Note 1 — Chapter IX · DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE ITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM

We may safely take it for granted that Διόνυσος is the Greek name of the god, though a completely convincing etymology for the word has yet to be found. Recent attempts to derive it from the Thracian language are not very convincing. (Tomaschek, Sitzber. Wien. Ak. 130, 41; Kretschmer, Aus der Anomia, 22 f.; Einl. 241.) Acc. to Kretschmer a Thracian origin for the name is proved by the appearance of the form Δεόνυσο—on inss. found in a few Greek towns surrounded by Thracian influences, e.g. Abdera, Maroneia. Acc. to him the transition from ι to ε before a vowel is regular in Thrako-Phrygian, while on the other hand “it is completely incompatible with all the laws of Greek phonetics”. Others have disagreed with this view, e.g. G. Curtius, certainly an auctor probabilis, to whom the occasional appearance of the transition from ι to ε before a vowel (side by side with the much commoner reverse process) seemed quite compatible with the laws of Greek phonetics. He even counted Διόνυσος—Δεύνυσος (Anakreon) among the examples of this vowel change within the limits of the Greek language (Gr. Etym.5, p. 608 f.). At any rate Ἐάσων = Ἰάσων, and πατρουέαν = πατρωίαν are certain cases of it (see Meister, Gr. Dial. i, 294; G. Meyer, Gr. Gramm.2, p. 162). Kretschmer himself, Einl. 225, supplies Ἀσκληπεόδωρος, Δεί = Διί. To account for these forms he postulates the influence of Thracian surroundings on Greek pronunciation; but in the case of such a purely Greek word as Ἀσκληπιόδωρος the Thracian influence must have been a secondary phenomenon operating to cause the alteration of the old ιο into εο. Why should we not use the same explanation in accounting for the change from Διόνυσος to Δεόνυσος and (if Thracian influence is to be presumed—by no means probable in view of the statement of EM. 259, 30, Δεόνυσος, οὕτω γὰρ Σάμιοι προφέρουσιν) say that this Thracian influence was a secondary one acting upon the original Greek form of the name Διόνυσος?—It is evident that the ancients had no idea that Διόνυσος (Διώνυσος, Διόννυσος) was the indigenous name of the Thracian god, for they would in that case have said so without hesitation. They derived the conception, figure, and cult of the god from Thrace but not this particular name, which they regularly regard as the Greek name of the daimon whom the Thracians spoke of as Σαβάζιος or otherwise. (So too Hdt. regards Διόνυσος as the Greek name of the god whose essential nature is Egyptian.) This is by no means without importance; on the contrary, it provides cogent reason for doubting the (otherwise insecurely founded) derivation of the name from the Thracian.