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What was it, then, which saved the Eleusinia from this defeat, which kept the movement of the Dionysiac procession from the ruin inevitably consequent upon all intemperate joy? It was the presence of our Lady, the sorrowing Achtheia, who was the inseparable companion of the joyous conqueror, who subdued the joy of victory, and preserved the strength and holy purity of the great Festival.
Thus, by some secret sympathy with her movements, are gathered together about the central Achtheia all the Matres Dolorosoe, our Ladies of Sorrow; for, like her, they were all wanderers. They were so by necessity. All unrest involves loss, and thus leads to search.
Nothing in all Greece and that is saying very much could compare with it in its depth of divine mystery. If anything could, it would have been the drama; but no wailings were ever heard from beneath the masks of the stage like the wailings of Achtheia, no jubilant song of the Chorus ever rose like the paean of Dionysiac triumph.
But it is only when we yield that we are conquered. "The daemon shall not choose us, but we shall choose our daemon." It is only when we lose hold of our royal inheritance that Time is seen with his scythe and the heritage becomes a waste. This is the failure, the central loss, over which Achtheia mourns.
Achtheia mourns all failures; and here it is that the human touches the earth. But they who conquer, these are our Saviours; they shall follow in the train of Dionysus; they shall lift us to the heavens, and sanctify in our remembrance the Sunday of Palms!
Each found expression in sculptured monument, the one hinting of flight into darkness, and the other of resurrection into light; each in its cycle inclosed the world; each widened into the invisible; as the wail of Achtheia reached the heart of Hades, so the paean of Dionysus was lost in the heavens. But in what manner did this Dionysus make his avatar in the world?
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