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

The Satyric Drama

695

A divine babe who grows up with phenomenal speed and seeks
a divine consort, a murderous attack made upon him by others
who would occupy his place and win his bride, a miraculous
restoration of the dead to a new life—these are precisely the
elements that we detected in the Zagreus-cult of the Cretans1,
in the Orphic mystery of the Thracians2, and in the Lenaean
rite of the Athenians3. We cannot doubt that in Crete and Thrace
and Athens alike we have to do with variations on a common
theme, the annual birth, death, and resurrection of Dionysos, the
son of the sky-father by the earth-mother.

The name of the mother and the treatment of the child varies
from place to place. In Crete, where this religion appears as a
development of the old Anatolian worship, the parent remains
Rhea and the babe acquires the name Zagreus4. In Thraco-
Phrygian belief, as represented by Sabazian and Orphic myths,
the earth-goddess was dualised into Demeter and Kore, by whom
Zeus begat the horned infant Dionysos5. At Athens the mother
keeps her northern name of Semele, and her child is Iakchos or
Dionysos6. Again, among the Thracians, the originators and
rightful owners of this cult, the part of Dionysos was played by
a child actually dismembered and eaten'. In Crete the human
victim was replaced by a bull, the cannibal feast by a bovine
omophagy8. At Athens civilisation would not permit even this
attenuated orgy: the slaughter became dramatic make-belief, and
the omophagy a banquet for the successful poet and his troupe*.
The Athenians of the fourth century, sitting on cushions in their
theatre to witness a triumph of the tragedian's art, had travelled
far indeed from the primitive simplicity of that mimesis, in which
the celebrants had identified themselves with the god to become the
consorts of the goddess and so share in her all-pervading life.

(l) The Satyric Drama.

Yet even in the fourth century one touch of primitive life
remained in piquant contrast with surrounding refinement. I refer
to the Satyric drama. Here Prof. G. Murray has made a very
interesting suggestion, wThich it concerns us either to accept or

1 Supra p. 647. 2 Supra p. 6546".

3 Supra p. 669 ff. 4 Supra p. 644 ff.

5 Supra p. 390 ff. 6 Stipra p. 669 ff.

7 Supra p. 654 ff.

8 At the trieteric rites of Dionysos Semele had ev'upbv re Tpdire^av I8e [Avarripid 0'
dyvd (Orph. h. Sem. 44. 9). In Hesych. Se^AT?* Tpdirefa. irapd dk Qpvvlxv eopT-q
O. Jessen would read Se^eA^s rpdirefa' irapd Qpvvixv eoprr] (Roscher Lex. Myth. iv.
668).