Part 17 (1/2)

DIONYSUS.

In bitter wise, for bitter was the shame Ye did me, when Thebes honoured not my name.

AGAVE.

Then lead me where my sisters be; Together let our tears be shed, Our ways be wandered; where no red Kithaeron waits to gaze on me; Nor I gaze back; no thyrsus stem, Nor song, nor memory in the air.

Oh, other Baccha.n.a.ls be there, Not I, not I, to dream of them!

[AGAVE _with her group of attendants goes out on the side away from the Mountain_. DIONYSUS _rises upon the Cloud and disappears_.

CHORUS.

There be many shapes of mystery.

And many things G.o.d makes to be, Past hope or fear.

And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought.

So hath it fallen here. [_Exeunt._

[Ill.u.s.tration]

NOTES ON THE BACCHAE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The _Bacchae_, being from one point of view a religious drama, a kind of ”mystery play,” is full of allusions both to the myth and to the religion of Dionysus.

1. The Myth, as implied by Euripides. Semele, daughter of Cadmus, being loved by Zeus, asked her divine lover to appear to her once in his full glory; he came, a blaze of miraculous lightning, in the ecstasy of which Semele died, giving premature birth to a son. Zeus, to save this child's life and make him truly G.o.d as well as Man, tore open his own flesh and therein fostered the child till in due time, by a miraculous and mysterious Second Birth, the child of Semele came to full life as G.o.d.

2. The Religion of Dionysus is hard to formulate or even describe, both because of its composite origins and because of its condition of constant vitality, fluctuation, and development.

(_a_) The first datum, apparently, is the introduction from Thrace of the characteristic G.o.d of the wild northern mountains, a G.o.d of Intoxication, of Inspiration, a giver of superhuman or immortal life.

His wors.h.i.+p is superposed upon that of divers old Tree or Vegetation G.o.ds, already wors.h.i.+pped in Greece. He becomes specially the G.o.d of the Vine. Originally a G.o.d of the common folk, despised and unauthorised, he is eventually so strong as to be adopted into the Olympian hierarchy as the ”youngest” of the G.o.ds, son of Zeus. His ”Olympian” name, so to speak, is Dionysus, but in his wors.h.i.+p he is addressed by numbers of names, more or less mystic and secret--Bromios, Bacchios or Baccheus, Iacchos, Eleuthercus, Zagreus, Sabazios, &c. Some of these may be the names of old spirits whom he has displaced; some are his own Thracian names. Bromos and Sabaja, for instance, seem to have been Thracian names for two kinds of intoxicating drink. Bacchos means a ”wand.” Together with his many names, he has many shapes, especially appearing as a Bull and a Serpent.

(_b_) This religion, very primitive and barbarous, but possessing a strong hold over the emotions of the common people, was seized upon and transfigured by the great wave of religious reform, known under the name of Orphism, which swept over Greece and South Italy in the sixth century B.C., and influenced the teachings of such philosophers as Pythagoras, Aristeas, Empedocles, and the many writers on purification and the world after death. Orphism may very possibly represent an ancient Cretan religion in clash or fusion with one from Thrace. At any rate, it was grafted straight upon the Dionysus-wors.h.i.+p, and, without rationalising, spiritualised and reformed it. Ascetic, mystical, ritualistic, and emotional, Orphism easily excited both enthusiasm and ridicule. It lent itself both to inspired saintliness and to imposture. In doctrine it laid especial stress upon sin, and the sacerdotal purification of sin; on the eternal reward due beyond the grave to the pure and the impure, the pure living in an eternal ecstasy--”perpetual intoxication,” as Plato satirically calls it--the impure toiling through long ages to wash out their stains. It recast in various ways the myth of Dionysus, and especially the story of his Second Birth. All true wors.h.i.+ppers become in a mystical sense one with the G.o.d; they are born again and are ”Bacchoi.” Dionysus being the G.o.d within, the perfectly pure soul is possessed by the G.o.d wholly, and becomes nothing but the G.o.d.

Based on very primitive rites and feelings, on the religion of men who made their G.o.ds in the image of snakes and bulls and fawns, because they hardly felt any difference of kind between themselves and the animals, the wors.h.i.+p of Dionysus kept always this feeling of kins.h.i.+p with wild things. The beautiful side of this feeling is vividly conspicuous in _The Bacchae_. And the horrible side is not in the least concealed.

A curious relic of primitive superst.i.tion and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism--a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the sacrifice of Dionysus himself, and the purification of man by his blood.

It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their wors.h.i.+p on the mountains, when they were possessed by the G.o.d and became ”wild beasts,” actually tore with their teeth and hands any hares, goats, fawns, or the like that they came across. There survives a constant tradition of inspired Baccha.n.a.ls in their miraculous strength tearing even bulls asunder--a feat, happily, beyond the bounds of human possibility. The wild beast that tore was, of course, the savage G.o.d himself. And by one of those curious confusions of thought, which seem so inconceivable to us and so absolutely natural and obvious to primitive men, the beast torn was also the G.o.d! The Orphic congregations of later times, in their most holy gatherings, solemnly partook of the blood of a bull, which was, by a mystery, the blood of Dionysus-Zagreus himself, the ”Bull of G.o.d,” slain in sacrifice for the purification of man. And the Maenads of poetry and myth, among more beautiful proofs of their superhuman or infra-human character, have always to tear bulls in pieces and taste of the blood. It is noteworthy, and throws much light on the spirit of Orphism, that apart from this sacramental tasting of the blood, the Orphic wors.h.i.+pper held it an abomination to eat the flesh of animals at all. The same religious fervour and zeal for purity which made him reject the pollution of animal food, made him at the same time cling to a ceremonial which would utterly disgust the ordinary hardened flesh-eater. It fascinated him just because it was so incredibly primitive and uncanny; because it was a mystery which transcended reason!

It will be observed that Euripides, though certainly familiar with Orphism--which he mentions in _The Hippolytus_ and treated at length in _The Cretans_ (see Appendix)--has in _The Bacchae_ gone back behind Orphism to the more primitive stuff from which it was made. He has little reference to any specially Orphic doctrine; not a word, for instance, about the immortality of the soul. And his idealisation or spiritualisation of Dionysus-wors.h.i.+p proceeds along the lines of his own thought, not on those already fixed by the Orphic teachers.

P. 80, l. 17, Asia all that by the salt sea lies, &c.], _i.e._ the coasts of Asia Minor inhabited by Greeks, Ionia, Aeolis, and Doris.

P. 80, l. 27, From Dian seed.]--Dian=belonging to Zeus. The name Dionysus seemed to be derived from [Greek: Dios], the genitive of ”Zeus.”