Dionysus or Bacchus is, with both Greeks and Romans, the god of wine, of vineyards, and of autumn blessings. Naxos was the chief seat of his worship. It was on this island that he met and married Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, King of Crete, who had been deserted here by Theseus, her former lover. The story of Dionysus punishing the Tyrrhenian pirates who took him prisoner, intending to sell him as a slave, and of his changing himself to a lion and so terrifying the sailors, who jumped overboard and were changed into dolphins, is the subject of the fine relief on the frieze of the Lysikrates monument (Fig. 275 and Frontispiece). The lion, tiger, bull, and ram are his favourite animal attributes. Among plants, the vine, the ivy, and the laurel were sacred to him. Bacchanalian subjects and festivals of Dionysus occupy a large and important place in the art of Greece, Rome, and Pompeii. [Illustration: Fig. 276.—Victory, Munich Collection.] Nice, Victoria, or Victory is always represented with wings, a palm branch, and holding a laurel wreath, and, as would be expected, was more extensively venerated at Rome than in Greece. In the latter country her statues are generally of a small size, and she is an accompanying goddess to Athene and Zeus (Fig. 276). CHAPTER XII. ART IN PRIMITIVE GREECE. It was not only on their temples and images of their gods that the Greeks put their best efforts in art; but in their vases, jewellery, furniture, and humbler utensils of the household and of every-day life, we find the Greek artist pouring out some of his richest fancies, and the same spell of beauty is cast over them all. And did not Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, eulogise his countrymen in his famous speech on those who had fallen in the Peleponnesian War, as “lovers of justice and wisdom,” “philosophers, lovers of _beauty_, and foremost among men”? In Egypt, Assyria, and Persia we find all the artistic knowledge of these countries was lavished on the temples, and to the glorification of their autocratic rulers; but scarcely any remains are found that would imply a fostering of the minor arts among the common people. On the contrary, in Greece art impregnated the life and work of all classes, from the highest to the lowest in the state. This was only possible when entire freedom prevailed, as it did in the mass of the Greek people.