Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

iv] Thunder-elements in the Bacchae 93
beauty, the blasting and the blessing of the thunderstorm, the
magic of mana, the sanctity of tabu.
The keynote is struck in the first words of the prologue.
Dionysos enters, so quietly, yet against a background of thunder
and lightning.
Behold God's son is come unto this land
Of Thebes—even I, Dionysos, whom the brand
Of heaven's hot sjJendour lit to life—when she
Who bore me, Cadmus' daughter, Semele,
Died here 1 .
He sees the afiarov of his mother, from which is rising faint smoke
through the vine leaves.
There by the castle's side
I see the place, the Tomb of the Lightning's Bride,
The wreck of smouldering chambers, and the great
Faint wreaths of tire undying 2 .
The god knows this aftctTov, though unapproachable, is no monument
of shame, but of grace, of glory unspeakable.
Aye, Cadmus hath done well, in purity
He keeps the place apart, inviolate,
His daughter's sanctuary, and I have set
My green and clustered vines to robe it round 3 .
The sacrilege of the later version of the story is horrible to
think of.
All through the play there are hauntings of lightning and
thunder. The sudden fiery apparitions are not merely ' poetical,'
in honour of any and every god ; they are primitive, and of the
actual lightning-cultus of the land. And above all, the great
Epiphany of the Lightning is but the leaping forth afresh of the
fire from Semele's Tomb.
Unveil the Lightning's eye ;
arouse
The Fire that sleeps, against this house,
and then the measure changes, and to arrest attention come the
two solemn emphatic syllables a, a.
saw ye, marked ye there the flame
From Semele's enhallowed sod
Awakened 1 Yea, the Death that came
Ablaze from heaven of old, the same
Hot splendour of the shaft of God 4 .
1 Eur. Bacch. 1. -v. 6.
3
v. 10.
4
v. 596.