Dionysus is of the lowest inventive type.
As Dionysus is one of the most recent of the Homeric deities, so likewise is he one of the most purely heathenish[513]. He has not, even in Homer, a divine maternity assigned to him, and he is the only one of the Homeric deities who stands in this predicament[514]. The anomaly was felt and provided for, in the later traditions at least, by the deification of Semele after death. But perhaps another mode of statement may be adopted. As it is evident that the original tradition made him the son of a woman, and as all those with whom he is classed in Homer are probably historical personages, it seems possible that he may have been one of our own race, whose discovery or extension of the use of wine may, by its rapid and powerful effect upon the countries which it had reached, have led to his adoption into the order of the Immortals, by a process more rapid than took place in the case of Hercules or any other person. Upon this supposition, he stands altogether alone among the gods of Homer. But, be this as it may, he is, when considered in the capacity of a deity, the representation of an animal instinct in its state of gross excess, and of nothing more. He is the god of drunkenness, as Mars is the god of violence, and Venus the goddess of lust: and there are no three other deities, from whom Homer has so remarkably withheld all signs of his reverence.
Though I state this as an historical possibility, I think it is certain that, according to the Poet, Dionysus was from his birth one of the Immortals: but it is also very doubtful whether he was one, to whom a place belonged in the smaller Olympian Assembly. Even in later times, he was not one of the Dii Majores: and his being the son of a mortal in Homer would tend to make it probable that he was not invested by the Poet with Olympian dignity. Again, he is only four times mentioned in the whole of the poems; nor is a single act of his manhood recorded, except his information against Ariadne. That information seems to imply, that a known Greek island was sacred to him; and it was followed by the death of Ariadne under the darts of Diana. These circumstances may perhaps raise a presumption of his Olympian rank, equal to the adverse one which has been stated above. So far as this inquiry is concerned, the question must remain unsolved. But little of interest can attach to these, the shameful parts of the Greek mythology, which boast, as if it were our strength, of what can scarcely be excused as our weakness, and which treat our shame as our joy. The real point of interest is to learn whether there was a time when man, even though he had lost the clear view of the guiding hand from above, yet revolted against, or had not become familiar with, the deification of vicious passion. And we seem to find the note of such a time in Homer. Only one laudatory phrase is applied throughout the poems to Dionysus; it is the χάρμα βροτοῖσιν, and these words are not the sentiment of the Poet, or of any character that represents his mind; they are put into the mouth of Jupiter, when he is speaking under a paroxysm of sensual passion.
I have not adverted to the tradition which places the Lycoorgus of Il. vi. in Thrace, but have simply followed what appears to be the suggestion of the Homeric text.
SECT. IV.
The Composition of the Olympian Court: and the Classification of the whole Supernatural Order in Homer.
In the full Olympian Assembly, or Great Chapter of the Immortals, we find a collection of deities, who are respectively the representatives, in the main, of Elemental Powers, of Human Passions or Ideas, and of Historical Traditions, either single or intermixed. Among the simple examples, we may cite the Rivers and Nymphs for the first, Mars and Venus for the second, the goddess Themis for the third, Latona and Iris for the last. In Jupiter, the chief of all, these elements are blended together.
Principal cases of exclusion from Olympus.
But we must also consider those who do not appear in Olympus, and why they are excluded. If, as is perhaps the case, Aidoneus and Persephone are not there, it is because of the separateness of their work, and the remoteness of their kingdom. They had servants, guards, and a judge, in short, a sort of polity of their own. Atlas, Proteus, Calypso, Circe, and the other purely local deities, so far as we know, are not there; probably because they do not enter into the national religion, but are little more than convenient symbols[515] of geographical points known or conceived through maritime, that is, without doubt, through Phœnician report. Again, we do not hear in Olympus of Destiny, Sleep, Night, Dream, Terror, Panic, Uproar, and the rest; probably because these had not attained to practical impersonation in the religion of the people, but were merely objects of the poetical faculty. So likewise with respect to the Winds, who stand as receivers of worship and sacrifice in Il. xxiii. 195. The different treatment which they receive in the Iliad and Odyssey, like their non-appearance in the Great Chapter[516] of Olympus, unless referable to the peculiarities of the Outer Geography, shows that they had not a developed and established godhead, but might be dealt with by the Poet at his will. In these imperfect impersonations, it has been well observed, sometimes the mere elemental power, sometimes the superinduced personality prevails. Again, Ἄτη the temptress, and Ἐρινύες the avengers, might stand excluded, both on the same ground of inadequate impersonation, and on other grounds. Nereus and the purely elemental deities of the sea are not summoned to the Assembly, apparently because he too had his own submarine palace. It answered to Olympus; and here he sat in state amidst his numerous Court of Nymphs. Even Thetis was fetched from thence to attend the last Assembly of the gods in the Twenty-Fourth Iliad. Κρόνος and Ῥέα are not in the divine meetings, firstly, because he, probably with her as his reflected image, is penally confined in Tartarus; but secondly, because, the first representing Time, and the second Matter, they are the primary ideas in the metaphysical order, which comprehended all others, and from which all others were derivative. And as they stood in the metaphysical nexus of ideas, so stood Oceanus and his feminine, Tethys, in the terrestrial order; where Oceanus was the all-inclosing, all-containing; the Form, within which every terrestrial existence was cast, and beyond which even Thought could not pass. Hence the curious and marked exception of him from the summons of Themis to the Great Assembly of the Twentieth Book[517].
οὔτε τις οὖν Ποταμῶν ἀπέην, νόσφ’ Ὠκεανοῖο,