to an Athenian grouping together in the same scene and story the goddess and the heroic fathers of the town. If our information were fuller, we should probably find abundance of other legends respecting the Dêmêtria: the Gephyræi of Athens, to whom belonged the celebrated Harmodios and Aristogeitôn, and who possessed special Orgies of Dêmêtêr the Sorrowful, to which no man foreign to their Gens was ever admitted,[93] would doubtless have told stories not only different but contradictory; and even in other Eleusinian mythes we discover Eumolpus as king of Eleusis, son of Poseidôn, and a Thracian, completely different from the character which he bears in the Hymn before us.[94] Neither discrepancies nor want of evidence, in reference to alleged antiquities, shocked the faith of a non-historical public. What they wanted was a picture of the past, impressive to their feelings and plausible to their imagination; and it is important to the reader to remember, while he reads either the divine legends which we are now illustrating or the heroic legends to which we shall soon approach, that he is dealing with a past which never was present,—a region essentially mythical, neither approachable by the critic nor mensurable by the chronologer.

[93] Herodot. v. 61.

[94] Pausan. i. 38, 3; Apollodôr. iii. 15, 4. Heyne in his
Note admits several persons named Eumolpus. Compare Isokratês,
Panegyr. p. 55. Philochorus the Attic antiquary could not have
received the legend of the Eleusinian Hymn, from the different
account which he gave respecting the rape of Persephonê (Philoch.
Fragm. 46, ed. Didot), and also respecting Keleos (Fr. 28,
_ibid._).

The tale respecting the visit of Dêmêtêr, which was told by the ancient Gens, called the Phytalids,[95] in reference to another temple of Dêmêtêr between Athens and Eleusis, and also by the Megarians in reference to a Dêmêtrion near their city, acquired under the auspices of Athens still further extension. The goddess was reported to have first communicated to Triptolemus at Eleusis the art of sowing corn, which by his intervention was disseminated all over the earth. And thus the Athenians took credit to themselves for having been the medium of communication from the gods to man of all the inestimable blessings of agriculture, which they affirmed to have been first exhibited on the fertile Rharian plain near Eleusis. Such pretensions are not to be found in the old Homeric hymn. The festival of the Thesmophoria, celebrated in honor of Dêmêtêr Thesmophoros at Athens, was altogether different from the Eleusinia, in this material respect, as well as others, that all males were excluded, and women only were allowed to partake in it: the surname Thesmophoros gave occasion to new legends in which the goddess was glorified as the first authoress of laws and legal sanctions to mankind.[96] This festival, for women apart and alone, was also celebrated at Paros, at Ephesus, and in many other parts of Greece.[97]

[95] Phytalus, the Eponym or godfather of this gens, had received
Dêmêtêr as a guest in his house, when she first presented mankind
with the fruit of the fig-tree. (Pausan. i. 37, 2.)

[96] Kallimach. Hymn. Cerer. 19. Sophoklês, Triptolemos, Frag. 1.
Cicero, Legg. ii. 14, and the note of Servius ad Virgil. Æn. iv.
58.

[97] Herodot. vi. 16, 134. ἕρκος Θεσμοφόρου Δήμητρος—τὸ ἐς ἔρσενα
γόνον ἄῤῥητα ἱερά.

Altogether, Dêmêtêr and Dionysos, as the Grecian counterparts of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, seem to have been the great recipients of the new sacred rites borrowed from Egypt, before the worship of Isis in her own name was introduced into Greece: their solemnities became more frequently recluse and mysterious than those of the other deities. The importance of Dêmêtêr to the collective nationality of Greece may be gathered from the fact that her temple was erected at Thermopylæ, the spot where the Amphiktyonic assemblies were held, close by the temple of the Eponymous hero Amphiktyôn himself, and under the surname of the Amphiktyonic Dêmêtêr.[98]

[98] Herodot. vii. 200.

We now pass to another and not less important celestial personage—Apollo.