Greek Studies: A Series of Essays | Page 9

Dionysus is the Deliverer,
Eleutherios; and of such enthusiasm, or ecstasy, is, in a certain sense,
an older patron than Apollo himself. Even at Delphi, the centre of
Greek inspiration and of the religion of Apollo, his claim always
maintained itself; and signs are not wanting that Apollo was but a later
comer there. There, under his later reign, hard by the golden image of
Apollo himself, near the sacred tripod on which the Pythia sat to
prophesy, was to be seen a strange object--a sort [20] of coffin or

cinerary urn with the inscription, "Here lieth the body of Dionysus, the
son of Semele." The pediment of the great temple was divided between
them--Apollo with the nine Muses on that side, Dionysus, with perhaps
three times three Graces, on this. A third of the whole year was held
sacred to him; the four winter months were the months of Dionysus;
and in the shrine of Apollo itself he was worshipped with almost equal
devotion.
The religion of Dionysus takes us back, then, into that old Greek life of
the vineyards, as we see it on many painted vases, with much there as
we should find it now, as we see it in Bennozzo Gozzoli's mediaeval
fresco of the Invention of Wine in the Campo Santo at Pisa- -the family
of Noah presented among all the circumstances of a Tuscan vineyard,
around the press from which the first wine is flowing, a painted idyll,
with its vintage colours still opulent in decay, and not without its
solemn touch of biblical symbolism. For differences, we detect in that
primitive life, and under that Greek sky, a nimbler play of fancy, lightly
and unsuspiciously investing all things with personal aspect and
incident, and a certain mystical apprehension, now almost departed, of
unseen powers beyond the material veil of things, corresponding to the
exceptional vigour and variety of the Greek organisation. This peasant
life lies, in unhistoric time, behind the definite forms with which poetry
and a refined [21] priesthood afterwards clothed the religion of
Dionysus; and the mere scenery and circumstances of the vineyard
have determined many things in its development. The noise of the
vineyard still sounds in some of his epithets, perhaps in his best-known
name--Iacchus, Bacchus. The masks suspended on base or cornice, so
familiar an ornament in later Greek architecture, are the little faces
hanging from the vines, and moving in the wind, to scare the birds.
That garland of ivy, the aesthetic value of which is so great in the later
imagery of Dionysus and his descendants, the leaves of which, floating
from his hair, become so noble in the hands of Titian and Tintoret, was
actually worn on the head for coolness; his earliest and most sacred
images were wrought in the wood of the vine. The people of the
vineyard had their feast, the little or country Dionysia, which still lived
on, side by side with the greater ceremonies of a later time, celebrated
in December, the time of the storing of the new wine. It was then that

the potters' fair came, calpis and amphora, together with lamps against
the winter, laid out in order for the choice of buyers; for Keramus, the
Greek Vase, is a son of Dionysus, of wine and of Athene, who teaches
men all serviceable and decorative art. Then the goat was killed, and its
blood poured out at the root of the vines; and Dionysus literally drank
the blood of goats; and, being Greeks, with quick and mobile
sympathies, [22] deisidaimones,+ "superstitious," or rather "susceptible
of religious impressions," some among them, remembering those
departed since last year, add yet a little more, and a little wine and
water for the dead also; brooding how the sense of these things might
pass below the roots, to spirits hungry and thirsty, perhaps, in their
shadowy homes. But the gaiety, that gaiety which Aristophanes in the
Acharnians has depicted with so many vivid touches, as a thing of
which civil war had deprived the villages of Attica, preponderates over
the grave. The travelling country show comes round with its puppets;
even the slaves have their holiday;* the mirth becomes excessive; they
hide their faces under grotesque masks of bark, or stain them with
wine-lees, or potters' crimson even, like the old rude idols painted red;
and carry in midnight procession such rough symbols of the productive
force of nature as the women and children had best not look upon;
which will be frowned upon, and refine themselves, or disappear, in the
feasts of cultivated Athens.
Of the whole story of Dionysus, it was the episode of his marriage with
Ariadne about which ancient art concerned itself oftenest, and with
most effect. Here, although the antiquarian [23] may still detect
circumstances which link the