Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/80

66 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY had been dedicated to the god, and which, according to the older idea, filled his place. Then they drank the blood, which was regarded as the seat of vital strength, devoured the raw flesh, and wrapped themselves in the fresh skin. At the same time with a loud voice they be- sought the god (whom at the time of the winter solstice fancy pictured as a sleeping child in a winnowing fan) to dispense fruitfulness in the year just beginning. The god was called also Bacchus or lacchus from the shouts uttered by them. 87. It was for the same purpose that in the rural dis- tricts of Attica the phallus was carried about during the lesser Dionysia, which came at the same time in the year (Poseideon = December-January). In Athens itself, at the festival of the Anthesteria (' flower festival ? ), this favor of the god was sought by the ceremony of his sym- bolic marriage with a queen representing the soil. In the times of the republic her place was filled by the wife of the ArcJwn Basileus. 88. As the bull and the he-goat, of all the animals, were especially sacred to Dionysus, so in the vegetable kingdom were the evergreen ivy and the vine swelling with juice, on account of their luxuriant growth. The vine was especially appropriate also for the reason that the enjoyment of wine drinking has the faculty of increasing the sensual excitement peculiar to this worship to a point of enthusiasm that is like madness (drunkenness). (Of. i Spirit/ ' spirits of wine.') Such an effect, moreover, cor- responded to the nature of Dionysus, who was so gener- ally believed to be taken into oneself in drink that his relation to wine gradually drove into the background all other phases of his character. As Lyaeus ('freer from