Poems on Sappho or on Phaon: Charles Kingsley, Sappho; Buchanan, Sappho on the Leucadian Rock; Landor,—Sappho, Alcæus, Anacreon, and Phaon; Frederick Tennyson, Kleïs or the Return (in the Isles of Greece). See also Lyly's amusing prose drama, Sappho and Phao.
109. Textual. Mount Cyllene: between Arcadia and Achæa. Pierian Mountains: in Macedonia, directly north of Thessaly; the birthplace of the Muses. Pylos: an ancient city of Elis.
Interpretative. On the supposition that the herds of Apollo are the bright rays of the sun, a plausible physical explanation of the relations of Mercury (Hermes) to Apollo is the following from Max Müller: "Hermes is the god of the twilight, who betrays his equivocal nature by stealing, though only in fun, the herds of Apollo, but restoring them without the violent combat that (in the analogous Indian story) is waged for the herds between Indra, the bright god, and Vala, the robber. In India the dawn brings the light; in Greece the twilight itself is supposed to have stolen it, or to hold back the light, and Hermes, the twilight, surrenders the booty when challenged by the sun-god Apollo" (Lect. on Lang., 2 Ser., 521-522). Hermes is connected by Professor Müller with the Vedic god Sarameya, son of the twilight. Mercury, or Hermes, as morning or as evening twilight, loves the Dew, is herald of the gods, is spy of the night, is sender of sleep and dreams, is accompanied by the cock, herald of dawn, is the guide of the departed on their last journey. To the conception of twilight, Cox adds that of motion, and explains Hermes as the air in motion that springs up with the dawn, gains rapidly in force, sweeps before it the clouds (here the cattle of Apollo), makes soft music through the trees (lyre), etc. Other theorists make Hermes the Divine Activity, the god of the ether, of clouds, of storm, etc. Though the explanations of Professor Müller and the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox are more satisfactory here than usual, Roscher's the swift wind is scientifically preferable.
Illustrative. See Shelley, Homeric Hymn to Mercury, on which the text of this section is based, and passages in Prometheus Unbound; Keats, Ode to Maia.
In Art. The intent of the disguise in Fig. 81 (text) is to deceive Demeter with a sham sacrifice.
110-112. Textual. See Table E, for Bacchus, Pentheus, etc. Nysa "has been identified as a mountain in Thrace, in Bœotia, in Arabia, India, Libya; and Naxos, as a town in Caria or the Caucasus, and as an island in the Nile." Thebes: the capital of Bœotia. Mæonia: Lydia, in Asia Minor. Dia: Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades Islands in the Ægean. Mount Cithæron: in Bœotia. The Thyrsus was a wand, wreathed with ivy and surmounted by a pine cone, carried by Bacchus and his votaries. Mænads and Bacchantes were female followers of Bacchus. Bacchanal is a general term for his devotees.
Interpretative. "Bacchus (Dionysus) is regarded by many as the spiritual form of the new vernal life, the sap and pulse of vegetation and of the new-born year, especially as manifest in the vine and juice of the grape."—Lang, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 221 (from Preller 1, 554). The Hyades (rain-stars), that nurtured the deity, perhaps symbolize the rains that nourish sprouting vegetation. He became identified very soon with the spirituous effects of the vine. His sufferings may typify the "ruin of the summer year at the hands of storm and winter," or, perhaps, the agony of the bleeding grapes in the wine press. The orgies would, according to this theory, be a survival of the ungoverned actions of savages when celebrating a festival in honor of the deity of plenty, of harvest home, and of intoxication. But in cultivated Greece, Dionysus, in spite of the surviving orgiastic ceremonies, is a poetic incarnation of blithe, changeable, spirited youth. See Lang, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 221-241. That Rhea taught him would account for the Oriental nature of his rites; for Rhea is an Eastern deity by origin. The opposition of Pentheus would indicate the reluctance with which the Greeks adopted his doctrine and ceremonial. The Dionysiac worship came from Thrace, a barbarous clime;—but wandering, like the springtide, over the earth, Bacchus conquered each nation in turn. It is probable that the Dionysus-Iacchus cult was one of evangelical enthusiasm and individual cleansing from sin, of ideals in this life and of personal immortality in the next. By introducing it into Greece, Pisistratus reformed the exclusive ritual of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Of the Festivals of Dionysus, the more important in Attica were the Lesser Dionysia, in December; the Lenæa, in January; the Anthesteria, or spring festival, in February; and the Great Dionysia, in March. These all, in greater or less degree, witnessed of the culture and the glories of the vine, and of the reawakening of the spirits of vegetation. They were celebrated, as the case might be, with a sacrifice of a victim in reminiscence of the blood by which the spirits of the departed were supposed to be nourished, with processions of women, profusion of flowers, orgiastic songs and dances, or dramatic representations.
Illustrative. Bacchus: Milton, Comus, 46. Pentheus: Landor, The Last Fruit of an Old Tree; H. H. Milman, The Bacchanals of Euripides; Calverley's and Lang's translations of Theocritus, Idyl XXVI; Thomas Love Peacock, Rhododaphne: The Vengeance of Bacchus; B. W. Procter, Bacchanalian Song. Naxos: Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 275.
In Art. Figs. 31, 82-87, 143, in text.