Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

68o

Goat instead of Bull

easy to suffering heroes in general—Hippolytos dragged to death
by his horses but brought to life again by Asklepios, Orestes
reported as dead but returning to wreak vengeance on his foes,
Apsyrtos murdered and dismembered by Medeia, Neoptolemos
mangled beside the altar at Pytho, and many another who, as
old-fashioned folk were apt to complain, had ' nothing to do with
Dionysos1.'

(<9) The Attic Festivals of Dionysos.

Prof. G. Murray pursuing a different route has arrived at a
similar, or at least analogous, conclusion. In a lucid and closely-
reasoned note2 he shows that Greek tragedies, so far as they are
extant and so far as they can be reconstructed from extant
fragments, normally contain a sequence of six parts—an agon
or 'contest' ; a pathos, generally a ritual or sacrificial death; an
angelza or 'messenger's speech' announcing the death; a thrinos
or ' lamentation,' often involving a clash of contrary emotions;
an anagnorisis or ' recognition' of the slain and mutilated body ;
a theophdneia or ' epiphany in glory.' Following a clue put into
his hands by Dieterich3, Prof. Murray makes the really important
discovery that Greek tragedy fills out the ritual forms of an old
sacer Indus. This is what he is chiefly concerned to prove; and
this, I think, he has succeeded in proving.

When, however, Prof. Murray assumes that the sacer Indus in
question was the dithyramb or spring dromenon of Dionysos re-
garded as an ' Eniautos-Daimon' or ' Year Spirit,' I demur to his
nomenclature4 and I disagree with his presuppositions. Had he

1 Phot. lex. s.v. ovdev irpbs rbv Aidvvaov = Souid. s.v. ovdev irpos rbv Aibwaov — Apostol.
13. 42, Zenob. 5. 40, Diogeneian. 7. 18, Append. Prov. 4. 82 ; Strab. 381, Plout. symp.
1. r. 5, Loukian. Baccli. 5, Liban. epist. 881, Heliod. Aeth. 2. 24, schol. Loukian. Alex.
53 p. 185, 9 f. Rabe, schol. Loukian. de salt. 80 p. 189, 29 ff. Rabe. Cp. the word
airpoabibwaos (Stephanus Thes. Gr. Ling. i. 2. 1820D).

2 Printed as an excursus in Miss Harrison's Themis Cambridge 1912 pp. 341—363.

3 A. Dieterich 'Die Entstehung der Tragodie' in the Archivf. Rel. 1908 xi. 163—196.

4 Prof. Murray writes to me (July 6, 1913): 'I want to put in a word of explanation
about the Daimon, where I am not sure that you have taken my point. I could, of course,
call him simply Dionysus, as the ancient authorities do. Only then there would have to
be explanations for each separate play. Hippolytus is not Dionysus; it is a strain even
to call him a Dionysiac hero. The same with Orestes, Oedipus, Actaeon, Pentheus even.
It seemed to me simpler, as a matter of nomenclature, to say: "Dionysus, though of
course a complex figure, belongs so far as tragedy is concerned to a special class of beings
called Vegetation Spirits or Year-Daemons. Tragedy, while in official cult specially be-
longing to Dionysus, readily accepts as its heroes all sorts of other people who are, in then-
various degrees, Daemons of the same class, and have the same set of Pathea." Thus in
each case I can speak simply of " the Daimon."'