The worship of this god was wholly unlike that of the Olympian gods. Under his influence his devotees, mostly women, in divine madness left their homes and daily tasks to roam the wild mountainside, clad no longer in their ordinary dress but wearing the skins of wild beasts, their flowing hair bound with ivy and wild bryony. In their excitement they were unconscious of time and place, unfettered by the normal limitations of human powers and sensibilities. Wild music stimulated their orgiastic dance; in frenzy they tore living creatures limb from limb, and devoured the raw dripping flesh, calling meantime on the god by name. This mad revel was continued until the participants fell exhausted to the ground. We can well understand how these things shocked the earliest Hellenic spectators and why it was that in becoming a Greek god, Dionysus lost much of his wilder Thracian nature and the more savage elements of his cult. To this amelioration the Delphic oracle doubtless contributed. Yet it is certain that the ecstatic rites were known on Mt. Cithaeron and on the heights of Parnassos down to a late date. Elsewhere for the most part the excesses of the cult were checked and ordered by law. The Greeks had come to see that there was something more than extravagant madness in the wild Dionysiac revel. The possessed devotee was set free for the moment from the tangled net of daily life, gained for a brief time new and superhuman powers, a very foretaste of immortality. Not least of all he was made one with all nature that united to worship the one god. Now this escape from the daily round of human affairs, this desire for union with divinity, has constantly made its appearance in various times and under varied conditions; as we all know, it has led to extraordinary religious outbursts in both pagan and Christian ages. Dionysus came also as god of wine. In the revival and elevation of the man, which the moderate use of wine gives, the Greek saw a divine mystery. Of course this use of wine is exactly parallel to the use of hashish and other narcotics for religious ends, and the ecstasy produced by music and the dance is familiar in the history of religion as a means to put individuals or whole companies into direct communication with the spirits or into union with a god.