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

692

Goat instead of Bull

the passion of the god1. Presumably, then, in Attike, where
the intercalary month was always a second Poseideon, the trie-
tens involved a ritual representation of Dionysos' death in the
month following the first Poseideon. But the trieterts was at
a very early date, probably in ' Minoan' times2, found to be
inadequate. For, given alternate years of 354 and 384 days,
every two years the error would amount to about 7J days, and
every eight years to about 30 days, in fact to a whole month.
Hence, says Geminos, the first attempt to rectify the error took
the form of an oktaeterts, in which three (not four) months were
intercalated in the third, fifth, and eighth years of the cycle3. This
arrangement brought the lunar year into approximate accordance
with the solar year. But it laboured under a serious disadvantage.
Once in every period of eight years the intercalary month was
dropped, and with it would go the trieteric rites of Dionysos.
Perhaps it was to guard against this disaster, perhaps also to
avoid the confusion arising from the performance of trieteric rites
every third, fifth, and eighth years, that the Athenians made the
rites annual and assigned them to Gamelion, the month following
Poseideon. We can thus account for the celebration of the Rural
Dionysia {i.e. the old annual festival) and the Lenaia {i.e. the old
trieteric rites) in successive months. The date of the City Dionysia
would be fixed by that of the Lenaia, the significant interval of ten
lunar months being carefully observed4.

In sundry other festivals of the Attic year, all of them mystic
in character and all belonging by rights to Demeter and Kore,
Dionysos as a god of kindred function played a subordinate part.
He appears to have gained some footing at Agra or Agrai, for the
Lesser Mysteries there are described by a late author as ' a repre-
sentation of Dionysos' story5.' He certainly intruded, under the
name of Iakchos, into the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis6. And

1 Supra p. 662 f.

2 See Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 957 n. i. The evidence is discussed more fully by
Dr Frazer in his Golden Bough*: The Dying God pp. 58—92 and by me in the Class.
Rev. 1903 xvii. 411 and in Folk-Lore 1904 x,v. 394—412.

3 Gemin. elem. astr. 8. 27 ff.

4 Dr Farnell's contention {supra p. 682 n. 2), that it was Peisistratos who introduced
the cult of Dionysos Eleuthereus and organised the City Dionysia as his festival, allows
us to suppose that Peisistratos only re-organised a previously existing Dionysiac celebra-
tion. I incline to think that this was the case and that the essential feature of the
pre-Peisistratic fete was the performance of the dithyramb [supra p. 681 f.).

5 Steph. Byz. s.vv. "Aypa Kai "Aypat., xwPL0V■•■^v V T(* ^xpa [xvarripLa twiTekeiTai,
p.Lp.ruxa tG>v irepi tov Aiovvtrou.

6 Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 54 n. 11 ff., p. 1167 f., p. 1435 n. 2, E. Pottier in
Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. iii. 369 ff., and especially Farnell Cults of Gk. States hi.
J46—153-