NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII
[1] Pl., Phdr. 265 A.
[2] e.g. Cael. Aurel. (i.e. Soranos), Morb. Chr. i, § 144 ff.; Aret. Chron. Pass. i, 6, p. 84 Kühn [vol. 24].
[3] Even the late interpolated passages Ξ 325, ω 74, are not quite conclusive. Apart from these the statement of Sch. ι 198 applies strictly throughout both poems: τὸ μὴ παραδιδόναι Ὅμηρον Διόνυσον οἴνου εὑρετήν, Lehrs, Arist.3, p. 181.
[4] Ζ 132 ff. The scene is evidently meant to be a Bacchic festival. This is shown by the θύσθλα, which the Διωνύσοιο τιθῆναι let fall out of their hands. All the rest is obscure. Even in antiquity no one knew who the τιθῆναι of Dionysos really were, and hence alternative suggestions were all the more numerous: cf. Nauck, Fr. Trag.2, p. 17. Voigt, in Roscher’s Mythol. Lex. i, 1049. It can hardly be necessary (with Sch. A on Z 129) to deduce from the reference to τιθῆναι that Dionysos himself was regarded as νήπιος ἔτι καὶ παῖς. His former τιθῆναι follow him in the Bacchic festival even after he has grown up, exactly as in h. Hom. xxvi, 3, 7–10. αἱ Διονύσου τροφοί as the frenzied mob worshipping the god, τῷ θεῷ ὀργιάζουσαι (in Thessaly), come in D.S. 5, 50, 4, in a parallel narrative to the story of Lykourgos and the Mainads. With the conception of the god as λικνίτης neither his leap into the sea (Ζ 135 ff.), nor esp. the adj. μαινομένοιο (132) are in harmony. This last word does certainly give us pause. The accounts provided by later ages of the madness of Dionysos are obviously made up from the lines of Homer and are therefore of no use to us (already ap. Eumelos in the Εὐρωπία, Schol. AD. Ζ 131; then Pherekydes, Achaios ἐν Ἴριδι: Phld., Piet., p. 36 [Nauck, Fr. Trag.2, p. 751]; E., Cyc. 3. [Apollod.] iii, 5, 1, is prob. derived from Pherec. as are also Philistos fr. 57, FHG. i; Pl., Lg. 672 B; Nic. Ὀφιακ. fr. 30 Schn., etc.). Scholastic interpreters even thought of a hypallage: μαινομένοιο = μανιοποιοῦ, βακχείας παρασκευαστικοῦ, Schol. A, Ζ 132; cf. Sch. B, p. 182a, 43 f. Bk. And, indeed, there is certainly in this case a sort of mythological or sacramental hypallage: the state of mind brought about by the god in those who surround him is reflected back on to the god himself (μαινόμενοι Σάτυροι, E., Ba. 130; cf. the mad nurses of Dionysos, Nonn., D. ix, 38 ff.). It would not be hard to parallel this (e.g. Dionys. who makes men drunk is represented as himself drunk, Ath. 428 E, etc.).
[5] Ξ 460, μεγάροιο διέσσυτο μαινάδι ἴση, παλλομένη κραδίην. The evidence of this passage for the familiarity of Homer’s audience with the nature of the Mainads cannot be set aside as Lob., Agl. 285, tries to do. The word could only be used as an εἰκών if the thing were often before men’s eyes. μαινάς, indeed, is even something different from, and more specialized than μαινομένη (Ζ 389).
[6] The view that μαίνεσθαι was primitive in the cult of D., the wine, etc., being added later, was definitely put forward in 1825 by O. Müller (Kl. Schr. ii, 26 ff.) arguing against J. H. Voss. But it is only in quite recent times that in tracing the origin of the religion of Dionysos occasional inquirers have taken this view as their starting point: cf. esp. Voigt in his noteworthy treatment of Dionysos in Roscher’s Myth. Lex. i, 1029 ff.
[7] ὃς μαίνεσθαι ἐνάγει ἀνθρώπους, Hdt. iv, 79. [268]
[8] E.g. the Odrysai, who, however, lived further north in the Hebros valley; Mela, ii, 17, mentions distinctly the mountain chains of Haimos, Rhodope, and Orbelos as sacris Liberi patris et coetu Maenadum celebratos.
[9] Lob., Agl. 289 ff.
[10] Sabazios: Σαβάζιον τὸν Διόνυσον οἱ Θρᾷκες καλοῦσιν Sch. Ar., Ves. 9; cf. Sch. Ar., Lys. 388; D.S. 4, 4, 1; Harp. Σαβοί; Alex. Polyh. ap. Macr. i, 18, 11 (Sebadius: cf. Apul., M. viii, 25, p. 150, 11 Ey. The original form of this name seems to have been Savos, Savadios, Kretschmer, Einleitung in. d. Gesch. d. griech. Spr. 195 f.; Usener, Götternamen 44). Sabos, Phot. p. 495, 11–12 Pors. Hesych. s.v.; Orph., H. 49, 2, etc. The fact that others could call Sabazios a Phrygian god (Amphitheos π. Ἡρακλείος βʹ ap. Sch. Ar., Av. 874; Str. 470; Hsch. s.v.), only serves to bring out more clearly the opinion, unanimously held even in antiquity, that the Thracians and the Phrygians were closely related. Sabazios (besides being identified with Helios: Alex. Polyh. l.c.; cf. Soph. fr. 523 N.), as the supreme and almighty god of the Thracians, was even called Ζεὺς Σαβάζιος (Val. Max. i, 3, 2), esp. on inss. (a few are given in Rapp, Dionysoscult [Progr.] p. 21; cf. also ins. from Peiraeus Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1883, p. 245; Ins. Pergam. i, 248, 33, 49: from Pisidia, Papers of the Amer. School at Athens, ii, p. 54, 56. Jovi Sabazio, Orelli, Ins. 1259). We even find Ζεὺς Βάκχος, Ζεὺς Ἥλιος (BCH. vi, 189).—The name Σαβάζιος was derived from σαβάζειν = εὐάζειν, διὰ τὸν γενόμενον περὶ αὐτὸν εὐασμόν (θειασμόν): Sch. Ar., Av. 874; Lys. 388. So, too, Βάκχος was on this view only another way of expressing the same meaning; since this name also was derived by the ancients from βάζειν = εὐάζειν (it is really from the root ϝαχ (ἀχέω) Βάκχος, with “affrication”; a reduplicated form of it is ϝιϝαχος, Ἴακχος, ἰαχέω, ἰακχέω; cf. Curtius, Griech. Etym.5, p. 460, 576). Other names of the Thracian Dionysos are the following: Βασσαρεύς (Βάσσαρος, Orph., H. 45, 2), derived from βασσάρα the long dress (made of skin?) worn by the Βασσαρίδες = Θρᾴκιαι βάκχαι, AB. 222, 26 f.; Hsch. s.v. Βασσάραι and EM. s.v. (the last compiled from Orion and Sch. Lyc. 771). Other accounts (not contradicting in this point the statement of Hsch.) made it the dress worn by the god himself: Sch. Pers. i, 101. (The Βασσαρεύς was generally described as bearded and even senili specie, like the representation of Dionysos himself in the oldest Greek art: Macr. i, 18, 9.) If Βασσαρεύς means “the wearer of the long fox-skin” we should be strongly reminded of the—also Thracian—god Ζάλμολξις (Ζάλμοξις), whose name was derived from ζαλμός = δορὰ ἄρκτου (Porph., VP. 14, though this comes only from Antonius Diogenes 6), and probably means “he who is cloaked in the bearskin” (see Fick, Spracheinh. d. Indog. Europ., p. 418; Hehn, Culturpflanz. 428 E.T.).—Γίγων a name of Dionysos, EM. 231, 28: perhaps a name given to the god in the city Gigonos mentioned in the same passage, and the ἄκρα Γίγωνις at the western end of the Thracian Chalkidike.—EM. 186, 32, is too short to be intelligible: βαλιά· διαποίκιλος. καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον Θρᾷκες.—Δύαλος Διόνυσος παρὰ Παίοσιν, Hesych.
[11] At any rate the people whom Thuc., Ephoros, and others call Thracians and regarded as having been once settled in Phokis, Boeotia, etc., are undoubtedly to be considered Thracians—and not the impossibly honest and exemplary people, a creation of the fancy, the “Thracians of the Muses”, alleged to be quite distinct from the real Thracian peoples, of whom we have heard so much since K. O. [269] Müller (Orchom. 379 ff.) introduced the idea. Antiquity only knew of one kind of Thracian. In the Homeric poems they are not so different from the Greeks in civilization as they were in later times, when we know them from the accounts of Herod. and Xen. For all that they are the same people. They seem in the course of time to have degenerated, or rather they have not shared in the progress made by others and so have remained backward (even behind their Phrygian relatives who wandered to Asia Minor and achieved a higher culture under Semitic influence). In fact, like the Keltoi, they were never able to get beyond a condition of semi-civilization.
