Taylor - Eleusianian and Bacchic Mysteries.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

192 Eleusinian andbecause this goddess is the supervisingguardian of motion and *progression and;on this account, in the Iliad, she perpetuallyrouses and excites Jupiter to providentialaction about secondary concerns ; and, inanother respect, Dionysusisthe ephorus orsupervising guardian of generation, becausehe presides over life and death ;for he is theguardian or ephorus of life because of generation, and also of death because wine producesan enthusiastic condition. We become moreenthusiastic at the period of dying, as Proclusindicates in the example of Homer whobecame prophetic [(j.avuttO] at the time of hisdeath, f They likewise assert, that tragedyand comedy are assigned to Dionysus :comedy being the play or ludicrous representationof life; and tragedy having relation to theBy progression [upoooot;] is here signified the raying-out, orissuing forth of the soul ; having left the divine or pre-existentlife, and come forth toward the human.tSee also PLATO: Phcedrus, 43. "When I was about tocross the river, the divine and wonted signal was given me italways deters me from what I am about to doand I seemed tohear a voice from this very spot, which would not suffer me todepart before I had purified myself, as ifI had committed some