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

Attic Festivals of Dionysos 693

he was recognised at least as an adventitious deity in the mystic
rites of the Haloia1. These festivals fell in Anthesterion, Boe-
dromion, and Poseideon. It is therefore tempting to see in them
some traces of a Dionysiac cycle. Accordingly A. Mommsen has
surmised that at the Lesser Mysteries on or about Anthesterion 20
Zeus begat Iakchos by Semele; that Semele bore Iakchos as a
seven-months' child, who at the Greater Mysteries on Boedro-
mion 20 was taken to Eleusis and there incorporated with Zeus;
and finally that at the Haloia in Poseideon Zeus himself gave birth
to Dionysos2. But this reconstruction is a mere fancy-flight, which
goes far beyond ascertained facts and may be safely relegated to
the limbo of improbable conjectures3.

The arrangement of the Dionysiac year that I have been
advocating might be supported by a consideration of analogous
festivals in Italy4. But it will be more in point to observe that

1 Schol. Loukian. dial. mer. 7. 4 p. 279, 24 ff. Rabe, Bekker anecd. i. 384, 31 ff.

2 Mommsen Feste d. Stadt Athen p. 23 f.

3 Mommsen loc. cit. even attempts to combine all the Attic festivals of Dionysos, with
the solitary exception of the City Dionysia (which he believes to have been originally
Apolline!), in a consistent Dionysiac Jahreskreis. It is a pity that a scholar who has
done such good service in the collection of materials should waste his time by building
them into a fantastic whole.

4 We must not here be drawn into a discussion of the Roman calendar. But in
passing we may note that the Liberalia of March 17 and the Saturnalia of December 17,
separated by the same interval of nine solar or ten lunar months, appear to be the old
Italian equivalents of the Greek festivals examined above.

Of the Liberalia little is known (W. Warde Fowler The Roman Festivals London
1899 p. 54 ff.). The aged priestesses of Liber crowned with ivy, who sat about the
streets with cakes and a brazier sacrificing on behalf of their customers (Varr. de ling.
Lat. 6. 14, On. fast. 3. 725 ff.), recall the Gerairai of the Anthesteria {supra p. 684) ;
and in many parts of Italy, including Rome, Liber was served with phallic rites pro
eventibus seminum (Aug. de civ. Dei 7. 21, cp. 4. 11, 6. 9, 7. 2, 7. 3, 7. 16: see further
G. Wissowa in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 2021 ff. and in his Rel. Ktdt. Rom? pp. 120, 298 f.,
who regards Liber as a creative or procreative god developed out of Iupiter Liber and
later identified with the Greek Dionysos). T. Mommsen Romische Geschichte7 Berlin 1881
i. 162 took the Liberalia to be ' das Fest des Kindersegens.'

The Saturnalia too stood in obvious relation to semina. In view of the fact that our
own Christmas has been to a large extent grafted upon this festival (see e.g. C. A. Miles
Christmas in Ritual and Tradition Christian and Pagan London 1912 pp. 20 ff., 113,
165 ff., 180, 359), we may reasonably conjecture that it once involved a ritual birth.
Dr Frazer {Golden Bough3: The Magic Art ii. 311) has also detected in it traces of a
ritual marriage and {id. p. 310 ff.) of a ritual death. The human victim originally slain
at the Saturnalia (to Dr Frazer's evidence we may perhaps add Plaut. Amph. 4. 2. 156°.
AM. Tun"1 me mactes, carnufex? nisi formam dii hodie ??ieatn perduint, \ Faxo, ut bubidis
coriis onustus sis Satumi hostia. \ Ita ego te certb truce et crtuiatu mactabo. exi for as \
Mastigia. The passage is, owing to the loss of a quaternion, absent from our MSS.
It is usually supposed that the gap was filled up by Hermolaus Barbarus in the fifteenth
century: see J. L. Ussing ad loc. But the sentences quoted, which describe the victim
of Saturn as scourged and crucified, involve a very curious anticipation of modern dis-
coveries, and even if written by Hermolaus Barbarus may well have been drawn from