the dead and ascended up to heaven;[1] or that Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded;[2] or that Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele,[3] who in the common legend figures as mother of Dionysus. Or, again, the heart was pounded up and given in a potion to Semele, who thereby conceived him.[4]
Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a biennial[5] festival at which the sufferings and death of Dionysus were represented in every detail.[6] Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was enacted at the rites,[7] and it even appears that a general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the thought of the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus.[8] A different form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead.[9] The local Argive tradition was that he descended
- ↑ Macrobius, Comment. in Somn. Scip. i, 12, 12; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti (commonly referred to as Mythographi Vaticani), ed. G. H. Bode (Cellis, 1834), iii. 12, 5, p. 246; Origen, c. Cels. iv. 17 1, quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 713.
- ↑ Himerius, Orat. ix. 4.
- ↑ Proclus, Hymn to Minerva, in Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 561 ; Orphica, ed. Abel, p. 235.
- ↑ Hyginus, Fab. 167.
- ↑ The festivals of Dionysus were biennial in many places. See Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer,3 ii. 500 sqq. (The terms for the festival were τριετηρίς, τριετηρικός, both terms of the series being included in the numeration, in accordance with the ancient mode of reckoning.) Probably the festivals were formerly annual and the period was afterwards lengthened, as has happened with other festivals. See W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 172, 175, 491, 533 sq., 598. Some of the festivals of Dionysus, however, were annual.
- ↑ Firmicus Maternus, De err. prof. relig. 6.
- ↑ Mythogr. Vatic. ed. Bode, l.c.
- ↑ Plutarch, Consol. ad uxor. 10. Cp. id., Isis et Osiris, 35; id., De ci Delphico, 9; id., De esu carnium, i. 7.
- ↑ Pausanias, ii. 31, 2, and 37, 5; Apollodorus, iii. 5, 3.