[12] μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν. Aesch. in the Ἠδωνοί ap. Str. 470–1 (fr. 57), is the locus classicus for the music in the Thracian festival of Dionysos. Apart from this it is impossible to distinguish in the accounts given by our ancient authorities, between the strictly Thracian festival and the ideal generalized festival of Dionysos (not the mitigated ceremonial actually used in the festival in Greece). They merge completely into each other.
[13] σαβάζειν = εὐάζειν, Schol. Ar., Av. 874; Lys. 388.
[14] αἱ Βάκχαι σιγῶσιν. Diogen., Prov. iii, 43.
[15] Complete revolution round one’s own axis, as in the dance of a dervish, is known at least only in the more fanatic dance-festivals of antiquity: στροφὴν ὁλοσώματον ὥσπερ οἱ κάτοχοι δινεύοντες, Heliod. 4, 17, p. 116, 1 Bk. δίνησις τῶν θεοφορήτων in Phrygia: Horus ap. EM. 276, 32. Crusius, Philol. 55, 565, compares besides Verg., A. vii, 377 ff.; Alex. Aphr., Prob., p. 6 Us. In the Spartan dance διαμαλέας (?) Seilenoi and Satyrs appeared ὀρχούμενοι ὑπότροχα [περίτροχα acc. to Meineke: perhaps better]. Poll. 4, 104.
[16] E., Ba. 116 ff., 664 ff. Thracian: assiduis Edonis fessa choreis qualis in herboso concidit Apidano, Prop. 1, 3, 5 f.
[17] Bassaris: Thracian acc. to Sch. Pers. i, 101; worn by βάκχαι Hsch. βασσάραi. Lydian, too: ὅστις χιτῶνας βασσάρας τε Λυδίας ἐχει ποδήρεις, A. ἐν Ἠδωνοῖς, fr. 59; cf. Poll. 7, 59. “Perhaps a Phrygian word that has penetrated into Lydia,” Kretschmer, Einleitung, 390. The worship of Dionysos which had also presumably come from Phrygia, was esp. popular in Lydia.
[18] Familiar in the Bacchic ceremonial of Greece; but occurring already in Thrace: Aesch. ἐν Ἠδωνοί (dealing entirely with Thracian customs) mentions the νεβρίδες, and in the same place has αἰγίδας as well (fr. 64).
[19] The Βάκχαι of Macedonia and the Μιμαλλόνες, in all respects resembling the Thracian Bacchants, κερατοφοροῦσι κατὰ μίμησιν Διονύσου: Sch. Lyc. 1237 (Λαφυστίας κερασφόρους γυναῖκας).
[20] Mentis inops rapitur, quales audire solemus Threicias passis Maenadas ire comis, Ov., F. iv, 457 f.
[21] Thphr. Ch. 16 (28, p. 141 Jebb); Artemid. 2, 13, p. 106, 9 H.
[22] Snakes and daggers are found in the hands of the μιμαλλόνες καὶ βασσάραι καὶ λυδαί in the train of Ptol. Philad.: Kallixenos ap. Ath. 198 E. Snakes and θύρσοι belong to the paraphernalia of the ἔνοχοι τοῖς Ὀρφικοῖς καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς γυναῖκες in Macedonia, and of the Κλώδωνες καὶ Μιμαλλόνες who πολλὰ τοῖς Ἠδωνίσι καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὸν Αἷμον Θρῄσσαις ὅμοια δρῶσιν, Plu., Alex. 2 (in connexion with the snake of Olympias. She was especially given to the Thrako-Dionysian mysteries: cf. the letter of Olympias to Alexander, Ath. 659 F).—θύρσοι of the Macedonian Μιμαλλόνες: Polyaen. 4, 1; Sch. Pers. 1, 99.—“Even now” the thyrsos wands are decked with ivy in the Thraciae populis sollemnibus sacris, Plin., [270] NH. xvi, 144.—The νάρθηξ of the thyrsos is really a shepherd’s staff: Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 14 P.
[23] Eur., Ba. 735 ff. and frequently.
[24] κατοχαὶ καὶ ἐνθουσιασμοί in the Thrako-Macedonian worship of Dionysos: Plu., Alex. 2. (The Mimallones imitantur furorem Liberi, Sch., Pers. i, 99.) οἱ τῷ Σαβαζίῳ κάτοχοι: Porph. ap. Iamb. de Myst. 3, 9, p. 117, 16. βάκχος· ὁ μανιώδης, Eust. δ 249; β 16. Κλώδωνες is the name given to the μαινάδες καὶ βάκχαι ἀπὸ τοῦ κατόχους γινομένας κλώζειν, EM. 521, 50. οἱ κάτοχοι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς, Plu., Is. et Os. 35, p. 364 F.
[25] οἱ βακχευόμενοι καὶ κορυβαντιῶντες ἐνθουσιάζουσι μέχρις ἂν τὸ ποθούμενον ἴδωσιν, Philo, Vit. Cont. 2, ii, p. 473 M.
[26] So too the wild shaking and whirling-round of the head, which acc. to innumerable literary and pictorial descriptions was a regular feature of the Bacchic dance and cult, must have contributed—and was so intended—to bring about the condition of ecstasy and frenzy (ῥιψαύχενι σὺν κλόνῳ, Pi., fr. 208; κρᾶτα σεῖσαι, E., Ba. 185, etc.).—How such fanatic shaking of the head, if kept up for along time, is by itself sufficient, in persons naturally predisposed to it, to bring on complete religious ἔκστασις, may be learnt from a remarkable account in Moreau du hachisch, p. 290 ff., derived from personal observation in the East.
[27] The object of the trieteric festival of Dionysos (repeated every second year) held in so many places in Greece (cf. Weniger, Dionysosdienst in Elis, Progr. 1883, p. 8) was to celebrate the presence of the god. This is clearly shown by D.S. 4, 3, 2, who also attributes the trieteric festival to the Thracians: τοὺς Βοιωτοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας καὶ Θρᾷκας . . . καταδεῖξαι τὰς τριετηρίδας θυσίας Διονύσῳ καὶ τὸν θεὸν νομίζειν κατὰ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον ποιεῖσθαι τὰς παρὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐπιφανείας. At this time women and maidens celebrated τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ Διονύσου. (In the archaic song of the Elean women the Bull-god is thus called upon: Plu., QG. 36, 299 A; Is. et Os. 35, p. 364 F; whereupon the Eleans believed that τὸν θεόν σφισιν ἐπιφοιτᾶν ἐς τῶν Θυίων τὴν ἑορτήν: Paus. 6, 26, 1.)—For Bakchos amongst the dancers see E., Ba. 185 ff., 306 f., and often. At the trieteric festival at Delphi Διόνυσος . . . Παρνασὸν κατὰ πηδᾷ χορεύει παρθένοις σὺν Δελφίσιν, E., Hypsip. fr. 752. And so often in poetry: see Nauck on S., OT. 213; Ant. 1126 ff.—Thracian trieteric festival: tuo motae proles Semeleia thyrso Ismariae celebrant repetita triennia bacchae, Ov., M. ix, 641 f.; tempus erat, quo sacra solent trieterica Baccho Sithoniae celebrare nurus; nox conscia sacris, etc., vi, 587.
