[49]
He becomes a new Aidoneus, a hunter of men's souls; like him, to be
appeased only by costly sacrifices.
And then, Dionysus recovering from his mid-winter madness, how
intensely these people conceive the spring! It is that triumphant
Dionysus, cured of his great malady, and sane in the clear light of
the longer days, whom Euripides in the Bacchanals sets before us, as
still, essentially, the Hunter, Zagreus; though he keeps the red
streams and torn flesh away from the delicate body of the god, in his
long vesture of white and gold, and fragrant with Eastern odours. Of
this I hope to speak in another paper; let me conclude this by one
phase more of religious custom.
If Dionysus, like Persephone, has his gloomy side, like her he has
also a peculiar message for a certain number of refined minds,
seeking, in the later days of Greek religion, such modifications of
the old legend as may minister to ethical culture, to the perfecting
of the moral nature. A type of second birth, from first to last, he
opens, in his series of annual changes, for minds on the look-out for
it, the hope of a possible analogy, between the resurrection of
nature, and something else, as yet unrealised, reserved for human
souls; and the beautiful, weeping creature, vexed by the wind,
suffering, torn to pieces, and rejuvenescent again at last, like a
tender shoot of living green out of the hardness and stony darkness+
[50] of the earth, becomes an emblem or ideal of chastening and
purification, and of final victory through suffering.
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