CHAPTER V

“Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos,With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?”

Scholars have broken their own heads and one another’s to find a meaning and an answer to the odd query. It is only quitelately that they have come at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive rite. Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric poetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring Song, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How can driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the “slender-ankled” Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull?

The difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them, is soon settled. They are the Seasons, or “Hours,” and the chief Season, or Hour, was Spring herself. They are called Charites, or Graces, because they are, in the words of the Collect, the “Givers of all grace,” that is, of all increase physical and spiritual. But why do they want to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their “fruits in due season” is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the Dithyramb “bull-driving”? Is this a mere “poetical” epithet? If it is, it is not particularly poetical.

But Pindar is not, we now know, merely being “poetical,” which amounts, according to some scholars, to meaning anything or nothing. He is describing, alluding to, an actual rite ordromenonin which a Bull is summoned and driven to come in spring. About that we must be clear. Plutarch, the first anthropologist, wrote a little treatise calledGreek Questions, in which he tells us all the strange out-of-the-way rites and customs he saw in Greece, and then asks himself what they meant. In his 36thQuestionhe asks: “Why do the women of Elis summon Dionysos in their hymns to be present with them with his bull-foot?” And then, by a piece of luck that almost makes one’s heart stand still, he gives us the very words of the little ritual hymn the women sang, our earliest “Bull-driving” Spring Song:

“In Spring-time,25O Dionysos,To thy holy temple come;To Elis with thy Graces,Rushing with thy bull-foot, come,Noble Bull, Noble Bull.”

It is a strange primitive picture—the holy women standing in springtime in front of the temple, summoning the Bull; and the Bull, garlanded and filleted, rushing towards them, driven by the Graces, probably three real women, three Queens of the May, wreathed and flower-bedecked. But what does it mean?

Plutarch tries to answer his own question, and half, in a dim, confused fashion, succeeds. “Is it,” he suggests, “that some entitle the god as ‘Born of a Bull’ and as a ‘Bull’ himself? ... or is it that many hold the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?” We have seen how a kind ofdaimon, or spirit, of Winter or Summer arose from an actual tree or maid or man disguised year by year as a tree. Did the god Dionysos take his rise in like fashion from the driving and summoning year by year of some holy Bull?

First, we must notice that it was not only at Elis that a holy Bull appears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructiveQuestion:26“Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?” And we find to our amazement that the sanctifier is a Bull. A Bullwho not only is holy himself, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he is the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his death in the month Bysios, the month that fell, Plutarch tells us, “at the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many plants.”

We do not hear that the “Sanctifier” at Delphi was “driven,” but in all probability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake in the sanctity that simply exuded from him. At Magnesia,27a city of Asia Minor, we have more particulars. There, at the annual fair year by year the stewards of the city bought a Bull, “the finest that could be got,” and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seedtime they dedicated it, for the city’s welfare. The Bull’s sanctified life began with the opening of the agricultural year, whether with the spring or the autumn ploughing we do not know. The dedication of the Bull was a high solemnity. He was led in procession, at the head of which went the chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the sacrificer, and two bands of youths andmaidens. So holy was the Bull that nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must have both their parents alive, they must not have been under thetaboo, the infection, of death. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer for “the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of grain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle.” All this longing for fertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose holiness is his strength and fruitfulness.

The Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of the whole people, is fed at the public cost. The official charged with his keep has to drive him into the market-place, and “it is good for those corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift,” good for them because they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is their own luck. So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but early in April the end comes. Again a great procession is led forth, the senate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of each class of the State—children and youngboys, and youths just come to manhood,epheboi, as the Greeks called them. The Bull is sacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? Why not live out the term of his life? He dies because heisso holy, that he may give his holiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to his people.

“When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up among those who took part in the procession.”

The mandate is clear. The procession included representatives of the whole State. The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten—to every man his portion—by each and every citizen, that he may get his share of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State.

Now at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we hear no more. Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin again. But at Athens at the annual “Ox-murder,” theBouphonia, as it was called, the scene did not so close. The ox was slain with all solemnity, and allthose present partook of the flesh, and then—the hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing. The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the renouncing of something. Butsacrificedoes not mean “death” at all. It means making holy, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man just special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just that special life and strength which all the year long they had put into him, and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could not eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he must die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed him, not to “sacrifice” him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat him, livebyhim and through him, by his grace.