[28] ἀφανισμός followed by ἐπιφάνεια of Dionysos represent, as we frequently learn, the varying relationship of the god with mankind. These are alternating and periodically repeated, and they are reflected in the trieteric period of the festivals. It is customary to explain this disappearance and return of the god as an allegorical typification of the destruction and restoration of vegetation. There is no reason at all to believe this, except for those who regard the doctrines of the Greek “Religion of Nature” as infallible axioms. The god is simply, and in the literal sense of the words, regarded as removed for a time from the world of men, during which period he is in the world of spirits. In the same way Apollo, according to the Delphic legend, is carried away from the human world for certain periods: he lives during that time among the Hyperboreans, whose land is inaccessible to mortal foot or ship. We ought not to be afraid to make use of the light thrown on these matters by parallel legends of the temporary disappearance [271] of gods among uncivilized peoples (the god may be sometimes asleep or under constraint; cf. Plu., Is. et Os., 69 fin. 378 F); cf. what we are told in Dobrizhoffer’s Gesch. d. Abip. ii, p. 63 (E.T.), about the beliefs held by the Abipones of Paraguay; or, again, what is said of the negro races of West Africa, according to whom the god normally lives in the depths of the earth, but at regularly recurring intervals comes up to visit men; whereupon the members of a mystical society build him a house, receive his oracles, etc.; Réville, Rel. des peuples non-civil. i, 110–11. Thus Dionysos, too, is for a time in the underworld, in the world of spirits and the souls. This is clearly presupposed by the festival at Lerna, in which Dionysos is called up out of the bottomless spring Alkyonia by which there was an entrance to Hades (just as the inhabitants of Kos every year ἀνακαλοῦνται Hylas out of his spring, i.e. from the underworld: H. Türk, De Hyla, p. 3 f.; Welcker, Kl. Schr. i, 12; and see Maass, Litt. Ztg. 1896, 7–8). Hence also in Lerna a lamb was offered as a victim τῷ πυλαόχῳ, i.e. to Hades himself, and was thrown into the spring (Plu., Is. et Os. 35, p. 368 F, quoting Sokrates περὶ τῶν Ὁσίων; Smp. 4, 6, 2, p. 671 E; Paus. 2, 36, 7; 37, 5–6). Because he is in the realm of the dead a pragmatical myth represented him as slain by Perseus and thrown into the spring of Lerna: Lob., Agl. 574. In Delphi, too, something was known of the death and reawakening of Dionysos, but we have in Orph., H. 53, a quite unambiguous expression of the real conception, acc. to which D. “rested in the house of Persephone”, and appears again in the upper world at the time of the trieteric festival when he ἐγείρει his κῶμον, εὐάζων κινῶν τε χορούς. We may be all the more certain that the same idea is to be attributed to the trieteric festival in Thrace, since the same belief exactly occurs again in the legend of the Thracian (Getic) god Zalmoxis (see [below])—he was believed to have disappeared into his infernal kingdom among the spirits and souls and to have made periodical returns to the world of the living. The reason why Dionysos, as worshipped both in Thracian and Greek trieteric festivals, stops for a time in the underworld of the souls, is clear enough: that too was his realm. We can now understand why it is that Dionysos is also ruler over the souls and can be called Ζαγρεὺς, Νυκτέλιος, Ἰσοδαίτης: i.e. he is simply given names of Hades himself (Plu., E ap. D. ix, p. 389 A). His real character of master of the souls and spirits (ἄναξ, ἥρως), as it had been originally in the Thracian cult, was thus preserved, in spite of much alteration in its Greek form, partly in Greek local cults, partly in the Orphic cult of Dionysos.—There is a legend which is based on a reminiscence of this periodic disappearance of Dionysos to the underworld, viz. the thoroughly Greek story of his descent on a single occasion into Hades in order to bring back Semele. Elsewhere his disappearance into the realm of the spirits gave rise to the legend of his escape and flight to the Muses; this was spoken of in the Agrionia at Chaironeia (Plu., Smp. 8 Praef.).
[29] Cf. Eur., Ba. 920 ff., 1020 f.
[30] ταυρόφθογγοι δ’ ὑπομυκῶνταί ποθεν ἐξ ἀφανοῦς φοβεροὶ μῖμοι: A. Ἠδωνοί describing the Thracian worship of D. (fr. 57). This was “certainly intended to increase for the participants in the festival the feeling of the god’s presence and thus to add to the wildness of their orgies”, as Rapp, Dionysosc., 19, very rightly observes. The invisible bellowing bull is the god himself. (Dionysos appears as a bull to the insane Pentheus: E., Ba. 920 ff.).—“The Batloka, a tribe in the Northern Transvaal, hold a yearly festival of the dead in which [272] hidden magicians make weird sounds with flutes which the people take for the voice of spirits; they say ‘Modimo is there’.” Schneider, Relig. d. Afrikan. Naturv. 143.
[31] The women taking part in the trieteric festival of the god play the part of the μαινάδες in his train; D.S. 4, 3, 3. Imitation of the Νύμφαι τε καὶ Πᾶνες καὶ Σειληνοὶ καὶ Σάτυροι in the βακχεία: Pl., Lg. 815 C. What was afterwards merely a piece of traditional ritual was originally without doubt a real hallucination of the κάτοχοι.—The idea that a throng, θίασος, of wood-spirits Satyrs and Seilenoi danced about the God must also have been common in the Thracian cult (συγχορευεταὶ Διονύσου, Ael., VH. iii, 40; ὁ τῷ Διονύσῳ παρεπόμενος ὄχλος, Ath. 362 E). σαυάδαι (obviously related to Σαβάζιος; cf. Usener, Götternamen, 44 f.) was the name given to οἱ σειληνοί by the Macedonians, who in the practice of Dionysos-worship were entirely dependent upon the Thracians. Hsch. s.v., cf. Hdt. viii, 138 fin.
[32] The βακχεύοντες τῷ θεῷ (i.e. Sabazios, Sabos) are called σάβοι καὶ σάβαι καὶ σαβάζιοι: Phot. σαβούς; cf. Eust., β 16, p. 1431, 46. Harp. (Phot.) s. σάβοι; Phot. παρασαβάζειν (p. 383, 16 Pors.); Sch. Ar., Av. 874. This identification of the god with his ecstatic worshippers belongs to the Phrygian cult of Kybele as well. Just as the goddess is called Κυβήβη so ὁ κατεχόμενος τῇ μητρὶ τῶν θεῶν is called Κύβηβος: Phot. Κύβηβος, κύβηβον, Eust. β 16. Thus the Greeks in calling the ecstatic worshippers of Bakchos by the name of the god were only adopting the conceptions and vocabulary of the Thracian religion of inspiration into their Dionysos-worship which was modelled on the Thracian cult. Βάκχος is their name for the ὀργιαστὴς τοῦ θεοῦ (etymologically connected is βαβάκτης [κραύγασος, ὅθεν καὶ Βάκχος Hsch.] a Phrygian word for the frenzied priest of Kybele: and therefore = Κύβηβος; cf. Ribbeck, Alazon, p. 86). It appears that the βάκχοι of Dionysos were often called by the old Thracian name σάβοι: σάβους καὶ νῦν ἔτι πολλοὶ τοὺς βάκχους καλοῦσιν, Plu., Smp. 4, 6, 2, p. 671 F (Λαφύστιοι is also a name given, after Διόνυσος Λαφύστιος, to the Βάκχοι who worship him: Lyc. 1237 with Sch.).
[33] Διόνυσος ὠμάδιος (Porph., Abs. ii, 55), ὠμηστής (Plu., Them. 13), λαφύστιος, ταυροφάγος (Soph. fr. 607 N.).—At other times we catch a glimpse of the idea that the god himself is the torn and devoured bull (just as in many ancient worships the proper victim of the god is the animal most homogeneous with him): this is evidently the most primitive form of ἐν-θουσιασμός, the primeval symbolism of a mystic worship that, like all mysticism, desires to take personal possession of the God.
[34] Dionysos himself also carries the thyrsos (as often in sculpture): E., Hyps. fr. 752, etc.
[35] See above, [n. 19] (ὁ βούκερως Ἴακχος, Soph., fr. 874, ταυρόκερως θεός, E., Ba. 100). The Greek Dionysos is often described as bull-shaped and horned: this, too, in imitation of Thracian belief. It is Sabazios whom they κεραστίαν παρεισάγουσι, D.S. 4, 4, 2; cf. 3, 64, 2. Ὕῃ ταυροκέρωτι, Euphor. fr. 14.—An allusion in D.S. 4, 4, 2, seems to suggest that the god, the μυριόμορφος, was also (like Attis) regarded as a herdsman. Something of the sort may be referred to in the unintelligible lines quoted by Cl. Al., Prot. ii, p. 14 P., apparently in connexion with the Sabazios mysteries. So Dionysos, too, is sometimes thought of as a βουκόλος: ποιμένι δ’ ἀγραύλων ταύρων, Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο υἱέι κισσοχίτωνι are words used of him in [Orph.] Lith. 260. Again, in imitation of the god himself his μύσται are βουκόλοι on the inscriptions from Asia Minor (Ins. Perg. ii, 485–8) and Thrace, of [273] which R. Schöll speaks, de commun. et coll. Graecis (Satura philol. Saupp.), p. 178 ff. βουκολικός occurs among the cult officials in the Iobakcheia at Athens: Ath. Mitth., 1894, p. 260, l. 122; archibucolus dei Liberi on inscriptions of the city of Rome. βουκόλος and βουκολεῖν occur in connexion with Bacchic worship as early as Kratinos, Aristoph., and Eurip.: νυκτιπόλου Ζαγρέως βούτας, E., Cret. fr. 472, 11 (acc. to Diels). See Crusius, Rh. M. 45, 266 f.; Dieterich de hymnis Orph. (Marb. 1891), p. 3 ff.
