"Here is a country that, had Dionysus been properly worshipped by its people, might be the happiest, brightest of all nations, a model for all others, and living like the gods in perpetual bliss--that is, in perfect equilibrium of thought and action, reason and sentiment, beauty and moderation. They have done much and successfully for Pythian Apollo; they have established a solid fabric of Liberty and Imperial Power; various intellectual pursuits they have cultivated with glory; and in their pæans to Apollo they have shown exquisite beauties of expression and feeling. "But Dionysus they persistently want to neglect, to discredit, to oust. "Instead of bowing humbly and openly to the god of enthusiasm, of unreasoned lilt of sentiment and passion, and of the intense delight in all that lives and throbs and vibrates with pleasure and joy; they affect to suppress sentiments, to rein in all pleasures, and to cast a slur on joy. "And then the god, seeing the scorn with which they treat him, avenges himself, and blinds and maddens them, as he did King Pentheus of Thebes, King Perseus of Argos, the daughters of Minyas of Orchomenos, Proitos of Tiryns, and so many others. The god Dionysus puts into their hearts absurd thoughts and fantastic prejudices, and some of them spend millions of money a year to stop the use of the Bacchic gifts in a country which has long been the least drinking country in the white world, and as a matter of fact drinks far too little good and noble wine. "Others again are made by angry Dionysus to μαἱνεσθαι or rage by adding to the 250 unofficial yearly fogs of the country, fifty-two official ones, which they call Sundays. "Again others, instigated by the enraged god Dionysus, drive people to furor by their intolerable declamations against alleged cruelties to animals, while they are themselves full of cruel boredom to human beings. "There is, I note with satisfaction, one among them who seems to have an inkling of the anger of the god, and who has tried to restore, in a fashion, the cult of Dionysiac festivals. "He calls his Orphic Association the Salvation Army. "They imitate not quite unsuccessfully the doings of the legs and feet of the true worshippers of Dionysus; but the spirit of the true cult is very far off from them. "And so Dionysus, ignored and looked down upon by the people of this country, avenges himself in a manner the upshot and sum of which is not inadequately represented in my _Bacchæ_. "And yet the example of the Hellas of Hellas, or of the town of Athens, which all of them study in their schools, might have taught them better things.