To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth, marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little or no social emphasis. But the rite which concerned the whole tribe, the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of initiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word for rite was tělětē. It was applied to all mysteries, and sometimes to marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with death. It comes from a root meaning “to grow up.” The word tělětē means rite of growing up, becoming complete. It meant at first maturity, then rite of maturity, then by a natural extension any rite of initiation that was mysterious. The rites of puberty were in their essence mysterious, because they consisted in initiation into the sanctities of the tribe, the things which society sanctioned and protected, excluding the uninitiated, whether they were young boys, women, or members of other tribes. Then, by contagion, the mystery notion spread to other rites.
We understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite, the dromenon of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells us—Dionysos, “Divine Young Man.”
When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that image which is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring rite must be a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young man. Where emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just initiated, what the Greeks called a kouros, or ephebos, a youth of quite different social status from a mere pais or boy. Such a youth survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.
And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in spring and autumn alike “they carry out the Eiresione, a branch of olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits, that scarcity may cease, and they sing over it:
“Eiresione brings
Figs and fat cakes,
And a pot of honey and oil to mix,
And a wine-cup strong and deep,
That she may drink and sleep.”
The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called Korythalia,[34] “Branch of blooming youth.” The young men, says a Greek orator, are “the Spring of the people.”
The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a young man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a kouros, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors:
“Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Diktè for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song.”
The leader of the band of kouroi, of young men, the real actual leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in the new year at spring. The real leader, the “first kouros” as the Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all. He is “lord of all that is wet and gleaming,” for the May bough, we remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough remains to make the meaning clear.
And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood: