Chapter VI · DIONYSUS THE MAN

It is a pity that I cannot allow myself enough room to deal with these mythological questions more fully. I have been obliged to give but the merest outline both of the Promethean and the Dionysian myth. I can only hope that the details I am able to give will prove sufficient to enable the reader, not only to learn something about the myths themselves, which other books on the subject do not tell him, but also to follow the reasoning which I have based upon the bold outlines given.

In the Dionysian myth, I am faced with a peculiar difficulty, because so little of the scholarly explanation and interpretation of it appears to be of the slightest use.

If all the stuffy archæologists of the year 14,017, having found the remains of a machine-gun of the year 1917, insisted upon explaining it as an instrument for rapidly sowing a field with broad beans, because they refused to believe that the people of Europe in 1917, who were said to be so highly cultivated, could possibly have used such a disgusting instrument for warfare even against savages, much less against one another, it would be rather uphill work for one single individual, who was not an official archæologist, to prove that the instrument really was used for the purpose of killing young men, and that, moreover, in a certain war which occurred about the years 1914–1918, millions of healthy, brave and charming men were actually killed in this manner. Such allegations against our ancestors, particularly when they are supposed to have been civilised and Christians, moreover, are so very unpleasant! And since all thought and the formation of ideas is becoming more and more hedonistic every day,—that is to say, propositions and beliefs are no longer accepted on their merits but according to whether they evoke pleasant or unpleasant fancies in the minds of the majority⁠[166]⁠—we must assume that if “Progress” continues at its present rate, the only test of the validity or truth of a proposition in the year 14,017 will be whether the average old spinster or old washer-woman considers it a comforting thought or not. If she does not, it will be regarded as untrue.

I feel in regard to my interpretation both of the Promethean and of the Dionysian myth, that I am somewhat in the position of the non-official archæologist above mentioned, and that since the explanations I offer are not as “pleasant” as those usually presented to the lay public, they will run a considerable risk of being regarded by this same public as not quite as “true” as the customary ones.

But I am inured to this attitude and I shall not allow it to deter me from proceeding with the interpretation of the Dionysian myth and cult on the lines I have laid down.

In the first place, however, I must warn the uninitiated reader against the danger of believing that the bare outline I have given of the Dionysian myth is anything more than a rough, deliberate, though pretty thorough, simplification of the vast complex of legends and fables with which the name of Dionysus is identified. So intricately involved with one another are these various aspects of the myth, that it would be impossible in the small compass of this book to deal with them adequately. I was therefore compelled to treat the question on simple and broad lines, leaving it to those who are interested to investigate the matter further in the mass of literature, whether German, French, English or classical, which has grown up around the subject.

All I could do was to select the essential features; they are sufficient for my purpose; and I have satisfied myself from my study of the authorities, that had I embarked upon my undertaking with the determination to present the myth with very much greater elaboration, I should have served no more useful purpose than to increase the bulk of the present volume.

To return to Dionysus, the great medicine man, we have seen that he is called the Healer. But he is also called the Doctor (ἰατρός), and not only because he discovered the most potent and most pleasant nostrum (Wine), but also because he taught men, as Plutarch says, to hold ivy in high esteem.⁠[167] We have also seen above that he was the great patron of the bees and taught men the therapeutic use of honey.⁠[168] Thus we are to conceive of him primarily as a wizard in that art of life by which precisely the richest sources of vitality which nature possesses are tapped and turned to valuable account. We must disabuse our minds entirely of the impression that his connection with wine, the principal one in the popular mind for centuries, was anything more than one of the many attributes of his manifold character.

He came some time after the world had grown impossible as the result of the Promethean crime—just as Noah, after the parallel disasters that overcame his people, once the sons of god had mingled with the daughters of men, himself regards it as one of his first post-diluvian duties to plant the vine.⁠[169] But Dionysus’s range of remedies covered almost everything that may properly be regarded as a source of vigour and a means of curing or resisting disease. Personally, I am not inclined to exclude even fermented milk from among the contents of his vast natural medicine chest, though the oldest of all these I believe to have been honey, fresh fruit and raw meat.

It is possible that barley wine, millet wine, fermented milk, and even grape wine, may have been added to his supremely wise initial discoveries by himself later in his own lifetime, or by other men after he had died, and that possibly these later discoveries, if they were later discoveries, became through tradition incorporated in his original teaching, so that even the names of later medicine men became absorbed in his own and identified with it; but what is of supreme importance in understanding him and his cult is, that he it was who, in a moment of extreme distress handed suffering mankind a number of first-class protective beverages and foods, which not only corrected the mistakes of their early Promethean civilisation, but also gave them a new vigour, a new spirit, and a new intensity of sexual potency, unknown except to their pre-Promethean ancestors.

I say honey was probably one of the first of these, because the use of mead was so universally distributed among all the peoples of primeval Europe, that it must have a very hoary antiquity.⁠[170] Now it is interesting to note that the association of honey with the idea of medicine is also of very great antiquity. W. H. Roscher tells us that from the earliest times honey was thought to have properties which both secured good health and lengthened life, and that it was used in the curing of innumerable diseases.

I am not a believer in etymological methods of demonstration, but I quote the following as interesting in this connection. “The very Avestic word for wine shows that it was a drink sweet as honey. This Avestic word is madho, which corresponds to the Sanscrit madhu, Latin mel, and French miel. The root of the word shows its medicinal virtue. It comes from an old Aryan root, mad or madh = Latin mederi, meaning to make a remedy, from which comes our English word medicine.”⁠[171]⁠

Even in ancient India the drink Soma must probably have been introduced later than mead, as we find the former sometimes called madhu in the texts.⁠[172]⁠

The ancients were well aware of the old association of mead and honey generally with therapeutic powers of a high order. Aristotle, speaking of honey and wine, etc., says: “To know how to apply them for the purposes of health, and to whom, and at what time, is as difficult as to be a physician.”⁠[173] Pliny, too, writes as follows: “As to honey itself, it is of so peculiar a nature that it prevents putrefaction from supervening, by reason of its sweetness solely.... It is employed with the greatest success for affections of the throat and tonsils, for quinsy, all ailments of the mouth, as also in fever when the tongue is parched. Decoctions of it are used also for peripneumony and pleurisy, for wounds inflicted by serpents, and for the poison of fungi. In paralysis it is prescribed in honied wine, though the liquor also has its own peculiar virtues.”⁠[174]⁠

And further: “[Hydromel] which is made of skimmed honey is an extremely wholesome beverage for invalids who take nothing but a light diet ... it reinvigorates the body, is soothing to the mouth and to the stomach, and by its refreshing properties allays feverish heats. I find it stated too by some authors that to relax the bowels it should be taken cold, and it is particularly well-suited to persons of a chilly temperament, or of weak and pusillanimous constitution, such as the Greeks, for instance, call ‘mycropsychi.’”⁠[175]⁠

Pliny has other passages in which he refers to the value of honied wine as a “stimulant for failing appetite,” as a “laxative,” and gives the example of Pollio Romilius who lived to a great age, over a hundred years, on honied wine and bread alone.⁠[176]⁠

Diogenes Laertius speaks of Pythagoras as being content with honeycomb and bread,⁠[177] while in the Geoponica we read that honey makes men long-lived, and that a diet of bread and honey alone preserves all the senses perfect. “Democritus being indeed asked how men might become healthy and long-lived, said: ‘If they supplied the external parts of the body with oil and the internal parts with honey.’”⁠[178]⁠

Hosts of other passages could be quoted.

According to Spencer’s explanation of sacrifices, which in his opinion were merely offerings to the great ancestor, either to feed his spirit or to propitiate him, we would expect sacrifices of honey to have been made to the gods of Greece by their worshippers, because since we are told that honey was the food of the gods (we are informed that Zeus was brought up on it) we should naturally expect it to be given to them in sacrifice. And this is indeed what took place. Death offerings in Greece frequently consisted of honey. Pluto, Hecate and the Furies all received honey sacrifices. In fact honey is probably meant by nectar and ambrosia. It was the oldest medicine of infallible effect, the first panacea, the food that secured a long life, and therefore the food of immortals.

It is a pity that more experiments have not been made with honey by modern authorities on dietetics; because as I have already pointed out, since it constitutes a satisfactory whole food for a certain section of the animal kingdom, it is safe to conclude that it contains all the necessary vitamines. It is probably on this account that it was found so useful by the ancients for every sort of ailment and bodily affection.

I mention raw meat as one of the earliest products to be included among Dionysus’s list of therapeutic and natural foods. I shall at present only refer to a few of my reasons for doing this. In the first place, I would remind the reader of what I have already said concerning the medicinal value of raw meat; I would also recall the custom, even among such people as the Eskimo of the present day, of making raw meat an essential portion of their diet, bearing in mind that the Eskimo have a singularly restricted range of foodstuffs to draw upon and therefore that they have to be careful to absorb a sufficient quantity of “protective” food; and lastly I would refer to two of Dionysus’s most perplexing epithets: Omestes and Omophagos, both of which mean raw-flesh-eating.

How can we account for these epithets unless we suppose that he must have set the example of eating raw meat himself, or taught it as part of his wonderful therapeutic doctrine? It is in keeping with everything we have said about him and everything we know about him. It is consistent with his general doctrine of health and vigour, and we must bear in mind that he lived at a time probably near enough to the pre-Promethean era to enable him to know that men must have lived on raw meat in the Golden Age.

As far as raw meat was concerned, therefore, it did not necessarily constitute a very original portion of his doctrine. Arguing from his knowledge of the Golden Age, which tradition told him had preceded the Promethean era, he may simply have concluded that, at least experimentally, a return to one of the staple articles of diet of that age might be a good thing; and in the event the experiment proved successful. It must, however, have constituted an important part of his dietetic doctrine, otherwise he would scarcely have been called, among other things, Omestes and Omophagos.⁠[179]⁠

His insistence upon the virtues of fresh fruit would also be the natural outcome of his upbringing and his knowledge of plant and tree life. It is said that his title Dendrites was given him because the notion of his being the cultivator and protector of the vine was extended to that of his being the protector of trees in general. I should be inclined to reverse this order and to say that the tending of the vine was only one of his functions as Dendrites. However, the point is not important. The fact to note is that fresh fruit must be included among the earliest of the products associated with his therapeutic doctrine. He was probably a great eater of fresh fruit himself, and his followers became so likewise.

The transition from the idea of mead, or fermented honey, to other fermented drinks, was doubtless an easy one, and even if Dionysus was not the inventor of them all, it is easy to see how readily he would have been credited with their discovery once his towering personality had been stamped on the minds of the remote ancestors of the ancient Greeks through his great reputation as a therapeutist and therefore thaumaturgist. The two ideals, as the life of Christ shows, are closely associated in the mind of antiquity, and very rightly too.

Now the therapeutic value of the wines brewed from the grape, barley or any other seed, have been known for centuries by science and for thousands of years by unscientific man.⁠[180] Their tonic value has been recognised by medical men of all epochs, while their virtues as laxatives, aids to digestion (particularly needed when cooked food is partaken of plentifully) and stimulants both of the body and the mind, are proverbial.

All the virtues of the fruit or the grain, intensified by fermentation, and, in the case of partially germinated grain, actually created by the process of preparation,⁠[181] are absorbed in the resulting beverage, and protect not only against disease, but also add to the joys of life, enhance bodily vigour, neutralise the bad effects of injudicious cooking upon the digestive organs, strengthen the sexual powers, and lighten the heart generally.

I think there can be no doubt that the great decline in the resistance offered to disease which has been noticeable in Europe in the last three hundred years, and has made careful sanitation, antiseptic washes, and disinfectants of all kinds such an essential part of the life of modern man that without them he could scarcely be expected to survive, is largely due to a proportionate decline (a) in the quality of our fermented liquors, and (b) in the amount of fermented liquor that is consumed by the mass of the people.⁠[182] For as we have seen in the case of King Jamshed, the enormous advantage of fermented liquors is this,—not only do they offer the precious protective qualities of the fruit and the grain in an intensified form, but they make it possible for man to derive benefit from these precious qualities in all seasons and climes, that is to say, independently of the locality he happens to be in or of the time of year at which he feels he requires a restorative.

This is the great virtue of the cordials Dionysus introduced: they made it possible for man to resist deficiency diseases, in spite of a diet that offers no compensations for the cause of the trouble, and they also enabled him to do this at all times of the year and in any clime.

It has been argued again and again by authorities whose degrees and honours literally fill their title-pages, that alcohol is not good for the human body. I do not accept this view. There may be truth in the view that large amounts of alcohol are bad; but that alcohol taken moderately is bad, I do not believe. I would refer the reader to the Lancet of March 30th, 1907, where a large number of doctors repudiate the allegation that the medical profession are opposed to the use of alcohol. I would also refer the reader to Professor Attwater’s⁠[183] investigation into the liquor problem which was conducted with a Committee of fifty, and finally to Dr. C. Mercier’s “Inaugural Address on Drunkenness and the Physiological Effect of Alcohol,” delivered before the Midland Medical Association in November, 1912.

In all these papers the reader will find considerable doubt cast upon the glib assertion repeated so irresponsibly everywhere to-day that alcohol is of no value to the human body, or that it is directly pernicious.

It would be a simple matter, if one could spare the time over such futilities, to show that the harmless gramophone, the innocuous piano, and the apparently innocent cinema, were also harmful when indulged in to excess; but what purpose would the demonstration of such a truism serve?

I am, however, not deeply concerned with this campaign against alcohol. I think it stupid, puritanical and misanthropic; but it affects neither the credo of Dionysus nor my present argument. Its most pernicious and dangerous aspect is that it would fain throw a net wide enough to include the credo, the wondrous therapeutic doctrine, of Dionysus, and thus bring other things besides alcohol to nought.

For what did Dionysus stand for? In addition to the other products I have already mentioned he stood for wine, ale, cider, mead, perry and ivy-juice. But how much of this hated alcohol is there in the modern representatives of these liquors?

In champagne and burgundy: 10 to 13 per cent.

In claret: 8 to 12 per cent.

In cider and perry: 5 to 9 per cent.

In strong ale: 5 to 9 per cent.

In light ale: 2 to 5 per cent.

(The figures for mead and ivy-juice, I have, for obvious reasons, been unable to obtain.)

From this list the reader will be able to judge of the dishonesty of those who, under the cover of an attack on alcohol, would like, if they could, to rope in those precious liquors with which Dionysus may be said to have saved mankind under a Promethean civilisation.

Even the strong liquors, such as gin and rum, only have 40 per cent. of alcohol in them. But I am not speaking of these. I am speaking of the great known wines and of the precious liquors brewed from barley, apples and pears. No one has yet advanced a sound scientific case against these. How could they?—seeing that there is not a civilisation on earth that has achieved greatness that was not built up on one or more of these? But, as I say, under the dishonest cover of an attack on alcohol, against the abuse of which several scientists of repute have admittedly advanced cogent arguments, it has unfortunately become customary of late to assail these precious beverages as well. Ignorance could not be exploited with more diabolical ruthlessness.

The dictionary contains no epithet sufficiently insulting with which to dub the maniacs who endeavour to confuse so vital an issue as this in a manner so transparently unfair.

When it is known that the growth of alcoholism in France was coincident with the phylloxera crisis which so seriously reduced the consumption of the natural wines in that country; when, too, we bear in mind that the evils of drunkenness in England are the direct results of the poisoning and vitiating of the once pure old ale that can, without romantic fulsomeness, really be said to have made England what she was at her zenith in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; when I say I am prepared to prove the proposition that two of the fairest civilisations the world has ever seen,—that of England in the centuries of Elizabeth and Charles I.⁠[184] and that of Egypt at the dawn of history,—were the creation of ale-drinking communities, how can anyone who really values his reputation for fair-play—not to mention historical accuracy—still maintain that wine and ale are legitimately included in a campaign against alcohol?

It seems a waste of time to repeat all the arguments I have already brought forward elsewhere to show how great was the value of the old ale of England, and how unscrupulously its precious virtues were one by one destroyed, as the result of the reforms introduced by the Puritans in the seventeenth century.⁠[185] I have shown how very much its qualities were impaired, in the first place by adulteration with hops, later on by the introduction of inferior substitutes both for hops and malt, until finally it became the poisonous, health-destroying swill which we now call our beer,⁠[186] and upon which we have allowed our working-classes—the true backbone of England—to besot themselves for over one hundred years.

I have shown how the Kings of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries strove to keep this national drink pure and to supply it plentifully to the masses of the nation,⁠[187] and what universal protest there was when, owing to the rise of the commercial and profiteering spirit after the triumph of those enemies of man, the vile Puritans of the seventeenth century, this precious national beverage was turned into a draught of poison.

Our forefathers regarded ale with as much solicitude as bread; they were equally valued as necessaries of life,⁠[188] and their proper distribution was the constant concern of English legislators.

There was no temperance agitation against the use of old ale in England, any more than there was a temperance agitation in ancient Greece against the use of the fermented drinks sacred to the name of Dionysus,⁠[189] for the use of both was attended neither by ugliness nor ill-health. When the Puritans created a temperance movement it was, as I have shown, for very different reasons from those which animate the temperance movements of our own day.

But what is so strangely unfair and so transparently corrupt in the whole of the modern temperance movement is that it never concerns itself with the purification of our national drinks, or of wine or of any fermented liquor. It is as if those behind the temperance crusade were glad to see the gradual deterioration of intoxicating liquors into poisons in order that their case might appear the more plausible.

A truly patriotic temperance movement in this country would agitate for a return to the pure ale of old England, and in France it would concentrate upon the rigorous prosecution of all adulterers of wine; for, to inveigh against intoxication, or the evils of beer and wine-drinking, when the beer and wine available are admittedly adulterated,⁠[190] is obviously to take advantage of an accidental feature not inherent in the products themselves, to deprive mankind of the advantage of those products in their pure condition for all time.

Commercialism comes on the scene, unscrupulously deteriorates our national drinks and turns them into harmful, or at least neutral drinks for its own base ends; and then, if you please, has the impudence to declare (as it has done in America) that for commercial and industrial purposes the proletariat are more serviceable material if they are deprived of these beverages.

Of course, this is admitted. But then who is responsible for the supply of these deleterious or valueless drinks to the proletariat in the first place?⁠[191]⁠

I wonder whether there is a single workman either in England or America who has ever drunk a draught of ale such as Queen Elizabeth and her ladies-in-waiting used to drink at every meal!—I know there is not one,—not one! But it should be remembered that the old ale of the Plantagenet and Tudor periods kept men in a state more exuberant, more spirited, more lusty, than mere everyday health; it kept them above all unusually potent sexually. This was what the Puritans were clever enough to detect; and it was, I feel sure, by no means an accident that one of the chief adulterants of ale tolerated by the Puritans consisted of hops, from which lupulin—one of the most potent anaphrodisiacs—is extracted.

It is impossible to believe that the great fermented drinks of antiquity could have been anything but a precious boon and a godsend to men, otherwise we are forced to regard as cynics and misanthropists the races who deified the supposed original creators of them.

Read how the ancient Indian speaks of his Soma, remember how the ancient Greek refers to his god Dionysus as the Saviour, the Healer, and the Liberator; study the history of mead in Scandinavia, in Persia and in Asia Minor; follow the civilisation of China up to the time when it ceased to be a wine-drinking country, and compare its subsequent with its former condition;⁠[192] read of the Mexicans, the Peruvians, the great Babylonians⁠[193] and Egyptians and even the artistic Bushmen of Africa, now alas! almost extinct;—everywhere, among all peoples, you will find civilisation, art, culture, only where the health and spirit-giving beverages of nature’s fermented fruit and grain have made such achievements possible; for, as I shall show later, it is not only in Greek mythology that Prometheus and Dionysus are opposed—this conflict permeates every aspect of life ancient and modern, and it is not merely coincidence that the most Promethean of modern countries, America, should have been the first to suppress the cult of Dionysus among its people.

On those who wish to argue that the great civilisations of the world would have been possible without the fermented liquor, which is an inseparable part of the diet of the people who were responsible for them, it is surely incumbent to prove that a form of beverage so distinctive and possessing such marked therapeutic value, was adopted universally without any regard whatsoever to the utilitarian ends served by its adoption. They must be prepared to show that the consensus of opinion among thinking mankind of all ages points to the conclusion that, although this form of beverage met no social or cultural need, its universality is due to some perversity, some superfluous and non-utilitarian appetite, which did not require to be gratified in order to produce the results with which we are confronted in all ancient and comparatively recent civilisations.

To argue merely on the evidence drawn from modern conditions is vicious; in the first place, because beverages prepared from pure natural products (fermented) are no longer accessible, except perhaps to those who can afford to buy some of the good Continental wines;⁠[194] and, secondly, because the standard of health expected from the average man and woman of antiquity and regarded as an essential factor of happiness in the past, is no longer recognised or upheld among Western peoples as the first necessity of a life worth living.

Another and very important aspect of this question to which one would like to see the Temperance agitators give some prominence, is that of the substitutes which modern conditions offer to those who are deprived of sound and invigorating fermented liquors.

Read the books that have been written against alcohol. Where do you find a single author who is honest enough to lay stress on the dark side of his intended reforms? Where do you find an author who is sufficiently in earnest about the welfare of his fellow-creatures to point to the disastrous results of drinking tea and coffee—not to mention any more harmful drugs? For every sound line that has been written against alcohol, I am prepared to point to two that have been written against these two pernicious beverages. As early as the beginning of the last century, William Cobbett, in his Cottage Economy, called attention to the evils arising from the increasing consumption of tea and coffee in England, and deplored, as all friends of humanity must, the corresponding decline in the production and consumption of good English ale.

In my Defence of Aristocracy I devote a considerable portion of a chapter to this question of the pernicious substitutes to which the masses of a nation are driven when their most wholesome beverages are taken from them; and for the authorities whom I there adduce in support of my arguments I beg the reader to refer to the work mentioned.⁠[195]⁠

When we recollect that tea, besides being in no respect a food, is also, owing to its two principal chemical constituents—tannin and caffein—directly harmful both to the digestion and to the nervous system; when, moreover, we bear in mind that over 255,000,000 pounds of tea are consumed per annum in the United Kingdom, and that it has been calculated that the poor in London spend at least one-eighth of their income in buying this drug, it behoves us to regard with considerable caution any movement which, while it makes no reference to this aspect of “Temperance,” seeks under the cover of a scientific attack on alcohol to proscribe good wines and beers from the homes of a great people.⁠[196]⁠

To sum up this all too brief outline of some of the leading features of Dionysus’s therapeutic doctrine, we have seen that the wine of the grape possesses the following virtues in a pre-eminent degree:—

1. It is a good tonic.

2. It is a valuable stimulant, both of the mind and body.

3. It is an excellent aid to digestion and assimilation particularly in cases of constipation and dyspepsia caused by culinary errors.

4. It is a natural aphrodisiac.

5. It allows of the benefits derived from fruit being enjoyed at any time, in any clime, and therefore does not restrict the consumer to any locality or season.

6. And, above all, since the process of fermentation is believed to be, in itself, productive of vitamines, it constitutes a good compensation in cases when a diet is in any respect deficient, either through the exposure of a vital food to heat, or because the necessary vitamine-vehicles are not available.

Ale also possesses all these qualities,⁠[197] and in addition, a strong anti-scorbutic and nourishing virtue, owing to the fact that it is prepared from partly germinated grain, and, moreover, contains the most valuable form of sugar which is known as maltose.

Modern beer, of course, possesses none of these qualities.

It is unnecessary for me to continue the list, and to refer to mead, cider, perry, millet-ale, etc., all of which truly formed part of the Dionysian doctrine. I have said enough about the other beverages already, I hope, to convince the reader at least of this, that when the ancient Indian or Greek glorified his god Soma, or his god Dionysus, it was for genuine and lasting benefits,⁠[198] the evidence of which he saw in himself and all his fellows, and that there can be no mystery, no childish or empty phantasy about the worship of such a divinity, least of all when the evidence of the myth connected with his name definitely points to the nature of the bounties he dispensed.

Again, however, I feel I must lay stress upon an important aspect of this question which, particularly nowadays, is likely to be overlooked unless it is constantly reiterated. I refer, not to the cure of actual deficiency diseases, for which the Dionysian doctrine was responsible, though that was wonderful enough, but to the general alleviating and invigorating effect upon the body as a whole which results from correcting such slight though deeply depressing and debilitating disorders as indigestion, constipation and the like. One of the first functions to suffer in the case of faulty nutrition or in the event of blood-poisoning, however slight, owing to a bad diet, is the function connected with the joys of sex. And, when we think of how numerous and how intense these joys can be, both in the spiritual and the physical sphere, if the body is in a condition of exuberant health; when we recollect, moreover, how many of the manly virtues and the womanly interests centre around these functions, it is difficult to lay too much emphasis on their importance, or to exaggerate the literally delirious enthusiasm which must have possessed a people who, suddenly bereft of the perfect exercise of these functions, found themselves after a long spell restored to their pristine state of happiness by Dionysus, and assured by his teaching against a relapse into their former misery.

For, again, in regarding precisely these joys of sex, we must be careful not to contemplate them either through the glasses of this Age, or through the glasses of our own deteriorated vitality. We must try to imagine what sex and its joys must have meant to primitive beings, beings still unimpaired enough, despite their crude Promethean culture, to tower far above us in all matters of the body and its functions. Humiliating as it may seem, we must remember that we are below par in every respect, and that our standards are completely valueless except for measuring varying degrees of ill-health.

Well then, if we bear all these things in mind, and in addition ponder for a moment the extreme importance that healthy women must attach to healthy sexual potency in men, if we reflect for a moment how much the happiness of a robust, healthy woman’s life depends upon tenderness, love and caresses from the male, and ultimately upon the bearing and rearing of children,⁠[199] we will at once perceive how severely sound women are affected when men’s sexual potency is impaired. At least men can get about other business; but what is woman—particularly primitive woman—to do?

The period following upon the Promethean crime must have been one of appalling tribulation for the women members of that primeval stock which constituted the remote ancestors of the ancient Greeks. With their men grown cold, unresponsive to their charms, and in some cases perhaps quite impotent, what could they do? What had become of the beauty of their lives, the joy of their lives, the meaning of their lives? Everything of value for them had at one stroke of the wand been turned to dross and to emptiness. Life was a husk at which their vigorous teeth gnawed in vain endeavour to discover the sweet kernel. They thirsted to be taken, to be overcome, to be ravished. Instead they probably had to woo, to cajole and to persuade. They were outraged in their deepest instincts, by the inability to perform a function that was the very essence of their being; they languished with but the spectacle of their gradually vanishing youth and beauty to distract them. The racial memories of a better age filled their fancy, so that they were thrilled by the pictures their imaginations depicted; but these pictures became realities to them only in their dreams, and but helped to heap up the enormity of the contrast which actual life presented.

Then, suddenly, a great teacher appeared from the woods, who took pity on their lot. He saw with the eyes of a superior being the root of the trouble, the cause of their men’s perennial lassitude and self-control; and with his deep knowledge of nature and her secrets acquired in the forest glades he had just left behind him, he set out to remedy the evil that he recognised, and to put an end to the suffering that offended his vision on all sides. He preached his doctrine swiftly and with authority, for there was no time to lose. He taught the women the magic virtue of herbs, of fruits, of raw meat, and above all of honey and of mead. They listened, for he was young and handsome; and they obeyed, for they were desperate. Quickly the new teaching was learned, the kitchens hummed with unwonted business, the din of shattered pottery rent the air as superfluous stewpans were flung for ever on the dust heap, and the forest rang with the voices of eager wives and virgins, trying to recall precisely what it was that the handsome young man from the woods had recommended.

Fingers and arms were repeatedly stung by the infuriated bees, legs and feet got caught and entangled in the pricking brambles, hair fell down and became woven with leaves and branches, night came on and some were lost, while others pursued their search with firebrands and bonfires. What did it matter now—what did anything matter? Zeus had promised only Hope:—this man, this wonderful, handsome, young man from the woods had promised something tangible, something almost forgotten, something immensely precious,—could they be blamed for behaving like furies?

