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

vm] Daimon-Ritual and Homeric-Saga 339
coiled, is indifferent to the horseman. They are of two alien
worlds.
If with this relief to help us we bear in mind these two factors, i
the old daimonic, magical ritual which lent the forms, the new f
' Homeric '
saga
which lent the heroic content, the relation of the
drama to the worship of Dionysos and also to the worship of the !
dead becomes, I think, fairly clear. The plays were performed in
the theatre of Dionysos, in the precinct of the god, his image
was present in the theatre, the chorus danced round his altar, \
his priest sat in the front and central seat among the spectators.
In the face of facts so plain it seems to me impossible that the
drama had its roots elsewhere than in the worship of Dionysos 1
.
Aristotle is right, ' tragedy arose from leaders of the Dithyramb 2.'
Of any connection with the tomb and obsequies of an actual dead
Athenian hero there is not a particle of evidence. But, Dionysos
is a daimon, he is the daimon, of death and resurrection, of re-
incarnation, of the renouveau of the spring, and that renouveau,
that reincarnation, was of man as well as nature. In the Anthesteria,
the Blossoming of Plants and the Revocation of Ghosts are one
and the same, but they are universal, of ancestors, not of one
particular dead ancestor.
We left the problem of one scene (Fig. 31) on the Hagia
Triada sarcophagos unsolved and the solution now comes of itself.
The figure standing in front of the building is not, I think,
a god, not Dionysos Dendrites, nor is he a man, a particular dead
individual who is having a funeral at the moment. Rather he is
a daimon-hero, and the building before which he stands is a
heroon, like the heroon of the Agathos Daimon at Thebes. He
may be a dead king, if so he is worshipped as a functionary,
a fertility-daimon not as an individual ; he is like Cecrops, like
Erichthonios. He is certainly I think a kouros like in youth and
1
1910.
For a full statement of this, Prof. Ridgeway's view, see his Origin of Tragedy,
2 Supra, p. 32. The difficult question of ichen and how the incoming Thracian
daimon Dionysos came to dominate the local Agathos Daimon I leave here unanswered.
I have elsewhere (Proleg. pp. 557 and 571) suggested that Dionysos
may have come to Athens by way of Delphi and Eleusis. For the possible influence
of the Mysteries on drama see A. Dieterich's 'epoch-making' Die Entstehung der
Tragbdie in Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, 1908, p. 164.
22—2