on board; the god then declared to him who he was, and took him under his protection.

Another of these hymns relates, that the Nymphs received Dionysos from his father, and reared him in a fragrant cavern of the valleys of Nysa. He was counted among the Immortals; and when he grew up, he went through the woody vales crowned with bay and ivy: the Nymphs followed him, and the wood was filled with their joyous clamour.

In these poems the mention of the ivy, and the epithet noisy (épíẞpoμos), testify, as we shall see, their late age. Pindar also calls Dionysos Ivy-bearing (kioσopópos) and noisy (Bpópios). Herodotus and the tragedians describe what we (βρόμιος). consider to be the mixed religion of Dionysos.

The idea of mere mortals, or the offspring of gods and mortals, being raised to divine rank and power, does not occur in the Ilias. Ganymedes and Tithonos, who were mortal by both father and mother, were carried off, the former by the gods to be the cup-bearer of Zeusa, the latter by Eôs; and it is to be presumed, though Homer does not expressly say so, that they were endowed with immortality. But all the halfcaste, as we may call them, Heracles, Achilleus, Sarpedôn, Eneias, have no advantage over their fellow-mortals, except greater strength and more frequent aid from the gods.

But in the Odyssey we find the system of deification commenced. The sea-goddess Ino-Leucothea, who gives Odysseus her veil to save him from being drowned, was, we are told, a daughter of Cadmos (a name which does not occur in the Ilias), who had before been a speaking mortal, but was now allotted the honour of the gods in the depths of the sea.' And again; Odysseus beholds in the realms of Hades the image (eidwλov) of Heracles, pursuing his usual occupations when on earth; but himself we are told enjoys banquets among the immortal gods, and possesses fair-ankled Hebe.' It is not however said that he had obtained the power of a godb.

a Il. xx. 234.

Od. v. 333; xi. 601. The last of these passages is undoubtedly spurious, and the first is perhaps not altogether free from suspicion.

Supposing therefore Dionysos to have been, as his name might appear to indicate, one of the original Grecian deities, (and it is difficult to think that the vine and its produce, with which the 'sons of the Achæans' were so familiar, could have been without a presiding god,) he may have been regarded as a son of Zeus by a goddess named Semele, who in after-times, in pursuance of a practice hereafter to be explained, may have been degraded to the rank of a heroine, and Dionysos have consequently become the son of Zeus by a mortal mother. The vintage is in wine-countries at the present day, like haymaking and harvest-home in England, a time of merry-making and festivity; and the festival of the deity presiding over it may have been a very joyous one, and celebrated with abundance of noise and mirth. Such, we say, may have been (for we venture not to assert it) the original Dionysiac religion of Greece; and when we recollect the very incidental manner in which Demeter, undoubtedly one of the most ancient deities, is noticed in the Ilias, it should not excite any great surprise to find the poet totally omitting all mention of the wine-goda.

To pass from conjecture to certainty, it appears quite clear that the part of Thrace lying along the northern coast of the Ægæan was in the earliest times a chief seat of the Dionysiac religion, where the worship of the god of wine was celebrated with great noise and tumult by the people of that country; and, supposing the passage in the sixth book of the Ilias to be genuine, some account of it had possibly reached the ears of Homer. The Thracian worship of Dionysos, it is not improbable, was not introduced into Greece till after the time when the Æolians colonised the coast of Asia about the Hellespontb. Here they became acquainted with the enthusiastic orgies of the Great Mother, and of the god Sabazios; who, as it would appear, was similar to Dionysos, and an object of veneration both to Phrygians and Thracians, and who was worshiped under the form of an ox, as being the patron of agriculture. As polytheism is not jealous, and readily permits

a See end of this chapter.

Not till a century or two after the time of Homer, in the opinion of Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 672.).

* Sch. Aristoph. Birds, 873. Lys. 388. Wasps, 9.

the introduction of new deities into the system, particularly if their attributes or festivals have a resemblance to any of the old onesa, the worship of this new god was adopted by the Grecian colonists, and diffused over the isles and continent of Greece: not, however, without considerable opposition from the sober common-sense of several individuals of eminence, as appears by the mythic tales of Labdacos, Pentheus and Perseus, which are apparently real occurrences thrown back into the mythic age. The original Grecian festivals, though of a joyous cheerful character, were so widely different from the raving orgies and wild licentiousness of this Dionysiac religion, that it is quite evident the latter could not have been known in Greece during the Achæan periode.

There can be no doubt of the Dionysiac religion, with its nocturnal orgies and indecent extravagance, having been very prevalent among the Greeks at the time when the Ionians were permitted to settle in Egypt. It is in no small degree surprising with what facility the Grecian and Egyptian systems coalesced, with what open-mouthed credulity the Grecian settlers and travellers swallowed all the fictions of the cunning priesthood of that country, and with what barefaced assurance the latter palmed on their unsuspecting auditors the most incredible lies. In reading the Euterpe of Herodotus, one might fancy one's self beholding Captain Wilford listening with devout belief to his artful Pundit; so little suspicion does the Father of History betray of his having been played upon by the grave linen-clad personages who did him. the honour to initiate him in their mysteries.

The theory boldly advanced by the Egyptian priesthood was, that all the religion of Greece had been imported into

It was thus that there was a great resemblance observed between the Dionysia of Athens and the Saturnalia of Rome.

b Had the consul Postumius (Livy, xxxix. 8.) lived before history was written at Rome, and had the Bacchic orgies obtained a footing in that city, he would probably have figured as a Pentheus in the mythic annals of Rome. " Mythology," says Müller (Dor. i. 293.), “often first clothes the events of history in a fabulous garb, and then refers them to an early and unknown time."

c

Müller, Dor. i. 10. " Ægyptia numina gaudent plangoribus, Græca choreis, Barbara strepitu cymbalistarum et tympanistarum et ceraularum."-Apul, de Gent. p. 49.

4 See the Asiatic Researches.