"But at last, when I had gone through the fearful experiences of the Peloponnesian War, with all its supreme glories and its unrelieved shames, I learned to think otherwise. I learned to see that as man has two souls in his breast, one celestial or Apollinic, the other terrestrial or Dionysiac, so there are two gods, and not one, that govern this sub-lunar world.
"The two are Apollo and Dionysus.
"One rules the world of light, of political power, of scientific reason, and of harmonious muses. The other is the god of unreason, of passion, and wild enthusiasm, of that unwieldy Heart of ours which is fuller of monsters, and also of precious pearls, than is the wide ocean.
"Unless in a given commonwealth the legislator wisely provides for the cult of both gods, in an orderly and public fashion, Dionysus or Apollo will take fearful revenge for the neglect they suffer at the hands of short-sighted statesmen and impudent unbelievers.
"In the course of our Great War we have come into contact and conflict with many a non-Greek nation, or people whom we rightly term Barbarians. For while some of them sedulously, perhaps over-zealously, worship Dionysus, they all ignore or scorn Apollo. The consequence is that the great god blinds them to their own advantages, robs them of light and moderation, and they prosper enduringly neither as builders of States nor as private citizens in their towns.
"For Apollo, like all the gods, is a severe god, and his bow he uses as unerringly as his lyre.
"It is even so with Dionysus.
"The nation that affects to despise him, speedily falls a wretched victim to his awful revenge. Instead of worshipping him openly and in public fashion, such a nation falls into grotesque and absurd eccentricities, that readily degenerate into poisonous vices, infesting every organ of the body politic and depriving social intercourse of all its charms. The Spartans, although they allowed their women a temporary cult of the god Dionysus, yet did not pay sufficient attention to him, worshipping mainly Apollo. They had, in consequence, to do much that tends to de-humanisation, and, while many admired them, no one loved them.
"It was this, my late and hard-won insight into the nature of man, which I wanted to articulate in the strongest fashion imaginable in my drama called the Bacchæ. I see with bitterness how little my commentators grasped the real mystery of my work. If Dionysus was to me only the symbol of wine and merrymaking, why should I have indulged in the gratuitous cruelty of punishing the neglect of Bacchus by the awful murder of a son-king at the hands of his own frenzied mother-queen? All my Hellenic sentiment of moderation shudders at such a ghastly exaggeration.
"Neither the myth nor my drama refers to wanton, barbarous bloodshed; and such scholars as assume archaic human sacrifices in honour of Dionysus, and 'survivals' thereof in Dionysiac rites, ought to be taken in hand by the god's own Mænads and suffer for their impudence.