That night the first of the Dionysia was celebrated: dishevelled women, frantic with the promise of joy and already delighting over fulfilling a portion of their creed, made their supper of raw meat in the heart of the woods, while they searched and searched for the precious ingredients of the coming elixirs. Mad and wild women, forgetting both decency and humanity, rushing and darting hither and thither, like untamed animals, filling their baskets in the fury of delirium, and eager but for one great moment—the moment of the experiment when they would test the truth of the wood-wizard’s words—sang, shouted and danced in a transport of joy.

Imagine then their redoubled enthusiasm when they found that he had not deceived them! Picture the intensity of their ecstasy and gratitude when they saw that he was a true prophet!

Can it be wondered at that Dionysus was the exception among the Greek gods, and that he was served only by women? Is there any mystery now in the “mysteries”? Does the reader understand why the virgins, and not the hall-porters of the period, bore the phallus among the fruit in their baskets at the Dionysia? And is not even the fury of the rite explained, as also the fact that it was held in the darkness of night? Are not these mad dishevelled women which we see depicted by Greek art as taking part in the festival of Dionysus just what we should expect? Drunk with enthusiasm, mad with gratitude, wild with eagerness, even down to the eating of raw meat which was one of the essential features of the festivals—all is now surely clear enough. Omestes, Omophagos: the reader remembers these epithets! Can he doubt now that this ceremony of eating raw meat at the Dionysia was intended to recall that essential portion of the great teacher’s creed?

It was Dionysus against Prometheus, Life against Death, the erect obelisk against impotence, sickness and disease. And Dionysus triumphed! No wonder the women were so grateful; no wonder they were so wild; but they were better and healthier women, they were also more wicked and more sinful, more positive and more hearty women, and, on that account, more desirable women than the women of to-day.

It is generally known that at the festivals of Dionysus, which were called Bacchanalia, Dionysia, or Orgies, the god was served by priestesses called Bacchantes, Lenæ, Mænades, Thyiades, Mimallones, Clodones or Bassaræ. These women are usually represented almost naked, decked with garlands of ivy or vine-branches, a thyrsus, hair in frightful disarray, and wildly dancing and running. They utter strange cries, rage with mad enthusiasm, clash different musical instruments together, and hold swords or serpents (both phallic symbols) in their hands. In the processions they wore tamed serpents in their hair, while the Canephoria, as I have already mentioned, were virgins who carried baskets of fruit with a phallus, usually carved out of fig-tree wood, lying among the fruit. One of the most important rites at these festivals was the sacrifice of an animal sacred to Dionysus, and its carcass was usually torn frantically to bits by the Mænades and eaten raw.

This celebration of the Dionysian mysteries presents a number of problems which are hardly dealt with satisfactorily by the mythologians whether of antiquity or of the present day.

In the first place, why should Dionysus be an exception among the gods of Greece, and, contrary to custom, be served by priestesses instead of attendants of his own sex? F. A. Voigt is one of the few who raises this problem; but he does not attempt to solve it. He simply says that it is characteristic of all the oldest practices of the cult.⁠[200]⁠

Secondly, why should these women attendants be such furies? Why should they behave like raving madwomen? Voigt says: “The tearing of the sacrificial animal by the Mænads appears to be genuinely orgiastic, like the outcome of wild and Heaven-ordained madness.”⁠[201]⁠

What is the explanation of this? Nor should the actual eating of the torn fragments raw be regarded as an unimportant part of the ceremony, simply because in plastic representations of this aspect of their cult the Mænads only appear with pieces of the mutilated beasts in their hands; for, as Voigt points out: “The fact that the eating of these raw fragments is not depicted, is simply owing to the æsthetic difficulty, or impossibility, of representing this plastically, and does not point to the relative unimportance of the omophagic feature of the celebrations.”⁠[202]⁠

Modern mythology offers no satisfactory replies to these questions.

It attempts to explain the orgies by suggesting that they were an act of sympathising with life and of recapitulating life in nature, its movements and contrast, the joy and sorrow of life on earth. Or, again, it suggests that they constituted a periodic debauch to symbolise the fact that man is master on earth and is able to do everything he likes, and consequently that he can without scruple commit every act which law and order at ordinary times forbid.

Neither of these suggested explanations is worth a moment’s consideration, because they do not even account for the exclusively female attendants, let alone their characteristic demeanour.

Modern mythologians suggest that the tearing of the sacrificial animal to pieces symbolises the tearing of Zagreus (Dionysus) to pieces by the Titans.⁠[203] But surely, if that were so, the Mænades would scarcely have celebrated this tragic occurrence, so disastrous to the world, by eating the raw flesh of their god and eating it with such fury! This obviously will not do.