[36] The special flute-melodies going under the name of Olympos were called θεῖα ([Pl.] Min. 318 B); κατέχεσθαι ποιεῖ (Pl., Smp. 215 C); ὁμολογουμένως ποιεῖ τὰς ψυχὰς ἐνθουσιαστικάς (Arist., Pol. 1340a 10). Cic., Div. i, 114: ergo et ei quorum animi, spretis corporibus, evolant atque excurrunt foras, ardore aliquo incitati atque inflammati, cernunt illa profecto quae vaticinantes praenuntiant: multisque rebus inflammantur tales animi qui corporibus non inhaerent: ut ei qui sono quodam vocum et Phrygiis cantibus incitantur. An unmistakable description of what was meant by ἔκστασις and Korybantic frenzy (see [below]).
[37] i.e. those who are ἐνθουσιασμοῦ κατακώχιμοι, as Aristotle knew them; certain μανικαὶ διαθέσεις are known to Plato. Somewhat similar is the φύσις θειάζουσα which according to Demokritos [D. Chr. 36, 1] fr. 21 Diels, belongs to the inspired poet.
[38] The drunkenness of the Thracians and their ancient cultivation of the vine are well known. They even brewed beer from barley: Ath. 547 BC (cf. Hehn, Culturpflanzen, p. 121 E.T.). The prophetai (prophesying in “enthusiasm”) of a Thracian oracle prophesied plurimo mero sumpto, Aristot. ap. Macr. 1, 18, 1.—Even the women drank unmixed wine in Thrace: Pl., Lg. 637 E.
[39] Mela, 2, 21 (and from him Solin. 10, 5, p. 75, 16 Mom.) says of the Thracians epulantibus ubi super ignes quos circumsident quaedam semina ingesta sunt, similis ebrietati hilaritas ex nidore contingit (cf. [Plu.] de Flu. 3, 3). There can be no doubt that it was hemp-seed (κάνναβις) which had this effect. Hdt. iv, 74, says expressly that the Thracians knew hemp. It was thus with a sort of hashish that they intoxicated themselves (hashish is an extract of cannabis indica). The Scythians did something similar: Hdt. tells of their vapour-baths in tightly closed huts (iv, 75): they produced a smoke by laying hempseeds on red-hot stones and—though Hdt. does not say so—must necessarily have got into a state of wild intoxication. This may have been a religious performance. Drunkenness is generally regarded by savage tribes as a religiously inspired condition. Further, the Scythian practice has the most striking parallel in the use of “vapour-huts” among the North American Indians, in which case the religious intention is certain (see the account in Klemm, Culturg. ii, 175–8; J. G. Müller, Amerik. Urrelig. 92). Hdt. i, 202, also mentions intoxication from the fumes of certain “fruits” among the Massagetai; these last, after they had completely bemused themselves, stood up to dance and sing. The Thracians, too, may very well have used intoxication through hashish-fumes as a means of exciting themselves to their ecstatic religious dances.—The ancients were quite familiar with the practice of inhaling aromatic smoke to produce religious hallucinations: [Galen] ὅρ. ἰατρ. 187 (xix, p. 462 K) ἐνθουσιασμός ἐστι καθάπερ ἐξίστανταί τινες ἐπὶ (ὑπὸ?) τῶν ὑποθυμιωμένων ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς, <φάσματα (om. edd.)> ὁρῶντες ἢ τυμπάνων ἢ αὐλῶν ἢ συμβόλων (scr. κυμβάλων) ἀκούοντες; cf. odorum delenimento potest animus humanus externari, Apul., Ap. 43.—For the use of smoke in the [274] Korybantic ceremonies see [below].—The γαγάτης λίθος ὑποθυμιαθείς is useful as an ἐπιληπτικῶν ἔλεγχος (Dioscor. v, 145); it brings on the convulsions of the victim of ἱερὰ νόσος (epilepsy) [Orph.] L. 478 ff. (cf. further Damigeron, de Lap. 20, p. 179 Ab.; Plin., NH. 36, 141; and also Gal. xii, p. 203 K.).
[40] Polak, Persien, ii, 245 ff.—We have only to read the accounts derived from personal experience of the sensations and hallucinatory states accompanying hashish-smoking—such as those given, for instance, by Moreau (de Tours) Du hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale (Paris, 1845), esp. pp. 23 ff., 51 ff., 59 ff., 90, 147 ff., 151 ff., 369 ff.—to have a complete parallel to the condition which underlay Bacchic excitement. There, too, is the complete ἔκστασις of the spirit, a waking dream-state, an ὀλιγοχρόνιος μανία. It only requires the special tone and character given to the hallucinations and illusions by deep-rooted religious or fanciful conceptions—and the external machinery for cultivating such illusions—to make them an exact equivalent of the delirious condition of the real βάκχοι at the nightly festival of Dionysos. (The helpless state of impressionability to outward—e.g. musical—and inward influences is a marked feature of the intoxication and fantasia of hashish.) Other narcotics also have similar effects (Moreau, p. 184 ff.).
[41] Pl., Ion, 534 A (perhaps an allusion to the words of Aischines Socr. in the Ἀλκιβιάδης [Aristid. Rh. ii, 23 f. Dind.]).
[42] E., Ba. 142 f., 706 ff. (144 Συρίας δ’ ὡς λιβάνου καπνός).
[43] Anaesthesia of the Bakchai: ἐπὶ δὲ βοστρύχοις πῦρ ἔφερον οὐδ’ ἔκαιεν, Ba. 757 f.—suum Bacche non sentit saucia volnus, dum stupet Edonis exululata iugis, Ov., Tr. 4, 1, 41 f. qualis deo percussa maenas . . . atque expers sui volnus dedit nec sensit, Sen., Troad. 682 ff. Similar insensibility to pain (certainly not always feigned) was shown in their ekstasis by the self-wounding galli of Kybele, the priests and priestesses of Mâ (Tibull. 1, 6, 45 ff.)—something of the sort is reported of the prophets of Baal (1 Kings xviii, 28). See in general on the subject of anaesthesia and the ὀρθῶς κατεχόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν, Iamb., Myst. 3, 4, p. 110 Par. In the case of the shamans, the Indian Yogis, the dervishes, and the natives of North America the existence of such states of insensibility in religious excitement has been actually observed.
[44] κατεχόμενος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ (Pl., Men. 99 D; X., Sym. i, 10. κατεχόμενοι ὥσπερ αἱ βάκχαι, Pl., Ion, 534 A; Sym. 215 C. μανέντι τε καὶ κατασχομένῳ, Phdr. 244 E). ἡ δ’ ἀφρὸν ἐξιεῖσα καὶ διαστρόφους κόρας ἑλίσσουσ’, οὐ φρονοῦσ’ ἃ χρῆν φρονεῖν, ἐκ Βακχίου κατείχετο, E., Ba. 1122 ff. κάτοχοι above, [n. 24].
[45] ἔνθεός τε γίγνεται καὶ ἔκφρων καὶ ὁ νοῦς οὐκέτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἔνεστιν, Pl., Ion, 534 B (where it is applied to the inspired poet but properly belongs to the Bakchai).
[46] ἔκστασις, ἐξίστασθαι is often used of the inspired state. μαίνεσθαι, ἐνθουσιᾶν, ἔνθεον γίνεσθαι, ἐκστῆναι are all used in the same sense and apply to the “inspired” prophets (Βάκιδες, Σίβυλλαι) and the poets: Arist., Prob. 30, 1, p. 954a, 34–9. ἐξίσταται καὶ μαίνεται, Arist. HA. 6, 22, p. 577a, 12. The religious ὀργιασμοί, ἐκστάσιας ψυχᾶς ἐπάγοντι: Phintys ap. Stob., Fl. iv, 23, 61a, p. 593 H. ἔκστασις is a state in which the soul seems estranged from itself; when the οἰκεῖαι κινήσεις οὐκ ἐνοχλοῦνται ἀλλ’ ἀπορραπίζονται (Arist., Pa. Nat. 464a, 25). The word became weak and commonplace enough in later usage, but it was evidently meant, originally, to express the “exit” of the “soul” from its body. In the same way the phrase used of one who [275] goes off into a faint: τὸν δ’ ἔλιπεν ψυχή originally meant the same thing and was so understood, see above (chap. i, [n. 8]). The same idea occurs again in P. Mag. Par., l. 725, p. 63 Wessely: ὑπέκλυτος δ’ ἔσει τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ οὐκ ἐν σεαυτῷ ἔσει ὅταν σοι ἀποκρίνηται [the god conjured up].
[47] ἔκστασις ἐστιν ὀλιγοχρόνιος μανία [Galen] ὅρ. ἰατρ. 485 (xix, p. 462). μανίη ἔκστασίς ἐστι χρόνιος Aretaeus, Chr. Pass. 1, 6, p. 78 K.
