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

40 The Dithyramb, hpcofxevov and Drama [ch.
(7rai8oTpo(f)La). As nurses they are thrice familiar. In Homer 1
the god has his nurses {TiOrjvai), chased by Lykoorgos
Through Nysa's goodly land
He Dionysos' Nursing Nymphs did chase.
Sophocles in the Oedipus at Colonos' 2 knows of the Nurses :
Footless sacred shadowy thicket, where a myriad berries grow,
Where no heat of the sun may enter, neither wind of the winter blow,
"Where the Reveller Dionysos with his Nursing Nymphs will go.
At Delphi, Plutarch 3 tells us, the Thyiades, nurses of Dionysos,
wake up the child Dionysos in the cradle.
The BacchaDts are the Mothers ; that is why at their coming
they have magical power to make the whole earth blossom :
Oh burst in bloom of wreathing bryony,
Berries and leaves and flowers 4 .
It is not only the ' wild white maids,' but the young mothers
with babes at home who are out upon the mountains
And one a young fawn held, and one a wild
Wolf cub, and fed them with white milk, and smiled
In love, young mothers with a mother's heart,
And babes at home forgotten 5 !
At the touch of their wands, from the rocks break out streams of
wine and water, and milk and honey 6 .
It is at the great service of the Mothers on Mount Cithaeron
that the whole of creation moves and stirs and lives
All the mountain felt
And worshipped with them, and the wild things knelt
And ramped, and gloried, and the wilderness
Was filled with moving voices and dim stress 7 .
It is against the religion of the Bacchants, as Nurses and
Mothers of all that is, that Pentheus rages, charging them, the
Mothers, with license, banning their great service of Aphrodite.
1 n. vi. 129
6s 7TOT6 p.aivop.evoi.0 Aiuviktolo ridr/vas