And so this killing of the sacred beast was always a terrible thing, a thing they fain would have shirked. They fled away after the deed, not looking backwards; they publicly tried and condemned the axe that struck the blow.But their best hope, their strongest desire, was that he had not, could not, really have died. So this intense desire uttered itself in thedromenonof his resurrection. If he did not rise again, how could they plough and sow again next year? He must live again, he should, hedid.

The Athenians were a little ashamed of their “Ox-murder,” with its grotesque pantomime of the stuffed, resurrected beast. Just so some of us now-a-days are getting a little shy of deliberately cursing our neighbours on Ash Wednesday. They probably did not feel very keenly about their food-supply, they thought their daily dinner was secure. Anyhow the emotion that had issued in the pantomime was dead, though from sheer habit the pantomime went on. Probably some of the less educated among them thought there “might be something in it,” and anyhow it was “as well to be on the safe side.” The queer ceremony had got associated with the worship of Olympian Zeus, and with him you must reckon. Then perhaps your brother-in-law was the Ox-striker, and anyhow it was desirable that the women should go; some of the well-born girls had to act as water-carriers.

The Ox-murder was obsolete at Athens, but the spirit of the rite is alive to-day among the Ainos in the remote island of Saghalien. Among the Ainos the Bear is what psychologists rather oddly call the main “food focus,” the chief “value centre.” And well he may be. Bear’s flesh is the Ainos’ staple food; they eat it both fresh and salted; bearskins are their principal clothing; part of their taxes are paid in bear’s fat. The Aino men spend the autumn, winter and spring in hunting the Bear. Yet we are told the Ainos “worship the Bear”; they apply to it the nameKamui, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to all strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is formidable. In the religion of the Ainos “the Bear plays a chief part,” says one writer. The Bear “receives idolatrous veneration,” says another. They “worship it after their fashion,” says a third. Have we another case of “the heathen in his blindness”? Only here he “bows down” not to “gods of wood and stone,” but to a live thing, uncouth, shambling but gracious—a Bear.

Instead of theorizing as to what the Aino thinks and imagines, let us observe hisdoings,hisdromena, his rites; and most of all his great spring and autumn rite, thedromenonof the Bear. We shall find that, detail for detail, it strangely resembles the Greekdromenonof the Bull.

As winter draws to a close among the Ainos, a young Bear is trapped and brought into the village. At first an Aino woman suckles him at her breast, then later he is fed on his favourite food, fish—his tastes are semi-polar. When he is at his full strength, that is, when he threatens to break the cage in which he lives, the feast is held. This is usually in September, or October, that is when the season of bear-hunting begins.

Before the feast begins the Ainos apologize profusely, saying that they have been good to the Bear, they can feed him no longer, they must kill him. Then the man who gives the Bear-feast invites his relations and friends, and if the community be small nearly the whole village attends. On the occasion described by Dr. Scheube about thirty Ainos were present, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best clothes. The woman of the house who had suckled the Bear sat by herself, sad and silent, only now and then sheburst into helpless tears. The ceremony began with libations made to the fire-god and to the house-god set up in a corner of the house. Next the master and some of the guests left the hut and offered libations in front of the Bear’s cage. A few drops were presented to him in a saucer, which he promptly upset. Then the women and girls danced round the cage, rising and hopping on their toes, and as they danced they clapped their hands and chanted a monotonous chant. The mother and some of the old women cried as they danced and stretched out their arms to the Bear, calling him loving names. The young women who had nursed no Bears laughed, after the manner of the young. The Bear began to get upset, and rushed round his cage, howling lamentably.

Next came a ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to theinabos, sacred wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings.Five new wands with bamboo leaves attached to themare set up for the festival; the leaves according to the Ainos meanthat the Bearmay come to life again. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of attention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his staple food. But vegetation is not quite forgotten. The animal life of the Bear and the vegetable life of the bamboo-leaves are thought of together.

