When trying to summarise our researches on the differences between artistic and non-artistic expression of emotional states in a comprehensive conclusion, we are again led to that eminently illustrative instance—the Bacchantic condition of the ancient Maenads. We have seen that in their description of Dionysiac mania the classical authors enumerate almost all the various orgiastic manifestations which can be found in all periods in different parts of the world. And if ancient literature affords us an epitome of the various expedients to which the expressional impulse resorts in its endeavour to enhance and relieve an emotional state, the force of this craving for expression, on the other hand, nowhere appears with such convincing clearness as in the Dionysiac monuments of classical art. The frieze around the Bacchic candelabra in the Louvre proves better than any psychological analysis to how great a degree the Dionysiac state is alloyed with pain and the longing for relief. If these Maenads be compared with the figures on the great vases in the British Museum and with the various Agave reliefs, it will still more conclusively appear that it is real distress which compels the dancers to seek in ever-increasing excitement deliverance from the burden of their feelings. No movement could be more eloquently expressive of the corresponding psychical state than the peculiar toss on the head and the backward curve of the upper trunk which can always be recognised in the most violent of the dancers. An approach to this attitude (“opisthotonos”) sometimes appears, as Spencer remarks in his essay on the Physiology of Laughter, in movements of great joy, which has not been able to find expression by the usual channels of discharge.[145] But there is no doubt that, however pleasurable the quality of the original state may have been, its tone must have been radically transformed before it could produce these strained postures. A feeling which distorts the body by its efforts to find relief, which is not satisfied with the wild cries, the dances, and all the madness of the Bacchic intoxication, must in its abnormal exaggeration be perceived as a pain. The pathological character of this feeling appears further from the fact that the very same movement may be observed in Pierre Breughel’s paintings of hysteric patients and in M. Charcot’s photographs from La Salpétrière.[146] And this same backward toss of the head may be seen in sculptures of witches, the mediæval Bacchantes, where it sometimes gives an impression of proud and insolent defiance, sometimes one of profound melancholy.[147] But in the reliefs representing Bacchic orgies, side by side with the dancers whose distorted attitude and violent movements betray the pain underlying the appearance of revel and riot, there may always be seen the figures of women moving with easy and graceful step. The freedom of their motion shows that they at least have found deliverance from the oppression