The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

8 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)Dionysus, thegod of the vine,originally aThracian deity.the transient glory of the golden corn, the passing splendour ofthe purple grapes. Year by year in his own beautiful land hebeheld, with natural regret, the bright pomp of summer fadinginto the gloom and stagnation of winter, and year by year hehailed with natural delight the outburst of fresh life in spring.Accustomed to personify the forces of nature, to tinge her coldabstractions with the warm hues of imagination, to clothe hernaked realities with the gorgeous drapery of a mythic fancy, hefashioned for himself a train of gods and goddesses, of spirits andelves, out of the shifting panorama of the seasons, and followedthe annual fluctuations of their fortunes with alternate emotionsof cheerfulness and dejection, of gladness and sorrow, whichfound their natural expression in alternate rites of rejoicing andlamentation, of revelry and mourning. A consideration of someof the Greek divinities who thus died and rose again from thedead may furnish us with a series of companion pictures to setside by side with the sad figures of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. Webegin with Dionysus.The god Dionysus or Bacchus is best known to us as apersonification of the vine and of the exhilaration produced bythe juice of the grape. 1 His ecstatic worship, characterised by1 On Dionysus in general, see L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 4 i. 659sqq.; Fr. Lenormant, s.v. “Bacchus,” in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnairedes Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, i. 591 sqq.; Voigt and Thraemer, s.v.“Dionysus,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. u. röm. Mythologie, i.1029 sqq.; E. Rohde, Psyche 3 (Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), ii. 1 sqq.; MissJ. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Second Edition(Cambridge, 1908), pp. 363 sqq.; Kern, s.v. “Dionysus,” in Pauly-Wissowa'sReal-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 1010 sqq.; M. P.Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religiöser Bedeutung (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 258sqq.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, v. (Oxford, 1909) pp. 85sqq. The epithet Bromios bestowed on Dionysus, and his identification withthe Thracian and Phrygian deity Sabazius, have been adduced as evidence thatDionysus was a god of beer or of other cereal intoxicants before he became agod of wine. See W. Headlam, in Classical Review, xv. (1901) p. 23; Miss J.E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 414-426.