Then comes the actual sacrifice. The Bear is led out of his cage, a rope is thrown round his neck, and he is perambulated round the neighbourhood of the hut. We do not hear that among the Ainos he goes in procession round the village, but among the Gilyaks, not far away in Eastern Siberia, the Bear is led about the villages, and it is held to be specially important that he should be dragged down to the river, for this will ensure the village a plentiful supply of fish. He is then, among the Gilyaks, taken to each hut in the village, and fish, brandy, and other delicacies are offered to him. Some of the people prostrate themselves in front of him and his coming into a house brings a blessing, and if he snuffs at the food, that brings a blessing too.

To return to the Aino Bear. While he is being led about the hut the men, headed by a chief, shoot at the Bear with arrows tippedwith buttons. But the object of the shooting is not to kill, only apparently to irritate him. He is killed at last without shedding of his sacred blood, and we hope without much pain. He is taken in front of the sacred wands, a stick placed in his mouth, and nine men press his neck against a beam; he dies without a sound. Meantime the women and girls, who stand behind the men, dance, lament, and beat the men who are killing their Bear. The body of the dead Bear is then laid on a mat before the sacred wands. A sword and quiver, taken from the wands, are hung about the Bear. If it is a She-Bear it is also bedecked with a necklace and rings. Food and drink, millet broth and millet cakes are offered to it. It is decked as an Aino, it is fed as an Aino. It is clear that the Bear is in some sense a human Bear, an Aino. The men sit down on mats in front of the Bear and offer libations, and themselves drink deep.

Now that the death is fairly over the mourning ends, and all is feasting and merriment. Even the old women lament no more. Cakes of millet are scrambled for. The bear is skinned and disembowelled, the trunk is severed from the head, to which the skin isleft hanging. The blood, which might not be shed before, is now carefully collected in cups and eagerly drunk by the men, for the blood is the life. The liver is cut up and eaten raw. The flesh and the rest of the vitals are kept for the day next but one, when it is divided among all persons present at the feast. It is what the Greeks call adais, a meal divided or distributed. While the Bear is being dismembered the girls dance, in front of the sacred wands, and the old women again lament. The Bear’s brain is extracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin, is hung on a pole near the sacred wands. Thus it would seem the life and strength of the bear is brought near to the living growth of the leaves. The stick with which the Bear was gagged is also hung on the pole, and with it the sword and quiver he had worn after his death. The whole congregation, men and women, dance about this strange maypole, and a great drinking bout, in which all men and women alike join, ends the feast.

The rite varies as to detail in different places. Among the Gilyaks the Bear is dressed after death in full Gilyak costume andseated on a bench of honour. In one part the bones and skull are carried out by the oldest people to a place in the forest not far from the village. There all the bones except the skull are buried. After that a young tree is felled a few inches above the ground, its stump is cleft, and the skull wedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot the skull disappears and there is an end of the Bear. Sometimes the Bear’s flesh is eaten in special vessels prepared for this festival and only used at it. These vessels, which include bowls, platters, spoons, are elaborately carved with figures of bears and other devices.

Through all varieties in detail the main intent is the same, and it is identical with that of the rite of the holy Bull in Greece and the maypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads, later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a special life and strength intensely desired. They are led andcarried about from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, and avail for all; the animal dies that he may be eaten; the Tree is torn to pieces that all may have a fragment; and, above all, Bear and Bull and Tree die only that they may live again.

We have seen (p.71) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actuallyperceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image, an imagined Tree Spirit, or “Summer,” or Death, a thing never actually seen butconceived. Just so with the Bull. Year by year in the various villages of Greece was seen an actual holy Bull, and bit by bit from the remembrance of these various holy Bulls, who only died to live again each year, there arose the image of a Bull-Spirit, or Bull-Daimon, and finally, if we like to call him so, a Bull-God. The growth of this idea, thisconception, must have been much helped by the fact that in some places the dancers attendant on the holy Bull dressed up as bulls and cows. The women worshippers of Dionysos, we are told, wore bulls’ horns in imitation of the god, for they represented him in pictures as having a bull’s head.Weknow that a man does not turn into a bull, or a bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why should she not? It is not, then, that a god ‘takes upon him the form of a bull,’ or is ‘incarnate in a bull,’ but that the real Bull and the worshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an imagined Bull-God; but, it should be observed, only among gifted, imaginative, that is, image-making, peoples. The Ainos have their actual holy Bear, as the Greeks had their holy Bull; but with them out of the succession of holy Bears there arises, alas! no Bear-God.