[48] Διόνυσον μαινόλην ὀργιάζουσι βάκχοι, ὠμοφαγίᾳ τὴν ἱερομανίαν ἄγοντες, καὶ τελίσκουσι τὰς κρεωνομίας τῶν φόνων ἀνεστεμμένοι τοῖς ὄφεσιν ἐπολολύζοντες εὐάν, Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 11 P.
[49] The ἐνθουσιῶντες ἐκ θεοῦ τινος become like the god, λαμβάνουσι τὰ ἔθη καὶ τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα (τοῦ θεοῦ), καθόσον δυνατὸν θεοῦ ἀνθρώπῳ μετασχεῖν, Pl., Phdr. 253 A. More boldly ἑαυτῶν ἐκστάντας ὅλους ἐνιδρῦσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ ἐνθεάζειν, Procl. in Rp. ii, 108, 23 Kr.—οὐκ ἔκστασις ἅπλως οὕτως ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ (in its positive sense) ἐπὶ τὸ κρεῖττον ἀναγωγὴ καὶ μετάστασις, Iamb. Myst. 3, 7, p. 114, 9 Parth.
[50] ἔνθεοι γυναῖκες of the Bakchai, S. Ant. 963. αἱ Βάκχαι ὅταν ἔνθεοι γένωνται—Aesch. Socr. ap. Aristid., Rh. (ii, 23 Dind.). ἔνθεος ἤδε ἡ μανίη (the religious sort) Aret., p. 84 K. The essential meaning of ἔνθεον εἶναι (plenum esse deo) is clearly defined in Sch., E., Hip. 141: ἔνθεοι λέγονται οἱ ὑπὸ φάσματός τινος ἀφαιρεθέντες τὸν νοῦν, καὶ ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ φασματοποιοῦ κατεχόμενοι καὶ τὰ δοκοῦντα κείνῳ ποιοῦντες. The ἔνθεος is completely in the power of the god; the god speaks and acts through him. The ἔνθεος has lost his consciousness of himself; like the θεῖοι ἄνδρες (which phrase in Plato has the same meaning as ἔνθεοι ἄνδρες) esp. the θεομάντεις, λέγουσι μὲν ἀληθῆ καὶ πολλά, ἴσασι δ’ οὐδὲν ὧν λέγουσι, Pl., Men. 99 C. (Philo, Spec. Leg. ii, p. 343 M., says of the inspired prophet: ἐνθουσιᾷ γεγονὼς ἐν ἀγνοίᾳ, μετανισταμένου μὲν τοῦ λογισμοῦ . . . ἐπιπεφοιτηκότος δὲ καὶ ἐνῳκηκότος τοῦ θείου πνεύματος καὶ πᾶσαν τῆς φώνης ὀργανοποιΐαν κρούοντος κτλ.; cf. Iamb., Myst. 3, 4, p. 109.)
[51] ἔνθεοι μάντεις (Bakides, Sibyllai) Arist., Prb. 30, 2, 954a, 37. θεομάντεις Pl., Men. ad fin. μαντικὴ κατὰ τὸ ἔνθεον, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἐνθεαστικόν [Plu.] Plac. Phil. 5, 1, 1 [Dox., p. 415].
[52] μάντις δ’ ὁ δαίμων ὅδε (Dionysos)· τὸ γὰρ βακχεύσιμον καὶ τὸ μανιῶδες μαντικὴν πολλὴν ἔχει· ὅταν γὰρ ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὸ σῶμ’ ἔλθῃ πολύς, λέγειν τὸ μέλλον τοὺς μεμηνότας ποιεῖ, E., Ba. 298 ff. Here the inner relationship of the inspiration mantikê and the “possession” which took place in ecstatic frenzy is expressed with all possible clearness (drunkenness is surely not referred to!). This is how Plu., Smp. 7, 10, p. 716 B, also understood Eur. Prophesying Mainads: μαινάδας θυοσκόους E., Ba. 224—οὐδεὶς ἔννους ἐφάπτεται μαντικῆς ἐνθέου καὶ ἀληθοῦς, ἀλλ’ ἢ καθ’ ὕπνον τὴν τῆς φρονήσεως πεδηθεὶς δύναμιν ἢ διὰ νόσον ἢ διά τινα ἐνθουσιασμὸν παραλλάξας, Pl., Ti. 71 E. νοσήματα μαντικὰ ἢ ἐνθουσιαστικά make inspired μάντεις what they are: Arist. Prob. 954a, 35. Such mantikê takes place in the state of furor, cum a corpore animus abstractus divino instinctu concitatur, Cic., Div. i, 66. A famous case is that of Kassandra from whom the deus inclusus corpore humano, non iam Cassandra loquitur, § 67; cf. the Sibyl who prophesies μαινομένῳ στόματι (Heraclit. fr. 12 By. = 92 D.) and the Pythia at Delphi prophesying in a state of μανία. For the prophecy of Korybantic Phrygians possessed and “frenzied”, see Arrian ap. Eust., on D.P. 809.
[53] Hdt. vii, 111 (for Hdt. the Βησσοί seem to be a division, perhaps a clan, of the Satrai. Polyb., Strabo, Pliny, Dio C., and others know them as an independent Thracian tribe): πρόμαντις γυνὴ χρέουσα κατάπερ ἐν Δελφοῖσι—which means that she prophesied in ecstasy, for that is what the Pythia at Delphi did. (See Sch. Ar., Plut. 39; [276] Plu., Def. Or. 51, p. 438 B. Lucan vi, 166 ff., clearly describes the phenomena supposed to attend their religious ekstasis: artus Phoebados irrupit Paean, mentemque priorem expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere iussit pectore. bacchatur demens aliena, etc.)
[54] ὁ Θρῃξὶ μάντις Διόνυσος, E., Hec. 1267. Rhesos dwelling in Mt. Pangaios is Βάκχου προφήτης, Rh. 972. ἀφικέσθαι τοῖς Λειβηθρίοις παρὰ τοῦ Διονύσου μάντευμα ἐκ Θρᾴκης, Paus. 9, 30, 9. Aristoteles qui Theologumena scripsit, apud Ligyreos (?) ait in Thracia esse adytum Libero consecratum, ex quo redduntur oracula. Macr. 1, 18, 1. The wife of Spartacus, herself a Thracian, was μαντική τε καὶ κάτοχος τοῖς περὶ τῶν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς, Plu., Crass. 8. Octavian in Thrace consulted in Liberi patris luco barbara caerimonia, i.e. an oracle: Suet., Oct. 94. Even in 11 B.C. the Bessoi still had a ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διονύσου, Vologeses, who by means of prophesyings (πολλὰ θείασας) and τῇ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ δόξῃ stirred up his people to rebel against the Odrysai: D.C. 54, 34, 5. In 29 B.C. M. Crassus had handed over to the Odrysai the piece of land occupied by the Bessoi ἐν ᾗ καὶ τὸν θεὸν ἀγάλλουσι, D.C. 51, 25, 5.—The spirit of the old Thracian ecstatic cult reappeared in the character of the Bacchic worship introduced from Greece into Italy whose excesses (in 186 B.C.) are narrated by Livy: 39, 8 ff.: among these being viros velut mente capta cum iactatione fanatica corporis vaticinari: 39, 13, 12.
[55] Compare, for example, what we are told of the religious dances of the Ostiaks (Erman, Travels in Siberia, ii, 45 f., E. T., Cooley), the Haokah dance of the Dakota, the “medicine-dance” of the Winnebago in North America (Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii, 487 ff., 286 ff.), the dance of voodoo negroes in Haiti (Nouv. annales des voyages, 1858, iii, p. 90 ff.). For the violent religious dances of the people in ancient Peru see Müller, Amerik. Urrelig. 385; in Australia, R. Brough-Smith, Aborigines of Victoria, i, 166 ff. (1878). Among the Veddas of Ceylon there was a dance of the “devil’s priests” (called Kattadias) dressed up as demons: see Tennent, Ceylon, i, 540 f.; ii, 442.—In antiquity the following have the closest relationship to the ecstatic cult of the Thracians: the dance festivals in honour of the “Syrian Goddess”, of the Kappadocian Mâ, of the Phrygian Mountain Mother, and of Attis (the last having much the same origin as the Thracian festival, but being more strongly affected by Semitic influences, and perhaps by the religious practices of the prehistoric inhabitants of Asia Minor). Besides these we may remember the account given by Poseidonios ap. Strabo, 198, D.P. 570 ff., of the excited nocturnal festival celebrated in honour of “Dionysos” in an island at the mouth of the Loire by the women of the Namnites (Samnites, Amnites) Διονύσῳ κατεχόμεναι in the wildest delirium (λύττα).
