These twin festivals, held each spring and winter throughout the Attic villages, were the original home of the Greek drama. In character they were simple rustic gatherings, drawn together in honour of the god who blessed the labours of the countrymen, and made the earth fruitful and productive. The proceedings began with a procession to the altar of Dionysus, where a goat was sacrificed. A country maiden led the way, adorned with golden ornaments, and bearing on her head the sacred basket, containing an offering of cakes, a chaplet of flowers for the victim, and a knife for the sacrifice. Other people followed with rural gifts, such as grapes, figs, and jars of wine. The phallus, the universal symbol of Dionysus, was carried aloft. During the sacrifice dances and songs were performed in honour of the god of the vineyard; then came the country sport of dancing upon greased wine-skins; and the day concluded with general drinking and merriment.[1]
In the Attic festivals of Dionysus, with their pastoral simplicity of tone, the Bacchic worship appears to have lost most of its oriental character, and to have been modified into conformity with Hellenic tastes.[2] But this was not the case in every part of Greece. In many places the Asiatic origin of the cultus showed itself without disguise, and especially in Phocis and Boeotia, at the 'trieteric festivals,' which were observed every alternate year along the slopes of Parnassus and Cithaeron.[3] The spirit of these celebrations was one of wild and ecstatic violence. They were held in winter, during
- ↑ Plut. de cupid. divit. c. 8; Aristoph. Acharn. 237–279; Cornutus de nat. deor. p. 217 F.
- ↑ Mr. Bather, in his interesting article on the Problem of the Bacchae (Hellenic Journal, vol. xiv, part 2), suggests a different theory (pp. 244–246). He supposes that the worship of Dionysus in Greece was not derived entirely from oriental sources, but that there existed from early times an indigenous cult of a wine and vegetation deity, with whom the oriental Dionysus was afterwards identified. He believes that rustic celebrations such as those of the early Attic Dionysia represented the primitive Greek form of worship; and that the orgiastic rites which prevailed in other parts of Greece were a later development, due to the introduction of the Asiatic Dionysus, and his identification with the old Greek god.
- ↑ Probus on Verg. Georg. 3. 43; Soph. Ant. 1126.
institution of a second spring festival at Athens had something to do with the disappearance of similar festivities from the country calendar.
