What was it, then, which saved the Eleusinia from this defeat,—which kept the movement of the Dionysiac procession from the ruin inevitably consequent upon all intemperate joy? It was the presence of our Lady, the sorrowing Achtheia, who was the inseparable companion of the joyous conqueror,—who subdued the joy of victory, and preserved the strength and holy purity of the great Festival. Demeter was thus necessary to Dionysus,—as Dionysus to Demeter; and if in remembrance of him the sepulchral walls were covered with scenes associated with festivity,—in remembrance of her there must needs be a skeleton at every feast.
How inseparably connected in human thought is sorrow with all permanent hope is indicated in the penances which men have imposed upon themselves, from the earliest Gymnosophists of India, and the Stylitæ of Syria, down to the monastic orders of the Romish Church in later times. This is the meaning of the old Indian fable which made two of the Rishis or penitents to have risen by the discipline of sorrow from some low caste,—it may be, from very Pariahs,—first to the rank of Brahmins, and at last to the stars. The first initiation in which we veil our eyes, losing all, is essential to our fresher birth, by which in the second initiation all things are unveiled to us as our inheritance: indeed, it is only through that which veils that anything is ever revealed or possessed.
Through the same gate we pass both to glory and to tragic suffering, each of which heightens and measures the other; and it is only so that we can understand the function of sorrow in the Providence of God, or interpret the sudden calamities which sometimes overwhelm human hopes at their highest aspiration,—which from the most serene and cloudless sky evoke storms which leave not even a wreck from their vast ruin.
Nor merely is sorrow efficient in those who hope, but in even a higher sense does it attach to the character of Saviour. Apollo is, therefore, fabled to have been an exile from heaven and a servant of Admetus; indeed, Danaüs, in "The Suppliants" of Æschylus, appeals to Apollo for protection on this very plea, addressing him as "the Holy One, and an exiled God from heaven." Thus Hercules was compelled to serve Eurystheus; and his twelve labors were typed in the twelve signs of the zodiac. Æsculapius and Prometheus both suffered excruciating tortures and death for the good of men. And Dionysus—himself the centre of all joy—was persecuted by the Queen of Heaven and compelled to wander in the world. Thus he wandered through Egypt, finding no abiding-place, and finally, as the story runs, came to the Phrygian Cybele, that he might know in their deepest meaning—even by the initiation of sorrow—the mysteries of the Great Mother. And, very significantly, it is from this same initiation that His wanderings have their end and his world-wide conquest its beginning; as if only thus could be realized the possibility both of triumph for himself and of hope for his followers. For these wanderers can find rest only in a suffering Saviour, by the vision of whose deeper Passion they lose their sense of grief,—as Io on Caucasus in sight of the transfixed Prometheus, and the Madonna at the Cross.
It is worthy of more attention than we can give it here, yet we cannot pass over in silence the fact, so important in this relation, that Grecian Tragedy, in all its wonderful development under the three great masters, was directly associated, and in its ruder beginnings completely identified, with the worship of Dionysus. And this confirms our previous hint, that the same element which made tragedy possible for Greece must also be sought for in the development of its faith. There are those who decry Grecian faith,—at the same time that they laud the Grecian drama to the skies: but to the Greeks themselves, who certainly knew more than we do as regards either, the drama was only an outgrowth of their faith, and derived thence its highest significance. Thus the mystic symbolism of the dramatic Choruses, taken out of its religious connections, becomes an insoluble enigma; and naturally enough; for its first use was in religious worship,—though afterwards it became associated with traditionary and historic events. Besides, it was supposed that the tragedians wrote under a divine inspiration; and the subjects and representations which they embodied were for the most part susceptible of a deep spiritual interpretation. Indeed, upon a careful examination, we shall find that very many of the dramas directly suggest the two Eleusinian movements, representing first the flight of suppliants—as of the Heraclidae, the daughters of Danaüs, and of Oedipus and Antigone—from persecution to the shrine of some Saviour Deity,—and finally a deliverance effected through sacrifice or divine interposition. Examples of this are so numerous that we have no space for a minute consideration.
But certainly it is plain that the Eleusinia, as being more central, more purely spiritual, must in the thought of Greece have risen high above the drama. The very dress in which the mystae were initiated was preserved as most sacred or deposited in the temple. Or if we insist upon measuring their appreciation of the Festival by the more palpable standard of numbers,—the temple at Eleusis, by the account of Strabo, was capable of holding even in its mystic cell more persons than the theatre. To be sure, the celebration was only once in five years,—but it was all the more sacred from this very infrequency. Nothing in all Greece—and that is saying very much—could compare with it in its depth of divine mystery. If anything could, it would have been the drama; but no wailings were ever heard from beneath the masks of the stage like the wailings of Achtheia,—no jubilant song of the Chorus ever rose like the paean of Dionysiac triumph.
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Thus was the name of Dionysus connected with the palace and the temple, with the sepulchral court of death and the dramatic representations of life,—and everywhere associated with our Lady.
Sometimes, indeed, she seems to overshadow and hide him from our vision. Thus was it when the Eumenides in their final triumph swept the stage, and victory seemed all in the hands of invisible Powers, with no human participant: even as throughout the Homeric epos there runs an undercurrent of unutterable sadness; because, while to the Gods there ever remains a sure seat upon Olympus, unshaken by the winds, untouched by rain or snow, crowned with a cloudless radiance,—yet upon man come vanity, sorrow, and strife; like the leaves of the forest he flourisheth, and then passeth away to the "weak heads of the dead," ([Greek: nekuon amenaena karaena],) conquered by purple Death and strong Fate.
To the eye of sense, and in the circumscribed movements of this world, the desolation seems complete and the defeat final. But the snows of winter are necessary to the blossoms of spring,—the waste of death to the resurrection of life; and from the vastest of all desolations does our Lady lead her children in the loftiest of all flights,—even from all sorrow and solitude,—from the wastes of earth and the desolation of Æons, to ineffable joy in her Saviour Lord.