[56] This is regularly the meaning of such excesses practised by “magicians”. The shaman (with his “soul”) voyages out into the spirit-world; see the remarkably vivid account of Radloff, Siberien, ii, 1–67; and also Erman, Zschr. f. Ethnologie, ii, 324 ff.; A. Krause, Tlinkitindianer, p. 294 ff., 1885. So does the Lapp magician (Knud Leem, Lappen in Finmarken [E.T. in Pinkerton’s Voyages]). The Angekok enters into communion with his Torngak (Cranz, Hist. of Greenland, i, p. 194, E.T., 1820); the Butio with the Zemen (Müller, Amerik. Urrelig., 191 f.); the Piajes with the spirits (Müller, 217). Thus, too, communication with the divine “grandfather” of the people is established by means of dances, etc., among the Abipones (Dobrizhoffer, Abipones, ii, 64, E.T.). The expulsion of the soul to visit the spirit-world is also practised (in their convulsions) by the [277] magicians of the North American Indians, the people of the Pacific Islands (Tylor, ii, 133), etc. Such practices start out from a commonly held conception of the nature of body and soul and of their relations with the unseen. The magicians believe “that in their ecstatic condition they can break through the barrier between this world and the next”, Müller 397. To facilitate this process they employ the various means alluded to of stimulating their senses.
[57] The most remarkable case of this is provided by the history of a religious sect of our own day widely spread in Russia, who call themselves “the Christs”, i.e. sons of God. The sect was founded by a holy man named Philippov in whose body God one day took up his abode; after which the man spoke as the living God himself and gave commandments. The sect particularly stood for the idea that the divine dwells in mankind, Christ in men and Mary in women, and that the sense of their presence can be awakened in men by the action of the Holy Ghost, through the force of strong belief, by saintliness and by religious ecstasy. To produce the ecstasy dances are held in common. About midnight, after long prayers, hymns, and religious addresses, the participators in the secret festival, both men and women, dressed in strange costumes begin to dance. Soon the ranks and circles of the dancers and singers break up; individuals begin to turn round and round, revolving on their own axis with incredible speed, balancing meanwhile on their heels. The excitement of the dancing and leaping crowd grows continually greater. Finally one of them calls out “He comes; He is near—the Holy Ghost”. The wildest ecstasy takes hold of every one. Details may be found in N. Tsakni’s La Russie sectaire, p. 63 ff. (cf. what is said in the same work, p. 80 ff., of the religious dances of the Skopzes, and p. 119 f. of the sect of the “Leapers”).—All this is true Bacchanalia christiana and therefore mentioned here.
[58] e.g. Mariner, Tonga Islanders, i, 108 (1817); Wrangel, Reise in Siberien, i, 286 (i, 267 f., French trans.); Radloff, Siberien, ii, 58. Even the respectable Cranz, whose own point of view made it impossible for him to appreciate properly the Angekok practices so clearly observed by him, admits that many of them really saw visions that suggested “something supernatural” to them: Hist. of Greenland, p. 197 E.T. Something similar is said about ecstatically dancing dervishes by Lane, Modern Egyptians, ii, 197.
[59] Magicians called by the name of the god (Keebet) among the Abipones: Dobrizhoffer, ii, 248. Similar cases elsewhere: Müller, 77. In Tahiti the person inspired by the god so long as the “inspiration” lasted (several days sometimes) was himself called “god” or given the name of some particular god: Waitz, Anthropol. vi, 383. In the case of an African tribe dwelling on the banks of Lake Nyanza the chief spirit sometimes takes temporary possession of one of the magicians (man or woman) who then bears the name of the spirit: Schneider, Relig. d. Afrik. Naturv. 151. Sometimes the identity of the magician with the god is expressed by the wearing of the god’s distinguishing dress and imitation of his outward appearance (in the manner of the Thracian Βάκχοι); cf. the devil-dancers in Ceylon, etc.
[60] When it acquires a more philosophical temper mysticism seeks its unification with the highest (the ἔλλαμψις τῆς φύσεως τῆς πρώτης) more by means of the completest passivity of mind and body. It employs the εἰς αὑτὴν ξυλλέγεσθαι καὶ ἀθροίζεσθαι of the soul (Plato), or its withdrawal from all that is finite and particular (the recojimiento of the Spanish mystics). The profoundest quietude of spirit brings [278] about the unification with the One behind all multiplicity; cf. the Neoplatonic mystics, the Buddhists, etc. Sometimes both are found together; absorption and passivity of the spirit side by side with wild excitement. Both methods were practised by the Persian Sufis. Chardin, Voyage en Perse, iv, 458 (cd. Langlés) says of them, cependant ils se servent plus communément du chant de la danse et de la musique, disant qu’ils produisent plus sûrement leur extase. It may be that the cult of religious exaltation is always the real origin of these ecstatic states. Though the cult sometimes falls into decay itself, its offspring the ἔκστασις survives.
[61] In the language of these mystics the words mean: he knows that the passionate longing for reunion with God, the Soul of the universe, breaks down the individual personality and its limitations—“for where Love awakes to life the Self dies, that gloomy tyrant.”
[62] Γέται οἱ ἀθανατίζοντες, Hdt. Iv, 93–4 (ἀπαθανατίζοντες, Plato and others, see Wesseling on D.S. i, p. 105, 32).
[63] . . . οὐδένα ἄλλον θεὸν νομίζοντες εἰ μὴ τὸν σφέτερον (the Zalmoxis just mentioned) Hdt. iv, 94 fin. There we are told that the Getai πρὸς βροντήν τε καὶ ἀστραπὴν τοξεύοντες ἄνω ἀπειλεῦσι τῷ θεῷ, οὐδένα κτλ. If it were true (as most people seem to think) that the god (ὁ θεός) threatened by the Getai during thunder was their own god Zalmoxis, then it certainly is difficult, or, indeed, impossible, to understand the point of explaining the threatening of this god by the statement that they hold him for the only true god. The truth is that the τῷ θεῷ refers simply to the “sky” during a thunderstorm. The usage is common in Greek and is only transferred to the Getai by a rather awkward extension. This thundering θεός is not Zalmoxis at all (hence Z. is not as some have thought a “sky-god”). The Getai regarded Zalmoxis as the only god: the Thunderer is no real god to them (at the most a bad demon or a magician or something of the kind). To show that they are not afraid of him they shoot arrows against him, probably in the hope of breaking the thundercloud. (Parallels in other countries: Grimm, p. 1088; Dobrizhoffer, ii, 78. In India, Oldenberg, 491–4. Excitement during an eclipse of the moon: Weissenborn on Livy, 26, 5, 9. Reminiscence of such customs in the myth of Herakles: [Apollod.] 2, 5, 10, 5. From Hdt. by indirect channels comes Isig., Mir. 42 [p. 162 West.]; cf. also the account of D.C. 59, 28, 6 about Caligula.—Pallad., RR. i, 35 [contra grandinem].)
[64] ἀθανατίζουσι δὲ τόνδε τὸν τρόπον . . . οὔτε ἀποθνήσκειν ἑωυτοὺς νομίζουσι, ἰέναι τε τὸν ἀπολλύμενον παρὰ Ζάλμοξιν δαίμονα (οἱ δὲ αὐτῶν τὸν αὐτὸν τοῦτον οὐνομάζουσι Γεβελέϊζιν), Hdt. iv, 94. Here, as regularly in Greek use of the words, we must not understand by ἀθάνατον εἶναι a mere shadowy (if timeless) survival of the soul after death as in the Homeric Hades. Such a belief if it had been held by the Getai would not have struck Hdt. or his readers as remarkable in the slightest degree. It must therefore imply an unending and fully conscious existence, in this last respect resembling the life on earth.
[65] ἀθανατίζουσι δὲ καὶ Τέριζοι (τερετιζοι Phot.) καὶ Κρόβυζοι καὶ τοὺς ἀποθανόντας ὡς Ζάλμοξίν φασιν οἴχεσθαι, Phot. Suid., EM. Ζάμολξις. The Krobyzoi are a well-known Thracian stock. The Terizoi are not elsewhere mentioned; perhaps they may be placed in the neighbourhood of Τίριστις, Τίριξις ἄκρα = C. Kaliakra (cf. C. Müller on Arrian, P. Eux. 35); there we also hear of a Τίριστις πόλις, Ptolem. With this Tomaschek also agrees (D. alten Thraker, Ber. Wien. Ak.> 128, iv, p. 97). In this case they would be neighbours of the Krobyzoi. [279]
[66] οὐκ ἀποθνῄσκειν ἀλλὰ μετοικίζεσθαι νομίζοντες is what we hear of the Getai in Julian, Caes. 327 D. animas (putant) non extingui sed ad beatiora transire, Mela, ii, 18.
