Art, Greek; Greek drama -- History and criticism; Mythology, Greek
harmonious in its variations, had long maintained itself. It was in
memory of it, that those who were initiated into the Orphic mysteries
tasted of the raw flesh of the sacrifice, and thereafter ate flesh no
more; and it connected itself with that strange object in the Delphic
shrine, the grave of Dionysus.
Son, first, of Zeus, and of Persephone whom Zeus woos, in the form of
a serpent--the white, golden-haired child, the best-beloved of his
father, and destined by him to be the ruler of the world, grows up in
secret. But one day, Zeus, departing on a journey in his great
fondness for the child, delivered to him his crown and staff, and so
left him--shut in a strong tower. Then it came to pass that the
jealous Here sent [52] out the Titans against him. They approached
the crowned child, and with many sorts of playthings enticed him
away, to have him in their power, and then miserably slew him--
hacking his body to pieces, as the wind tears the vine, with the axe
Pelekus, which, like the swords of Roland and Arthur, has its proper
name. The fragments of the body they boiled in a great cauldron, and
made an impious banquet upon them, afterwards carrying the bones to
Apollo, whose rival the young child should have been, thinking to do
him service. But Apollo, in great pity for this his youngest
brother, laid the bones in a grave, within his own holy place.
Meanwhile, Here, full of her vengeance, brings to Zeus the heart of
the child, which she had snatched, still beating, from the hands of
the Titans. But Zeus delivered the heart to Semele; and the soul of
the child remaining awhile in Hades, where Demeter made for it new
flesh, was thereafter born of Semele--a second Zagreus--the younger,
or Theban Dionysus.
NOTES
12. +"Hymn to Aphrodite," lines 264-72 (Greek text). The Homeric
Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-
White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press;
London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
16. +"Hymn to Pan," lines 16ff. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with
an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns.
Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann
Ltd. 1914.
22. +Transliteration: deisidaimones. Liddell and Scott definition:
"fearing the gods," in both a good and bad sense--i.e. either pious
or superstitious.
22. *There were some who suspected Dionysus of a secret democratic
interest; though indeed he was liberator only of men's hearts, and
eleuthereus only because he never forgot Eleutherae, the little
place which, in Attica, first received him.
26. +E-text editor's transliteration: pyrigenês. Liddell and Scott
definition: "born of fire."
38. +Transliteration: Oinophoria . . . Anthestêria. Liddell and
Scott definition of Anthestêria: "The Feast of Flowers, the three
days' festival of Bacchus at Athens, in the month Anthesterion."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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