A still more curious incident of the Dionysiac worship was the sacrifice of a booted calf, a calf with cothurns on its feet.* The people of Tenedos, says Ælian, used to tend their goodliest cow with great care, to treat it, when it calved, like a woman in labour, to put the calf in boots and sacrifice it, and then to stone the sacrificer and drive him into the sea to expiate his crime. In this ceremony, as in the Diipolia at Athens, the slain bull is, as it were, a member of the blood-kindred of the man who immolates him, and who has to expiate the deed as if it were a murder.** In this connection it is worth remarking that Dionysus Zagreus, when, according to the myth, he was attacked by the Titans, tried to escape his enemies by assuming various forms. It was in the guise of a bull that he was finally captured and rent asunder. The custom of rending the living victims of his cult was carried so far that, when Pentheus disturbed his mysteries, the king was torn piecemeal by the women of his own family.*** The pious acquiescence of the author of the so-called Theocritean idyll in this butchery is a curious example of the conservatism of religious sentiment. The connection of Dionysus with the bull in particular is attested by various ritual epithets, such as "the bull," "bull-born,"**** "bull-horned," and "bull-browed".***** He was also worshipped with sacrifice of he-goats; according to the popular explanation, because the goat gnaws the vine, and therefore is odious to the god. * Ælian., H. A.t xii. 34. ** O. Müller, Proleg., Engl, transl., 322, attributes the Tenedos Dionysus rites to "the Beotic Achsean emigrants". Gf, Aglaoph., 674-677. *** Theocritus, Idyll, xxvi. **** Pollux, iv. 86. ***** Athenaus, xi. 466, a. The truth is, that animals, as the old commentator on Virgil remarks, were sacrificed to the various gods, "_aut per similitudinem aut per contrarietatem_" either because there was a community of nature between the deity and the beast, or because the beast had once been sacred in a hostile clan or tribe.* The god derived some of his ritual names from the goat as well as from the bull According to one myth, Dionysus was changed into a kid by Zeus, to enable him to escape the jealousy of Hera.** "It is a peculiarity," says Voigt, "of the Dionysus ritual that the god is one of his offering." But though the identity of the god and the victim is manifest, the phenomenon is too common in religion to be called peculiar.*** Plutarch**** especially mentions that "many of the Greeks make statues of Dionysus in the form of a bull".