[67] . . . τοὺς ἀποθανόντας ὡς Ζάλμοξίν φασιν οἴχεσθαι, ἥξειν δὲ αὖθις. καὶ ταῦτα ἀεὶ νομίζουσιν ἀληθεύειν. θύουσι δὲ καὶ εὐωχοῦνται ὡς αὔθις ἥξοντος τοῦ ἀποθανόντος, Phot. Suid., EM. Ζάμολξις. Mela, ii, 18: alii (among the Thracians) redituras putant animas obeuntium.
[68] Hdt. iv, 95, Zalmoxis, a slave of Pythagoras in Samos, is set free and comes back a rich man to his poverty-stricken country. He collects together the leading men of the race in a room, where he entertains them and seeks to persuade them of the belief that neither he nor they nor their descendants will die but that they will all come after death to a place where they will enjoy all good things in abundance. Thereupon he withdraws into a secret underground chamber and lives there for three years. In the fourth year he comes to light again and “the Thracians are persuaded of the truth of what Zalmoxis had told them.” This implies—though Hdt. omits to say so, and so does [Hellan.] π. νομ. βαρβ. (following Hdt.) ap. Phot., etc., s. Ζάμολξις—that he had also promised that he and his adherents should return to earth alive after the expiry of a definite period (three years). That such a belief in the “return” of the dead was actually held by the Thracians is clear enough from the quotations given in the last [note]. The story of Zalmoxis’ trick (which was perhaps intended humorously by its inventors) seemed suspicious even to Hdt., but it is not pure invention (any more than the analogous stories about Pythagoras, Trophonios, and later Empedotimos): it is rather a euhemerist version of a miraculous legend. The disappearance of Zalmoxis into a subterranean chamber is a distortion of the belief in his permanent abode in a hollow mountain-side, an ἀντρῶδές τι χώριον in Mt. Kogaionon of which Str. 298 speaks plainly enough. In that mountain the god dwells; just as Rhesos κρυπτὸς ἐν ἄντροις τῆς ὑπαργύρου χθονός of Mt. Pangaios, dwells there as an ἀνθρωποδαίμων [E.], Rh. 970; cf. chap. iv, [n. 36]. He lives there undying like the Βάκχου προφήτης, who has become a god, to whom the tragedy obscurely alludes in ll. 972 f. as living on Mt. Pangaios (this may perhaps refer to Lykourgos—see G. Hermann, Op. v, 23 f.—surely not to Orpheus as Maass, Orpheus, p. 68 [1895], suggests). The obvious parallel is Amphiaraos and Trophonios in their caves, and Orig., Cels. iii, 34 (see above, chap. iii, [n. 13]), puts them and Zalmoxis together. We may safely complete Hdt.’s account of how the ἀπολλύμενοι of the Getai go away and have everlasting life παρὰ Ζάλμοξιν δαίμονα (iv, 94), by saying that they reach this same hollow mountain, a subterranean place of delight where they dwell with the god. Mnaseas compares Zalmoxis with Kronos (FHG.; Phot. Suid. EM., as before) and the similarity doubtless resides in the fact that both rule over the spirits of the blest in another world. But besides this the Thracian belief must also have included the idea of a periodical appearance of the god in the upper world. Hdt.’s story of the trick practised by Zalmoxis shows this (the return of the souls to which the story also points, is a sort of counterpart of this). Are we to suppose that the ἐπιφάνεια of the god was expected after the expiry of three years (just as it was after two years in the Dionysos festival; see above, [n. 27])? We do not know whether these Thracian tribes celebrated the ἐπιφάνεια of the god with “enthusiastic” worship. Such an element in the cult of Zalmoxis seems to be suggested by the fact that we hear of “physicians of Zalmoxis” (Pl., Charm. 156 D) and of mantikê—which is generally closely bound up with ἰατρική—[280] in the cult of this god. This must be the meaning of calling Zalm. himself μάντις: Str. 762, 297; cf. also the otherwise valueless account of Ant. Diog. ap. Porph. VP. 14–15. Finally, the enthusiastic character of the cult seems to be implied in the identifying of the priest with the god by the Getai (as in the similar cases mentioned above, notes [32] and [59]). Thus, the high priest is himself called “god”: Str. 298 (he has authority over both king and state: cf. the ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διονύσου among the Bessoi, above, [n. 53]; cf. Jordanes, Get. 71). This made it easy for the “god” Zalmoxis, whom even Hdt. quite rightly regarded as δαίμων τις Γέτῃσι ἐπιχώριος (iv, 96) to be metamorphosed into a man of the historical past (he is this in D.S. 1, 94, 2; Str. vii, 297; cf. Jordanes, Get. 39). If the contemporary priest was called “god” it might naturally be concluded that the “god” Zalmoxis was once only a priest too.
[69] Hermip. ap. Jos., Ap. i, 22.
[70] In E., Hec. (1265 ff.) the Thracian Polymestor prophecies to Hekabe that she shall become a dog after her death, πύρσ’ ἔχουσα δέργματα. Hekabe asks πῶς δ’ οἶσθα μορφῆς τῆς ἐμῆς μετάστασιν; Pol.: ὁ Θρῃξὶ μάντις εἶπε Διόνυσος τάδε. It looks as if Eur. in this allusion to a belief in metempsychosis was intending to give a realistic touch of Thracian national character. He was well informed in such matters.
[71] The connexion between Thracian Dionysos-worship and the belief in immortality and cult of the dead is vouched for, acc. to Rapp, Dionysosc. 15 ff., by the insc. found by Heuzey in Thracian districts. An epitaph found at Doxato (near Philippi) says of one who has died young (ll. 12 ff.): reparatus vivis in Elysiis. Sic placitum est divis aeterna vivere forma qui bene de supero lumine sit meritus.—nunc seu te Bromio signatae (see Anrich, Antike Mysterienwesen, 123 f.) mystides ad se florigero in prato congregem uti Satyrum, sive canistriferae poscunt sibi Naïdes aeque, qui ducibus taedis agmina festa trahas . . . (CIL. iii, 686). It is true that this remarkable fantasy contains nothing directly alluding to specifically Thracian worship. On the other hand this is certainly suggested and both the Thracian god and his connexion with a cult of the dead is implied in the use of the local cult-title of Dionysos in an offering made by Bythos and Rufus to the thiasi Liberi patris Tasibasteni of 300 denarii ex quorum reditu annuo rosalibus (and so at the yearly festival of the dead) ad monimentum eorum vescentur. CIL. iii, 703; cf. 704. Even the conjunction by E., Hec. 1265 ff., of the belief in palingenesia with the oracle of the Thracian Dionysos seems to imply a connexion between that belief and the cult of Dionysos.
[72] πολλοὶ μὲν ναρθηκοφόροι, παῦροι δέ τε Βάκχοι ap. Pl., Phd. 69 C. The strict meaning of this Orphic verse (Lob., Agl. 813 ff.) is that out of the multitudes who take part in the Bacchic festival only a few have any real right to call themselves by the name of the god—as having become one with him through their ecstasy and exaltation. A special morbid state was necessary for that: the same state which in other circumstances made the real shamans, Piajes, etc.
[73] Even when their ἔκστασις had ceased the ecstatic worshippers still regarded as real the visions which they had enjoyed in that condition: οἷον συνέβη Ἀντιφέροντι τῷ Ὠρείτῃ καὶ ἄλλοις ἐξισταμένοις. τὰ γὰρ φαντάσματα ἔλεγον ὡς γενόμενα καὶ ὡς μνημονεύοντες, Arist. π. μνήμης, 1, p. 451a, 8. “Magicians who had subsequently been converted to Christianity were still convinced of the reality of their earlier visions: they thought they had seen something perfectly real.” [281] Müller, Amerik. Urrelig. 80. Add: Tylor, ii, 131; Cranz, Greenland, p. 197.
[74] See above, chap. i, [p. 7] ff.
