The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 07 of 12). Frazer James George
type="note">59 who in the common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. Or, again, the heart was pounded up and given in a portion to Semele, who thereby conceived him.60
Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a biennial61 festival at which the passion of Dionysus was represented in every detail. All that he had done or suffered in his last moments was enacted before the eyes of his worshippers, who tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth and roamed the woods with frantic shouts. In front of them was carried a casket supposed to contain the sacred heart of Dionysus, and to the wild music of flutes and cymbals they mimicked the rattles by which the infant god had been lured to his doom.62 Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was acted at the rites,63 and it even appears that a general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the thought of the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus.64 A different form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead.65 The local Argive tradition was that he went down through the Alcyonian lake; and his return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the warder of the dead.66 Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to bring the season with him.67 Deities of vegetation, who are supposed to pass a certain portion of each year under ground, naturally come to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived.68
Dionysus represented in the form of a bull.
A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as “cow-born,” “bull,” “bull-shaped,” “bull-faced,” “bull-browed,” “bull-horned,” “horn-bearing,” “two-horned,” “horned.”69 He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull.70 His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape,71 or with bull horns;72 and he was painted with horns.73 Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity.74 On one statuette he appears clad in a bull's hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind.75 Again, he is represented as a child with clusters of grapes round his brow, and a calf's head, with sprouting horns, attached to the back of his head.76 On a red-figured vase the god is portrayed as a calf-headed child seated on a woman's lap.77 The people of Cynaetha in north-western Arcadia held a festival of Dionysus in winter, when men, who had greased their bodies with oil for the occasion, used to pick out a bull from the herd and carry it to the sanctuary of the god. Dionysus was supposed to inspire their choice of the particular bull,78 which probably represented the deity himself; for at his festivals he was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull's foot. They sang, “Come hither, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!”79 The Bacchanals of Thrace wore horns in imitation of their god.80 According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans;81 and the Cretans, when they acted the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth.82 Indeed, the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites.83 When we consider the practice of portraying the god as a bull or with some of the features of the animal, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and the legend that in bull form he had been torn in pieces, we cannot doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival the worshippers of Dionysus believed themselves to be killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.
Dionysus as a goat. Live goats rent and devoured by his worshippers.
Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names was “Kid.”84 At Athens and at Hermion he was worshipped under the title of “the one of the Black Goatskin,” and a legend ran that on a certain occasion he had appeared clad in the skin from which he took the title.85 In the wine-growing district of Phlius, where in autumn the plain is still thickly mantled with the red and golden foliage of the fading vines, there stood of old a bronze image of a goat, which the husbandmen plastered with gold-leaf as a means of protecting their vines against blight.86 The image probably represented the vine-god himself. To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed the youthful Dionysus into a kid;87 and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat.88 Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw,89 they must have believed that they were eating the body and blood of the god.
Custom of rending and devouring animals and men as a religious rite. Ceremonial cannibalism among the Indians of British Columbia.
The custom of tearing in pieces the bodies of animals and of men and then devouring them raw has been practised as a religious rite by savages in modern times. We need not therefore dismiss as a fable the testimony of antiquity to the observance of similar rites among the frenzied worshippers of Bacchus. An English missionary to the Coast Indians of British Columbia has thus described a scene like the cannibal orgies of the Bacchanals. After mentioning that an old chief had ordered a female slave to be dragged to the beach, murdered, and thrown into the water, he proceeds as follows: “I did not see the murder, but, immediately after, I saw crowds of people running out of those houses near to where the corpse was thrown, and forming themselves into groups at a good distance away. This I learnt was from fear of what was to follow. Presently two bands of furious wretches appeared, each headed by a man in a state of nudity. They gave vent to the most unearthly sounds, and the two naked men made themselves look as unearthly as possible, proceeding in a creeping kind of stoop, and stepping like two proud horses, at the same time shooting forward each arm alternately, which they held out at full length for a little time in the most defiant manner. Besides this, the continual jerking their heads back, causing their long black hair to twist about, added much to their savage appearance. For some time they pretended to be seeking the body, and the instant they came where it lay they commenced screaming and rushing round it like so many angry wolves. Finally they seized it, dragged it out of the water, and laid it on the beach, where I was told the naked men would commence tearing it to pieces with their teeth. The two bands of men immediately surrounded them, and so hid their horrid work. In a few minutes the crowd broke into two, when each of the naked cannibals appeared with half of the body in his hands. Separating
Hyginus,
The festivals of Dionysus were biennial in many places. See G. F. Schömann,
Firmicus Maternus,
Plutarch,
Pausanias, ii. 31. 2 and 37. 5; Apollodorus,
Pausanias, ii. 37. 5
Himerius,
For Dionysus in this capacity see F. Lenormant in Daremberg et Saglio,
Plutarch,
Euripides,
Plutarch,
Diodorus Siculus, iii. 64. 2, iv. 4. 2; Cornutus,
Diodorus Siculus, iii. 64. 2; J. Tzetzes,
Müller-Wieseler,
F. G. Welcker,
Pausanias, viii. 19. 2.
Plutarch,
J. Tzetzes,
Nonnus,
Firmicus Maternus,
Euripides,
Hesychius,
Pausanias, ii. 35. 1; Scholiast on Aristophanes,
Pausanias, ii. 13. 6. On their return from Troy the Greeks are said to have found goats and an image of Dionysus in a cave of Euboea (Pausanias, i. 23. 1).
Apollodorus,
Ovid,
Arnobius,