It is also suggested that the annihilation of the sacrificial animal (or man originally⁠[204]⁠) symbolised the destruction of earth’s vegetation by winter. But then, as Voigt very reasonably points out, if that were so why was the youth of the animal or man always insisted upon? If the young animal or boy symbolised the earth’s vegetation, it must have been the vegetation of spring, not of winter. But this was not the idea.⁠[205]⁠

Again, the rural Dionysia, it has been suggested by modern mythologians, are no doubt to be compared to similar festivals which were traditional in France and in Germany, and are probably counterparts of them.⁠[206] In France, for instance, on the Dimanche des Brandons, which is the first Sunday in Lent, the peasantry used to run through the fields, gardens and vineyards with lighted fire-brands “to call them to fertility and to rid them of weeds”; while bonfires were lighted in the market-place, and around these the people would dance. In Germany and the Tyrol the peasants also used on certain specified occasions to march in procession through the fields, clanging cymbals and ringing bells, in order to “awaken the corn.”

But I see not the faintest trace of resemblance between these rural festivals in France and Germany and the Dionysia. In the first place, if the Dionysia are counterparts of these, why do women play the chief rôle in the Greek festival? Have not men also good reason to awaken the corn? And, furthermore, where is the all-pervading worship of the phallus which is inseparable even from the rural Dionysia?

These rural Dionysia, it has been said by certain other great authorities, were simply bucolic celebrations of the wine harvest. But as Mommsen points out, and I thoroughly agree with him, they were nothing of the sort. Read what occurred at the festivals, note when they were held, remember what was drunk at them, and it becomes plain that they had nothing in common with the celebration of a wine-harvest.⁠[207]⁠

Meanwhile, of course, a satisfactory answer to the most perplexing features of the Dionysia has not been found, and is not offered by modern or even ancient mythologians.

If, however, we regard the whole of the Dionysian mysteries as a traditional celebration of a stupendous event, an immense triumph—the victory of a suffering, debilitated and gradually disappearing race over the causes of all their misery;—if we regard them as ceremonies symbolic of the mad joy and gratitude which must have been felt when Dionysus first conquered Prometheus, then, it seems to me, everything becomes plain.

It is the women who suffer most from the asperities of a Promethean civilisation, just as it is the women who are suffering most to-day. It is the women, the very essence of whose nature is tortured and outraged when, owing to a Promethean civilisation, their men cease from being men, cease from being male, prehensile, virile, violent and even seductive.

If, then, we can postulate, as we very well may, a creature more innocent in her desires, more unsophisticated in her appetites, less tolerant of male self-control and less enamoured of it, than modern woman; if we can picture a creature frank and passionate enough to show mad enthusiasm when the deepest roots of her nature, from being poisoned to death, are suddenly liberated, nurtured and brought back to healthy life, and we are also able to imagine her wild gratitude to him who effected this salvation,—then what mystery does there remain in these Dionysian mysteries, what difficulty, what problem?

As I have already said, even Dionysus’s most perplexing epithets, Omestes and Omophagus, become once more quite clear, after having had their true meaning concealed for millenniums; and he, the great god himself, emerges from the investigation, not as the patron of pointless lust, debauchery, drunkenness and licence, but as the Liberator, the Healer, the Great Doctor, the Saviour of mankind, who released the human race, and particularly the women, from the appalling consequences of the Promethean crime, and whose name will therefore rightly be associated for ever by grateful humanity with the magic cordials for which his great genius was primarily accountable.

This was the first Renaissance, the first re-birth of health, beauty, vigour and joyful life; and by the side of the stupendous artist who was responsible for it, men like Donatello, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, appear as mere gnomes, pygmies, dwarfs or children.

The Promethean civilisation was a failure,—it was worse, it was a racking torment. Dionysus alone made it bearable; he alone overcame it, and so corrected or neutralised its evils as to make life not only possible under it, but also joyful, vigorous, spirited, glorious, and thrilling into the bargain. You cannot logically attack Dionysus, therefore, and all he stood for, without also insisting upon going back to pre-Promethean days; for those were the only days that could dispense with his teaching, his therapeutics, his magic cordials—in fact, his whole doctrine of salvation. To deprive us in post-Promethean days of the benefits Dionysus confers, is thus tantamount to the Promethean crime itself,—it is even more heinous than the Promethean crime; because now we know, and the people of those days did not know. Now we realise what all this means; we are aware of the very doubtful blessings that hail from any Promethean quarter, and wherever we hear the cries “Abolish Dionysus!” or “Down with his creed!” we cannot refrain from thinking that we are once more in the presence of the most savage enemies of mankind. The antithesis is radical. Prometheus versus Dionysus. It is, as we have seen, a very old conflict. If you insist upon having a Promethean civilisation, you are in mercy bound to have Dionysus and all that his doctrine means.

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