We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of spring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were performed at Athens, the young men (epheboi) brought in not only the human figure of the god, but also a Bull “worthy” of the God. We understand, too, why in addition to thetragedies performed at the great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung—“Bull-driving Dithyrambs.”

We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the drama.The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth.

Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. “Some,” he says, “are prayers to the gods—these are calledhymns; others of an opposite sort might best be calleddirges; another sort arepæans, and another—the birth of Dionysos, I suppose—is calledDithyramb.” Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the information carelessly—the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the birth or coming to be, thegenesisof Dionysos.

The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato’s statement. When a poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the titleDithyrambos. Thusan inscribed hymn found at Delphi28opens thus:

“Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come....Bromios, come, and coming with thee bringHoly hours of thine own holy spring....All the stars danced for joy. MirthOf mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth.”

The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull.

And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a dæmon, and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole onceperceived, then remembered andconceived. Dionysos, the Bull-God, is but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered,generalized, conceived. But the god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of thebirthof Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos calledLiknites, “Him of the Cradle.”29The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women.

But it is equally clear and certain thattheDionysos of Greek worship and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when, Homer says, “youth is most gracious.” This is the Dionysos that we know in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty like a woman’s. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the songof the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born.

This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the wordDithyrambosas meaning “He of the double door,” their wordthyrabeing the same as ourdoor. They were quite mistaken;Dithyrambos, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer, and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his father’s thigh, like no man.

But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the Tree-God, arises from adromenon, a rite, what is the rite of second birth from which it arises?

We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over half the savage world.

With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his first birth hecomes into the world, by his second he is born into his tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult for us to realize. A boy with us passes very gradually from childhood to manhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man. Little by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social privileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters a workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession. In the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to linger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as Coming Out. A girl’s dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up, she is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign’s hand, a dance is given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the cocoon state of the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom, with its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does not obtain at all. Both sexes share, of course, the religious rite of Confirmation.

To avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is always a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his ignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and transitions. The long process of education, of passing from child to man, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months of tremendous educational emphasis—of what is called “initiation,” “going in,” that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the gist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish things, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to cease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him for his two chief functions as a tribesman—to be a warrior, to be a father. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man.

This “initiation” is of tremendous importance, and we should expect, what in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues indromena, “rites done.” These rites are very various, but they all point one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the new-born man has entered on a new life.

Simplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by the Kikuyu of British East Africa,30who require that every boy, just before circumcision, must be born again. “The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed.”

More often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east Australia,31when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy bark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more andmore and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave.

The Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The boys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with blood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first gives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to cleanse themselves.

Here the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death that the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is practised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram32boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian association. The boys are taken blindfold, followed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest trees in the depths of the forest. When all are assembled the high priest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of chopping is heard, a fearful cry ringsout, and a sword dripping with blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy’s head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate. They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry.

Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn,new dances are danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out. The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house. The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe.

Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not adromenonor rite of swallowing we are not told.

In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal.Thus among the Carrier Indians33when a man wants to become aLulem, or Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to find him. They cry outYi! Kelulem(“Come on, Bear”) and he answers with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and other ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is explained if we see that in intent theyareall the same, all a passing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in every rite, the putting offof the old, the putting on of the new; you carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded, under ataboo.

To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth, marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little or no social emphasis. Buttherite which concerned the whole tribe, the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of initiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word for rite wastělětē. It was applied to all mysteries, and sometimes to marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with death. It comes from a root meaning “to grow up.” The wordtělětēmeansrite of growing up, becoming complete. It meant at first maturity, then rite of maturity, then by a natural extension any rite of initiation that was mysterious. The rites of puberty were in their essence mysterious, because they consisted in initiation into the sanctities of the tribe, the things which society sanctionedand protected, excluding the uninitiated, whether they were young boys, women, or members of other tribes. Then, by contagion, the mystery notion spread to other rites.

We understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite, thedromenonof tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells us—Dionysos, “Divine Young Man.”

When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, thatimagewhich is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring ritemustbe a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a youngman. Where emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just initiated, what the Greeks called akouros, orephebos, a youth of quite different social status from a merepaisor boy. Such a youth survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most ofall the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.

And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in spring and autumn alike “they carry out theEiresione, a branch of olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits,that scarcity may cease, and they sing over it:

“Eiresione bringsFigs and fat cakes,And a pot of honey and oil to mix,And a wine-cup strong and deep,That she may drink and sleep.”

The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was calledKorythalia,34“Branch of blooming youth.” The young men, says a Greek orator, are “the Spring of the people.”

The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a young man-song. The god hereinvoked is what the Greeks call akouros, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors:

“Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Diktè for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song.”

The leader of the band ofkouroi, of young men, the real actual leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in the new year at spring. The real leader, the “first kouros” as the Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all. He is “lord of all that is wet and gleaming,” for the May bough, we remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough remains to make the meaning clear.

And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood:

“The Horæ (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dikè to possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by wealth-loving Peace.”

We know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dikè is strange. We translate the word “Justice,” but Dikè means, not Justice as between man and man, but the order of the world, thewayof life. It is through this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the seasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that order were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion, barrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears:

“To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase.”

And yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p.32), who throws his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian peasant girls who leap highin the air crying, “Flax, grow.” The leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their annual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end:

“Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships,and for our young citizens, and for goodly Themis.”

They are now young citizens of a fencèd city instead of young tribesmen of the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds them together is the bond of social custom, social structure, “goodly Themis.” No man liveth to himself.

Crete is not Athens, but at Athens in the theatre of Dionysos, if the priest of Dionysos, seated at the great Spring Festival in his beautiful carved central seat, looked across the orchestra, he would see facing him a stone frieze on which was sculptured the Cretan ritual, the armed dancing youths and the child to be year by year reborn.

We have seen what the Dithyramb, from which sprang the Drama, was. A Spring song, a song of Bull-driving, a song and dance of Second Birth; but all this seems, perhaps, not to bring us nearer to Greek drama, rather to put us farther away. What have the Spring and the Bull and the Birth Rite to do with the stately tragedies we know—with Agamemnon and Iphigenia and Orestes and Hippolytos? That is the question before us, and the answer will lead us to the very heart of our subject. So far we have seen that ritual arose from the presentation and emphasis of emotion—emotion felt mainly about food. We have further seen that ritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the chief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the Dithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy—that is, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before us.

19Poetics, IV, 12.20See myThemis, p. 419. (1912.)21I, 43. 2.22Quaest. Græc.XII.23Op. cit.24Quæst. Symp., 693 f.25The words “in Spring-time” depend on an emendation to me convincing. See myThemis, p. 205, note 1.26IX.27See myThemis, p. 151.28See myProlegomena, p. 439.29Prolegomena, p. 402.30Frazer,Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. I, p. 228.31The Golden Bough,2III, 424.32The Golden Bough,2III, 442.33The Golden Bough,2III, p. 438.34See myThemis, p. 503.

19Poetics, IV, 12.

20See myThemis, p. 419. (1912.)

21I, 43. 2.

22Quaest. Græc.XII.

23Op. cit.

24Quæst. Symp., 693 f.

25The words “in Spring-time” depend on an emendation to me convincing. See myThemis, p. 205, note 1.

26IX.

27See myThemis, p. 151.

28See myProlegomena, p. 439.

29Prolegomena, p. 402.

30Frazer,Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. I, p. 228.

31The Golden Bough,2III, 424.

32The Golden Bough,2III, 442.

33The Golden Bough,2III, p. 438.

34See myThemis, p. 503.

Probablymost people when they go to a Greek play for the first time think it a strange performance. According, perhaps, more to their temperament than to their training, they are either very much excited or very much bored. In many minds there will be left a feeling that, whether they have enjoyed the play or not, they are puzzled: there are odd effects, conventions, suggestions.