[75] Hdt. v, 4 (speaking of the Τραυσοί. Hsch. has the same, s.v. Τραυσός). The story was then added to the regular list of νόμιμα βαρβαρικά used for illustrating the variability of νόμος. It was soon after told of the Κρόβυζοι: Isig., Mir. 27 (they were also regarded as strong adherents of a belief in immortality; see above, [n. 65]); then of the Καυσιανοί: Nic. Dam., Mir. 18 West. Zenob., Prov. v, 25, p. 128, 5 L.-Schn. (Καύσιοι, Καυσιανοί). It occurs again in a fragment of some collection of νόμιμα βαρβαρικά written before the third century (there is no reason to ascribe it to Aristotle) given by Mahaffy, On the Flinders Petrie Papyri, Transcript., p. 29: Καυσιανοῖς δὲ νόμιμον τοὺς μὲν γιγνομένους θρηνεῖν τοὺς δὲ τελευτῶντας εὐδαιμονίζειν ὡς πολλῶν κακῶν ἀναπεπαυμένους (κακῶν as above or πόνῶν must be supplied to fill the gap; cf. the well-known fragment of Eur. Cresph.: ἐχρῆν γὰρ ἡμᾶς . . . fr. 449, which perhaps alludes to Hdt.’s account). It is told of Thracians in general, or of some tribe not particularly named, by S. E., P. iii, 232; Val. Max. 2, 6, 12 (both clearly drawing on collections of νόμιμα βαρβαρικά); Mela, ii, 18; AP. ix, 111 (Archias). There were thus three sources of the story: Besides Hdt.’s, two in which either the Krobyzoi or the Kausianoi were named as the Thracian tribe instead of Hdt.’s Trausoi.
[76] ὅσων κακῶν ἐξαπαλλαχθεὶς ἔστι ἐν πάσῃ εὐδαιμονίῃ, Hdt. v, 4.
[77] See Jul., Caes. 327 D, Mela, ii, 18. Likewise of the Καυσιανοί in Anon. ap. Mahaffy (see [n. 75]), p. 29, 10–12. Iamb., VP. 173: as a result of the (Pythagorean) doctrine of immortality taught by Zalmoxis ἔτι καὶ νῦν οἱ Γαλάται (because they had been instructed by Zalm.; from a similar fabulous source comes Hippol., RH. i, 2, p. 14, 93 D.-S.) καὶ οἱ Τράλεις καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν βαρβάρων τοὺς αὑτῶν υἱοὺς πείθουσιν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι φθαρῆναι τὴν ψυχήν . . . καὶ ὅτι τὸν θάνατον οὐ φοβητέον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοὺς κινδύνους εὐρώστως ἑκτέον.—Τράλλεις Scaliger for the MS. τραλις, rightly as far as sense goes. But we find the name ΤΡΑΛΕIΣ given to the Pergamene mercenaries called after the Thracian tribes: Ins. Perg. i, n. 13, 23, 59. These had already served as infantry in 331 in the army of Alexander the Great: D.S. 17, 65, 1; cf. Hsch. Τραλλεῖς. They were a south Thracian tribe: Plu., Ages. 16; Ap. Lac. 42; Str. 649 (where read Τραλλέων); Tralli Thraeces, Liv. 38, 21, 2, who elsewhere calls them Illyriorum genus, 27, 32, 4; 31, 35, 1. It appears that a branch of the Thracian tribe of the Tralles reached Illyria in their wanderings; there Theopompos, too, knew them: Steph. Byz. Τραλλία; cf. also s. vv. Βῆγις, Βόλουρος (cf. Tomaschek, Sitzb. Wien. Ak., 128, iv, p. 56 f.).
[78] Appetitus maximus mortis, Mart. Cap. 6, 656. The Thracians esp. are meant by Galen when he speaks of βαρβάρων ἐνίοις who entertained the belief ὅτι τὸ ἀποθνήσκειν ἐστὶ καλόν (xix, p. 704 K).
CHAPTER IX
DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE
ITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM
The Greeks received from the Thracians and assimilated to their own purposes the worship of Dionysos, just as, in all probability, they received the personality and worship of Ares and the Muses. Of this assimilation we cannot give any further particulars; it took place in a period lying before the beginnings of historical tradition. In this period a multiplicity of separate tendencies and conceptions, freely mingled with features borrowed from foreign creeds, were welded together to form the religion of Greece.
Homer is already acquainted with the fanatical worship of Dionysos; the god is called by the name under which Greek worshippers made themselves familiar with the stranger.[1] But in Homer, Dionysos appears only once or twice for a moment in the background. He is not the bountiful giver of wine; he does not belong to the Round Table of the great gods assembled on Olympos. Nowhere in the story told in either of the Homeric poems does he influence the life and destiny of human beings. There is no need to seek far for the reason of Dionysos’ subordinate position in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer’s silence makes it quite plain that at that time the Thracian god had not yet emerged from a position of insignificance or merely local importance in the life and faith of Greece. Nor is this hard to understand; the cult of Dionysos only gradually won recognition in Greece. Many legends tell of the battles that had to be fought by the new worship and of the opposition that met the invader. We hear how the Dionysiac frenzy and the ekstasis of the Dionysiac dance-festival took possession of the whole female population of many districts of Central Greece and the Peloponnese.[2] Sometimes a few women would venture to join the wandering choruses of wild Bacchants who danced upon the mountain tops; here and there the king of the land would oppose the progress of this tumultuous worship. Such stories are told of the daughters of Minyas in Orchomenos, of Proitos in Tiryns, of King Pentheus at Thebes, and Perseus at Argos;[3] their opposition to the Dionysiac form of worship, occurring in [283] reality at no precise date, assumed a deceptive distinctness in the artificial systems of the mythologists and developed the character of historical events. In reality what we are told of these individuals—how the opponents of Dionysos themselves fell into even wilder frenzy and in Bacchic delirium slew and tore in pieces their own children instead of the victim-animal, or (as in the case of Pentheus) became themselves the victim slain and torn in pieces by the raging women—all this belongs to the class of ætiological myth. They are legends in which special features of worship (for example, the existing or dimly remembered sacrifice of human beings at the feasts of Dionysos) are provided with a mythical prototype in the supposed historical past of mythology, and thus receive their justification.[4] Still, there remains a substratum of historical fact underlying such stories. They all presuppose that the cult of Dionysos arrived from abroad and entered into Greece as something foreign. This presupposition notoriously corresponds to the actual facts of the case, and we are bound to assume that the account which they immediately proceed to give of the violent opposition which this cult, and only this cult, met with in many parts of Greece, is not pure fiction.[5] We are obliged to recognize that such stories preserved a trace of real historical memory expressed in the one form which was invariably assumed by the earliest Greek tradition, namely mythology, in which all the accidents and varieties of earthly experience were condensed into types of universal applicability.
It was then not without opposition, it appears, that the worship of Dionysos, descending from the north into Boeotia, spread from thence to the Peloponnese and at an early period invaded even some of the islands as well. In truth, even if we had no evidence at all on the point, we should have expected the Greeks to feel a profound repugnance to this disorderly and tumultuous Thracian worship; a deep-seated instinct must in their case have resisted such extravagance of emotional excitement and refused to lose itself in the limitless abyss of mere feeling. This unchecked roaming over the mountain sides in nocturnal revelry might be suitable enough for Thracian women-folk, but respectable Greek citizens could not give themselves up to such things without a struggle-—without, indeed, a break with all inherited propriety and decorum.[6] It seems to have been the women who were the first to give in to the invading worship,[7] carried away in a real frenzy of inspired enthusiasm, and the new cult may really have owed its first success chiefly to them. What we are told of the irresistible progress and widespread success[8] of the [284] Bacchic dance-worship and its exaltation reminds us of the phenomena which have attended similar religious epidemics such as have in more recent times occasionally burst out and overflowed whole countries. We may in particular recall to mind the accounts which we have of the violent and widespread dance-madness which, soon after the severe mental and physical shock suffered by Europe in the Black Death of the fourteenth century, broke out on the Rhine and for centuries could not be entirely stamped out. Those who were attacked by the fever were driven by an irresistible impulse to dance. The bystanders, in convulsions of sympathetic and imitative fury joined in the whirling dance themselves. Thus the malady was spread by contagion, and soon whole companies of men, women, and girls, wandered dancing through the country. In spite of the insufficiency of the surviving records, the religious character of this dance-enthusiasm is unmistakably apparent. The Church regarded it as a “heresy”. The dancers called upon the name of St. John or of “certain demons”; hallucinations and visions of a religious nature accompanied their ecstasies.[9] Can it have been another such popular religious malady which attacked Greece—perhaps in the train of the disturbance of spiritual equilibrium caused by the destructive migrations which take their name from the Dorians? The circumstances of the time must have predisposed men’s minds in that direction and made them ready to accept the Thracian Dionysos and his enthusiastic dance-worship. In any case this invasion did not, like its mediæval counterpart, break down by coming into conflict with a well-established religion and an exclusive ecclesiastical organization of a very different temper from its own. In the deceptive twilight of myth we can only dimly discern the arrival and progress of the Dionysiac religion in Greece. But so much at least is evident: the Bacchic cult, though it had to overcome many obstacles, at last established itself in Greece and triumphantly overran both mainland and islands, until in the course of time it obtained a profound and far-reaching importance in Greek life of which Homer could scarcely give a hint.