The Greek View of Life | Page 7

the god of wine,
but, according to another legend, symbolised in his fate the death of the
year in winter and its rebirth at spring.
The ceremonies open with a scene of abandoned jollity; servants and
slaves are invited to share in the universal revel; the school holidays
begin; and all the place is alive with the bustle and fun of a great fair.
Bargaining, peep-shows, conjuring, and the like fill up the hours of the
day; and towards evening the holiday-makers assemble garlanded and
crowned in preparation for the great procession. The procession takes
place by torch-light; the statue of Dionysus leads the way, and the
revellers follow and swarm about him, in carriages or on foot,
costumed as Hours or Nymphs or Bacchae in the 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