For example, the main deed of the Tragedy, the slaying of hero or heroine, is not done on the stage. That disappoints some modern minds unconsciously avid of realism to the point of horror. Instead of a fine thrilling murder or suicide before his very eyes, the spectator is put off with an account of the murder done off the stage. This account is regularly given, and usually at considerablelength, in a “messenger’s speech.” The messenger’s speech is a regular item in a Greek play, and though actually it gives scope not only for fine elocution, but for real dramatic effect, in theory we feel it undramatic, and a modern actor has sometimes much ado to make it acceptable. The spectator is told that all these, to him, odd conventions are due to Greek restraint, moderation, good taste, and yet for all their supposed restraint and reserve, he finds when he reads his Homer that Greek heroes frequently burst into floods of tears when a self-respecting Englishman would have suffered in silence.

Then again, specially if the play be by Euripides, it ends not with a “curtain,” not with a great decisive moment, but with the appearance of a god who says a few lines of either exhortation or consolation or reconciliation, which, after the strain and stress of the action itself, strikes some people as rather stilted and formal, or as rather flat and somehow unsatisfying. Worse still, there are in many of the scenes long dialogues, in which the actors wrangle with each other, and in which the action does not advance so quickly as we wish. Or again, instead ofbeginning with the action, and having our curiosity excited bit by bit about the plot, at the outset some one comes in and tells us the whole thing in the prologue. Prologues we feel, are out of date, and the Greeks ought to have known better. Or again, of course we admit that tragedy must be tragic, and we are prepared for a decent amount of lamentation, but when an antiphonal lament goes on for pages, we weary and wish that the chorus would stop lamenting anddosomething.

At the back of our modern discontent there is lurking always this queer anomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them alone commands a traditional respect; but if we are merely modern spectators, we may be respectful, we may even feel strangely excited, but we are certainly puzzled. The reason of our bewilderment is simple enough. These prologues and messengers’ speeches and ever-present choruses that trouble us are ritual forms still surviving at a time when thedramahas fully developed out of thedromenon. We cannot here examine all these ritual forms in detail;35one, however, the chorus, strangest and most beautiful of all, it is essential we should understand.

Suppose that these choral songs have been put into English that in any way represents the beauty of the Greek; then certainly there will be some among the spectators who get a thrill from the chorus quite unknown to any modern stage effect, a feeling of emotion heightened yet restrained, a sense of entering into higher places, filled with a larger and a purer air—a sense of beauty born clean out of conflict and disaster.

A suspicion dawns upon the spectator that, great though the tragedies in themselves are, they owe their peculiar, their incommunicable beauty largely to this element of the chorus which seemed at first so strange.

Now by examining this chorus and understanding its function—nay, more, by considering the actualorchestra, the space on which the chorus danced, and the relation of that space to the rest of the theatre, to the stage and the place where the spectators sat—we shall get light at last on our main central problem: How did art arise out of ritual, and what is the relation of both to that actual life from which both art and ritual sprang?

The dramas of Æschylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles and Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in thetheatre, but, strange though it sounds to us, in theorchestra. Thetheatreto the Greeks was simply “the place of seeing, the place where the spectators sat; what they called the skēnēorscene, was the tent or hut in which the actors dressed. But the kernel and centre of the whole was theorchestra, the circulardancing-placeof the chorus; and, as the orchestra was the kernel and centre of the theatre, so the chorus, the band of dancing and singing men—this chorus that seems to us so odd and even superfluous—was the centre and kernel and starting-point of the drama. The chorusdanced and sang that Dithyramb we know so well, and from the leaders of that Dithyramb we remember tragedy arose, and the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells us, just men and boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested from sowing and ploughing.

Now it is in the relation between theorchestraor dancing-place of the chorus, and thetheatreor place of the spectators, a relation that shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development from ritual to art—fromdromenonto drama.

The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a sketch is given in Fig.1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a splendidtheatron, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above tier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or dancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors are used in Greece to-day asconvenient dancing-places. The dance tends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a maypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On this dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as now-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There is no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors, all are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at initiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are the uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage thinks of building atheatre, a spectator place. It is in the common act, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must never be forgotten.

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