EELIGION OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS.
150
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve Got them new names; till wand'ring o'er Through God's high
By falsiti es and
the earth,
suff' ranee for the trial of ies the greatest part
man,
Of mankind they corrupted
to forsake God their Creator, and th' invisible Glory of Him that made them to transform Oft to the image of a brute, adorn'd With gay religions full of pomp and gold, And devils to adore for deities : Then they were known to men by various names, And various idols through the heathen world."
the deities external to the Olympic circle, the Dionysus, Leto, Persephone, and Hades or Aidoneus. Dionysus is generally admitted to have been derived from an Oriental source. The word " the * and reof meant
Among
most important were
men," originally judge ferred to a special function of the god, who was thought to pass sentence on the departed when they reached the other world. Essentially, however, Dionysus was the god of inebriety, the deification of drunkenness, as Ares was of violence, and Aphrodite of sensual desire. He was viewed as -the creator of the vine, or at any rate as its introducer into Greece ; the teacher of its culture, and the discoverer of the exhilarating properties of its fruit. The worship of Dionysus was effected by taking part in his orgies, and these were of a furious and ecstatic character, accompanied with exciting music, with wild dances, with shrieks and cries, and sometimes with bloodshed. Both men and women joined in the Dionysiac rites, the women outdoing the men in the violence of their frenzy. "Crowds of females, clothed with fawn-skins, and bearing the sacred thyrsus, flocked to the solitudes of Parnassus or Cithaeron or Taygetus, during the consecrated triennial period, passed the night there with torches, and abandoned themselves to demonstrations of frantic excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the god. The men yielded to a similar impulse by noisy revels in the streets, sounding the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying the image of the god in procession." f Every sort of license and excess was regarded as lawful on these probably
* See the " Transactions, of the Society of Biblical Archaeology," vol. t
II.
pp. 33. 81.
Grote,
"
History of Greece,"
VQ}.
{.
p.
20.