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

6go

Goat instead of Bull

The relation of the four Dionysiac festivals as here determined
may be conveniently set forth in tabular form. It appears that
the Anthesteria and the Rural Dionysia were duplicated after a
month's interval by the City Dionysia and the Lenaia respectively1.
How is this duplication to be explained ? According to the Greek
and Roman chronologists, the earliest attempt to correct the lunar
by the solar year was the adoption of a trieteris or two-year cycle,
wherein the years consisted alternately of twelve and thirteen
months2. We are expressly told that this cycle was used for the
mysteries of Dionysos3, who in many places had trieteric rites4.
Further, we have learnt that in Crete at least these rites were
performed side by side with an annual celebration5 and represented

Dr FarnelPs words: ' The black man could easily degenerate into comedy; the soot-
covered figure in the phallophoria [Athen. 622 d] appears to have been comic, and this
is the case now with our May-day sweep.'

1 On the attempt of O. Gilbert Die Festzeit der Attischen Dionysien Gottingen 1872
to prove that' die Lenaeen und Anthesterien sind identisch und gehoren zu den landlichen
Dionysien' see O. Kern in Pauly-Wissowa Real-Enc. v. 1021 f.

2 Gemin. elem. astr. 8. 26, Censorin. de die nat. 18. 2. So T. Mommsen Die
romische Chronologie bis auf Caesar Berlin 1859 p. 224 ff. and A. S. Wilkins in Smith—
Wayte—Marindin Did. Ant. i. 337 : see, however, F. K. Ginzel Handbuch der mathe-
matischen und technischen Chronologie Das Zeitrechnungswesen der Volker Leipzig 1911
ii. 366 ff.

3 Censorin. de die nat. 18. 2.

4 Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 956, W. Quandt De Baccho ab Alexandri aetate in Asia
Minore culto Ilalis Saxonum 1913 p. 279 Index s.v. Tpieryipides.

Dr Farnell in the Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History
of Religions Oxford 1908 ii. 139 f. and in his Cults of Gk. States v. 177 ff. rejects the
calendrical explanation of the Dionysiac rpLer^pidtis on grounds that to me seem un-
satisfactory: (a) 'we know that the Greeks corrected their calendar every eight yearsc
(cMacr. Sat. 1, 13). But there is nothing to suggest that they ever did this every other
year.' This ignores the definite statements. of Gemin. elem. astr. 8. 26 and Censorin.
de die nat. 18. 2, who both assert that the most ancient form of the luni-solar year was
the trieteris of 12 + 13 months, (b) 'And it is not with Greeks but with uncultured

Thracians that we are here concerned____But the barbarous tribes of Thrace were scarcely

capable of such accurate solar observations as would compel them to correct their lunar
calendar every other year.' If it comes to a priori argumentation, surely the very rough
approximation of the trieteris is much more suitable to a barbaric tribe than the com-
paratively exact eight-year cycle.

But Dr Farnell is constructive as well as destructive: ' I venture to suggest, as a
new hypothesis, that the " trieterica " are to be associated with the original shifting of
land-cultivation which is frequent, in early society owing to the backwardness of the
agricultural processes'1 (dVide Hansen, Agrarhistorische Abhandlungen, i, pp. 125—126.);
and which would certainly be consecrated by a special ritual attached to the god of the
soil.' The weak point in this ingenious view is that it does not account for the trieteric
rites in other cults, of which Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 956 n. 4 gives a formidable list.
Dr Farnell attributes these to ' casual local convenience or exigencies of finance.' It is,
I think, safer to postulate the two-year cycle as a vera causa of all trieteric rites.

5 I cannot share the odd view advanced by A. Fick Hatliden und Danubier in
Griechenland Gottingen 1909 p. 47 : 'Das Ztos der Trieteris bestand aus 12 Halbmonaten,
wie auch die 13 Monate des Mythos von Ares' Fesselung durch die Aloaden E 385 ff.