When we examine the evidence of art, we find that the simple vase-painter accepts the fact that Dionysos has become a Greek, and does not raise the question whence he came. In black and early red figured designs Dionysos is almost uniformly dressed a Greek and attended by Greek Maenads. Later the artist becomes more learned and dresses Dionysos as a Thracian or occasionally as an Oriental. The vase-painting[949] in fig. 115, from a late aryballos in the British Museum, has been usually interpreted as representing the Oriental triumph of Dionysos. Rightly so, I incline to think, because the figure on the camel is attended not only by Orientals but by Greek maidens playing on cymbals. Their free upward bearing contrasts strongly with the strange abject fantastic posturings of the Orientals. It must however be distinctly borne in mind that the figure on the camel carries no Dionysiac attributes and cannot be certainly said to be the god. * * * * * The question remains—why did popular tradition, accepted by Euripides and embodied occasionally in vase-paintings, point to Asia rather than to the real home, Thrace? The answer in the main is given by Strabo[950] in his important account of the provenance of the orgiastic worships of Greece. Strabo is noting that Pindar, like Euripides, regards the rites of Dionysos as substantially the same with those performed by the Phrygians in honour of the Great Mother. ‘Very similar to these are,’ he adds, ‘the rites called Kotytteia and Bendideia, celebrated among the Thracians. Nor is it at all unlikely that, as the Phrygians themselves are colonists from the Thracians, they brought their religious rites from thence.’ In a fragment[951] of the lost seventh book he is still more explicit. He is mentioning the mountain Bernicos as formerly in possession of the Briges, and the Briges, he says, were ‘a Thracian tribe of which some portion went across into Asia and were called by a modified name, Phrygians.’ The solution is simple and is indeed almost a geographical necessity. If the Thracians dwelling in the ranges of Rhodope and Haemus went south at all, they would inevitably split up into two branches. The one would move westward into Macedonia, across the Axios and Lydias into Thessaly and thence downwards to Delphi, Thebes and Attica; the other eastward across the Bosporus or the Hellespont into Asia Minor. Greek colonists in Asia Minor would recognize in the orgiastic cults they found there elements akin to their own worship of Dionysos. Wise men are not slow to follow the star that leads to the east, and it was pleasanter to admit a debt to Asia Minor than to own kinship with the barbarous north. Similarity of names, e.g. Lydias and Lydia, may have helped out the illusion and most of all the Theban legend of the Phoenician Kadmos[952]. [Illustration: FIG. 116.]