United States or Algeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And yet as a fresh corroboration of what I am trying to say how fearfully has that noble gift to man been abused for the same end as a hundred other vegetable products, ever since those mythic days when Dionusos brought the vine from the far East, amid troops of human Maenads and half-human Satyrs; and the Bacchae tore Pentheus in pieces on Cithaeron, for daring to intrude upon their sacred rites; and since those historic days, too, when, less than two hundred years before the Christian era, the Bacchic rites spread from Southern Italy into Etruria, and thence to the matrons of Rome; and under the guidance of Poenia Annia, a Campanian lady, took at last shapes of which no man must speak, but which had to be put down with terrible but just severity, by the Consuls and the Senate.
'Be it so; but recollect, that another myth makes her, and not without reason, the mother of all living beings. Be sure that Dionusos will have no objection, or any other god either, to allow her to make her children feel her conquering might; for they all know well enough, that if we can once get her well worshipped here, all Olympus will follow in her train.
The only superstition attributed to him which does not at first sight seem to have its root in dread is that of the Orphic mysteries. But of them Muller says that the Dionusos whom they worshipped "was an infernal deity, connected with Hades, and was the personification, not merely of rapturous pleasure, but of a deep sorrow for the miseries of human life."
'The Amphitheatre? We shall exhibit the Libyans, too, in the Theatre. 'Combats in the Theatre sacred to Dionusos? 'My dear lady' penitently 'I know it is an offence against all the laws of the drama. 'Oh, worse than that! Consider what an impiety toward the god, to desecrate his altar with bloodshed?
The Orphic societies of Greece seem to have been peculiarly ascetic, taking no animal food save raw flesh from the sacrificed ox of Dionusos.
And some say that Dionusos drove away Theseus, and took Ariadne from him by force: but however that may be, in his haste or in his grief, Theseus forgot to put up the white sail. Now AEgeus his father sat and watched on Sunium day after day, and strained his old eyes across the sea to see the ship afar.
What were Dionusos without his Ariadne, Ares without Aphrodite, Zeus without Hera? Even Artemis has her Endymion; Athens alone remains unwedded; but only because Hephaestus was too rough a wooer.
Some say that Theseus left her sleeping on Naxos among the Cyclades; and that Dionusos the wine-king found her, and took her up into the sky, as you shall see some day in a painting of old Titian's one of the most glorious pictures upon earth.
And some say that Dionusos drove away Theseus, and took Ariadne from him by force: but however that may be, in his haste or in his grief, Theseus forgot to put up the white sail. Now AEgeus his father sat and watched on Sunium day after day, and strained his old eyes across the sea to see the ship afar.
All which is worth settling you seemed to have settled for yourself before you deigned to consult me. 'I said so? Surely you must mistake. But if any hired poetaster's chant do pass unheeded, what has that to do with Hypatia's eloquence and science, glowing with the treble inspiration of Athene, Phoebus, and Dionusos?
Word Of The Day