Volume II Part 22 (2/2)
His mother, Semele, desired to see Zeus in all his glory, as he appeared when he made love to Hera. Having promised to grant all the nymph's requests, Zeus was constrained to approach her in thunder and lightning.
She was burned to death, but the G.o.d rescued her unborn child and sowed him up in his own thigh. In this wild narrative Preller finds the wedlock of heaven and earth, ”the first day that it thunders in March”.
The thigh of Zeus is to be interpreted as ”the cool moist clouds”. If, on the other hand, we may take Dionysus himself to be the rain, as Kuhn does, and explain the thigh of Zeus by comparison with certain details in the soma sacrifice and the right thigh of Indra, as described in one of the Brahmanas, why then, of course, Preller's explanation cannot be admitted.*
* Kuhn, Herabkunft, pp. 166, 167, where it appears that the G.o.ds buy soma and place it on the right thigh of Indra.
These examples show the difficulty, or rather indicate the error, of attempting to interpret all the details in any myth as so many statements about natural phenomena and natural forces. Such interpretations are necessarily conjectural. Certainly Dionysus, the G.o.d of orgies, of wine, of poetry, became in later Greek thought something very like the ”spiritual form” of the vine, and the patron of Nature's moods of revelry. But that he was originally conceived of thus, or that this conception may be minutely traced through each incident of his legend, cannot be scientifically established. Each mythologist, as has been said before, is, in fact, asking himself, ”What meaning would I have had if I told this or that story of the G.o.d of the vine or the G.o.d of the year's renewal?” The imaginations in which the tale of the double birth of Dionysus arose were so unlike the imagination of an erudite modern German that these guesses are absolutely baseless. Nay, when we are told that the child was sheltered in his father's body, and was actually brought to birth by the father, we may be reminded, like Bachofen, of that widespread savage custom, the _couvade_.
From Brazil to the Basque country it has been common for the father to pretend to lie-in while the mother is in childbed; the husband undergoes medical treatment, in many cases being put to bed for days.* This custom, ”world-wide,” as Mr. Tylor calls it, has been used by Bachofen as the source of the myth of the double birth of Dionysus. Though other explanations of the _couvade_ have been given, the most plausible theory represents it as a recognition of paternity by the father. Bachofen compares the ceremony by which, when Hera became reconciled to Herakles, she adopted him as her own through the legal fiction of his second birth. The custom by which, in old French marriage rites, illegitimate children were legitimised by being brought to the altar under the veil of the bride is also in point.** Diodorus says that barbarians still practise the rite of adoption by a fict.i.tious birth. Men who returned home safely after they were believed to be dead had to undergo a similar ceremony.*** Bachofen therefore explains the names and myths of the ”double-mothered Dionysus” as relics of the custom of the _couvade_, and of the legal recognition of children by the father, after a period of kins.h.i.+p through women only.
*** Tylor, Prim. Oult., I 94; Early History of Mankind, p.
293.
** Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861, p. 254.
*** Plutarch, Quaest. Rom., 5.
This theory is put by Lucian in his usual bantering manner. Poseidon wishes to enter the chamber of Zeus, but is refused admission by Hermes.
”Is Zeus _en bonne fortune?_” he asks.
”No, the reverse. Zeus has just had a baby.”
”A baby! why there was nothing in his figure...! Perhaps the child was born from his head, like Athene?”
”Not at all--his _thigh_; the child is Semele's.”
”Wonderful G.o.d! what varied accomplishments! But who is Semele?”
”A Theban girl, a daughter of Cadmus, much noticed by Zeus.”
”And so he kindly was confined for her?”
”Exactly!”
”So Zeus is both father and mother of the child?”
”Naturally! And now I must go and make him comfortable.”*
* Dial. Deor., xi.
We need not necessarily accept Bachofen's view. This learned author employed indeed a widely comparative method, but he saw everything through certain mystic speculations of his own. It may be deemed, however, that the authors of the myth of the double birth of Dionysus were rather in the condition of men who practise the _couvade_ than capable of such vast abstract ideas and such complicated symbolism as are required in the system of Preller. It is probable enough that the struggle between the two systems of kindred--maternal and paternal--has left its mark in Greek mythology. Undeniably it is present in the _Eumenides_ of aeschylus, and perhaps it inspires the tales which represent Hera and Zeus as emulously producing offspring (Athene and Hephaestus) without the aid of the opposite s.e.x.*
In any case, Dionysus, Semele's son, the patron of the vine, the conqueror of India, is an enigmatic figure of dubious origin, but less repulsive than Dionysus Zagreus.
Even among the adventures of Zeus the amour which resulted in the birth of Dionysus Zagreus was conspicuous. ”Jupiter ipse filiam incestavit, natum hinc Zagreum.”** Persephone, fleeing her hateful lover, took the shape of a serpent, and Zeus became the male dragon. The story is on a footing with the Brahmanic myth of Praj.a.pati and his daughter as buck and doe. The Platonists explained the legend, as usual, by their ”absurd symbolism ”.***
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