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

VI] The Bull-driving Dithyramb 205
Why is the Dithyramb Bull-driving ? Why does the Bull-
driving Dithyramb come with the Charites ?
Pindar no doubt was thinking of the new Graces of tragedy
but behind them come the figures of the older Charites, the
Givers of all Increase, the Horae who bring back the god in the
Spring, be he Bull or human Kouros. In our oldest Dithyramb
they bring him as a Bull.
In his xxxvith Greek Question Plutarch asks, ' Why
; ;
do the
women of Elis summon Dionysos in their hymns to be present
with them with his bull-foot?' Happily Plutarch preserves for us
the very words of the little early ritual hymn
—
In Springtime, Dionysos,
To thy holy temple come,
To Elis with thy Graces,
Kushing with thy hull-foot, come,
Noble Bull, Noble Bull 1 .
Fig. 53.
Plutarch 2 tries as usual to answer his own question and at
last half succeeds. ' Is it,' he suggests, ' that some entitle the god
as born of a bull and as a bull himself, or is it that many hold
that the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?' We have
seen how at Magnesia the holy Bull was the beginner (dpxvyo