Note 231.3 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

There is another distinction observed in Greek ritual, that becomes of some importance in the later history of ascetic purity, that between wineless offerings (νηφάλια) and those accompanied with wine: the former being preferred by the powers of the lower world,231.3 though not invariably, and certainly not by the departed hero. However this distinction arose—and no single hypothesis explains all the cases—it was not a Semitic tradition, taught in early days to Hellas. For the Semitic divinities, including Jahwé, have a genial liking for wine “which cheereth God and man”;232.1 nor have we any Semitic example of a taboo on it, except possibly a late Nabataean inscription from the neighbourhood of Palmyra, mentioning “the god who drinks no wine.”232.2 Such a phrase would certainly not apply to the deities of Babylon; even the sun-god, who in Hellas appears to have been a total abstainer, is offered wine in the Babylonian service,232.3 and, according to one verse in the Epic of Creation, the deities actually get drunk,232.4 a grossness which, in the mythic imagination of Hellas, is only imagined as possible for Dionysos.