The Greek View of Life | Page 7

train of the god of wine. The destination is the temple of the god and there sacrifice is performed with the usual accompaniment of song and dance; the whole closing with a banquet and a drinking contest, similar to those in vogue among the German students. Aristophanes has described the scene for us--
"Couches, tables, Cushions and coverlets for mattresses, Dancing and singing-girls for mistresses, Plum cake and plain, comfits and caraways, Confectionery, fruits preserved and fresh, Relishes of all sorts, hot things and bitter, Savouries and sweets, broiled biscuits and what not; Flowers and perfumes, and garlands, everything." [Footnote: Aristoph. Ach. 1090.--Frere's translation.]
and in the midst of this the signal given by the trumpet, the simultaneous draught of wine, and the prize adjudged to the man who is the first to empty his cup.
Thus ends the first phase of the festival. So far all has been mirth and revelry; but now comes a sudden change of tone. Dionysus, god of wine though he be, has also his tragic aspect; of him too there is recorded a "descent into hell"; and to the glad celebration of the renewal of life in spring succeeds a feast in honour of the dead. The ghosts, it is supposed, come forth to the upper air; every door-post is smeared with pitch to keep off the wandering shades; and every family sacrifices to its own departed. Nor are the arts forgotten; a musical festival is held, and competing choirs sing and dance in honour of the god.
Such, so far as our brief and imperfect records enable us to trace it, was the ritual of a typical Greek festival. With the many questions that might be raised as to its origin and development we need not concern ourselves at present; what we have to note is the broad fact, characteristic of the genius of the Greeks, that they have taken the natural emotions excited by the birth of spring, and by connecting them with the worship of Dionysus have given them expression and form; so that what in its origin was a mere burst of primitive animal spirits is transmuted into a complex and beautiful work of art, the secret springs and fountains of physical life flowing into the forms of a spiritual symbol. It is this that is the real meaning of all ceremonial, and this that the Greeks better than any other people understood. Their religion, one may almost say, consisted in ritual; and to attempt to divide the inner from the outer would be to falsify from the beginning its distinctive character.
Let us pass to our second illustration, the great city-festival of Athens. In the Anthesteria it was a moment of nature that was seized and idealized; here, in the Panathenaea, it is the forms of social life, its distinctions within its embracing unity, that are set forth in their interdependence as functions of a spiritual life. In this great national fete, held every four years, all the higher activities of Athenian life were ideally displayed--contests of song, of lyre and of flute, foot and horse races, wrestling, boxing, and the like, military evolutions of infantry and horse, pyrrhic dances symbolic of attack and defence in war, mystic chants of women and choruses of youths--the whole concentring and discharging itself in that great processional act in which, as it were, the material forms of society became transparent, and the Whole moved on, illumined and visibly sustained by the spiritual soul of which it was the complete and harmonious embodiment. Of this procession we have still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone, from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of men and maidens bearing sacrificial urns, by the garlanded sheep and oxen destined for sacrifice, to where, on turning the corner that leads to the eastern front, we find ourselves in the presence of the Olympian gods themselves, enthroned to receive the offering of a people's life. And if to this marble representation we add the colour it lacks, the gold and silver of the vessels, the purple and saffron robes; if we set the music playing and bid the oxen low; if we gird our living picture with the blaze of an August noon and crown it with the Acropolis of Athens, we may form a conception, better perhaps than could otherwise be obtained, of what religion really meant to the citizen of a state whose activities were thus habitually symbolised in the cult of its patron deity. Religion to