The Olympian rank of the Sun is clear; but there seem to be ascriptions made to him, which can only be reconciled by the supposition, in itself far from improbable, that he was separately known of, as an object of worship, through two different sets of traditions; one of them referable to Pelasgian sources, and entailing Trojan sympathies, the other of an Hellenic, or very probably a Phœnician, cast, and tending to rank him with the Hellenes. For in the Iliad his unwillingness to set, when his setting was to bring the glories of the Trojans to an end, seems very strongly to imply that he had a Pelasgian origin. In the Odyssey, his siding with Vulcan against Mars and Venus would show, so far as it goes, a Hellenizing turn; but what is more important is this, that, as the father of Circe and Æetes, of whom the latter bears the exclusively Phœnician epithet ὀλοόφρων, and the former has her abode close by his ἀντολαὶ, or point of rising, he is at once thrown into the Phœnician or the Persian connection. As the Sun-worship was so general in the East, it seems quite possible that it might come into Greece by more channels than one: and as the process of personification might in one set of traditions be more, and in another less complete, we may here find a possible clue to Homer’s reason for treating it differently in the two poems. Particularly as the poem where he is least personal, the Iliad, is also that where he is most Pelasgian: for we have found reason to ascribe to the Pelasgians less of lively and creative power in the realms of the imagination, than to the Hellenes, and to such races as had stronger affinities with them.
So distinct is the Sun from Apollo in the Odyssey, that they appear as separate dramatis personæ in the Lay of Demodocus. Yet there are some latent signs of sympathy between them. Apollo tends the oxen of Laomedon: the Sun delights, morning and evening, in his own oxen in Thrinacie. It is difficult to avoid supposing some kind of relation to be conveyed by Homer between the rays of the sun, and the arrows of Apollo in the Plague. The extension of his sympathies to both races is another sign of resemblance. Again, we have a promise from Eurylochus, one of the crew of Ulysses, to build a temple to the Sun upon his safe return to Ithaca[503]. Now we have seen that the only instances of temples, which we can certainly declare to be named in the poems, are temples either of Minerva or of Apollo. Thus this vow of Eurylochus looks like another anticipation of the subsequent absorption of the Sun into the person and deity of Apollo: and on the whole, we are left to infer that beginnings of that process may have been already visible. Homer, perhaps, did not care to advance it. At least, it does not appear to me that either he or his nation were friendly to the conception of mere elemental gods. Gods who preside over external nature he presents to us in abundance; but gods, who are the mere organs of external nature, are alien to the Greek genius as candidates for the higher posts, and are relegated to subordinate places in the system. Only Vulcan and Ceres really appear with him to bear decisively the stamp of this character: and both of them seem as if they were already in part detached from it, and developing in another direction. For in Vulcan the human faculty of skill already predominates over fire, and Ceres impersonates the vegetable product of Earth, and not the mere dead mass.
The connection of the Sun with Pelasgian traditions according to the Egyptian type is, I think, strongly signified by the legend of the oxen and sheep, in which he takes so much delight.
In the time of Homer he was, as it were, a probationer in the ἄγων of the Grecian gods. The main facts before us are simply these: first, his unformed separate state at that epoch; secondly, his absorption in Apollo. The lesson taught by both is the repugnance of the Greeks to mere Nature-worship. The signification of the second, in particular, appears to be this, that as Ἠέλιος could not stand alone, and needed to be absorbed, so he could find no place for his absorption so fitting as in that deity, of whom, as well as of the more venerable traditions that he represented, brightness was an inseparable and original characteristic.
In this view, the mythological absorption of the Sun in Apollo is a most striking trait of the ancient mythology: and it even recalls to mind that sublime representation of the Prophet, ‘The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory[504].’
The Dionysus of Homer, or Bacchus, has all the marks of a deity, whose name and worship were of recent introduction into Greece, and were not yet fully established there; while in connection with the Trojans we have no notice of him whatever.
The eastern origin of this god seems in an unusual degree to have been remembered in the later popular tradition: and from the slight Homeric notices we may find confirmation for the common idea; inasmuch as the poems appear both to mark him as not originally Greek nor Pelasgian, and likewise rather faintly to connect him with the Phœnicians.
His father was Jupiter, and his mother Semele. Her name occurs in a Catalogue, of which the first part is composed of women, the second of goddesses; she appears among the women. The lines, in which she is mentioned may be rendered, ‘nor when (I was enamoured) of Semele, nor (when) of Alcmene, in Thebes; and Alcmene had stout-hearted Hercules for her son, but Semele bore Dionysus, joy of men.’ These words appear probably to mean that Semele, as well as Alcmene, was in Thebes: and this supports the post-Homeric, but ancient, tradition of the hymn to Bacchus[505], which makes Semele the daughter of Cadmus. Now, Cadmus, according to every reasonable presumption, was Phœnician. We have thus a fixed chronological epoch, to which the god was junior. That is, we have a period fixed, which may be called historical, when his name and worship had not yet been brought into Greece.
The only note that we possess of the worship of Dionysus, as one established in Homer’s time among the Greeks, is in the obscure allusion of the Eleventh Odyssey to Ariadne[506], who was put to death by Diana in the island of Dia, on her way from Crete to Athens, at the instance of Dionysus, Διονύσου μαρτυρίῃσιν. The most probable interpretation of this passage seems to be, that Theseus, when on his voyage, landed with Ariadne in Dia to consummate the marriage, just as Paris[507], on his way from Sparta, landed in Cranae with Helen: but that, since the island was dedicated to Dionysus, this was punished as a desecration.
We thus see Dionysus taking root for the first time upon the natural line of communication, namely that by the islands, between Phœnicia and Greece: and his possession of this island is in harmony with the tradition of the Hymn, which represents him as having first been seen upon the sea-shore[508].
In the Twenty-fourth Odyssey we are told that Thetis supplied the Greeks with a gilded urn, in which to store the ashes of Achilles, together with wine and some unguent, probably fat. The passage to which these verses belong is perhaps the least trustworthy in the poems: nor is it in complete agreement with the Iliad, which mentions fat only as used on the occasion. But I refer to it because it is stated there, that this urn was reported by Thetis to be the work of Vulcan, and also to be the gift of Dionysus[509]. Her possession of a gift from him is in harmony with Il. v. 136, which represents her as having sheltered him, when, through fear, he plunged into the sea: while his possession of a work of art in metal is best explained by the supposition that Homer regarded him as a Phœnician deity, since it was from that race that such productions were commonly, though we cannot say exclusively, derived.
It is not difficult to understand why, as the god of wine and inebriety, Dionysus does not appear in the theotechny of the Iliad; but it would seem that the feasts of the dissolute Suitors in the Odyssey afforded a series of occasions, upon any of which the mention of his name would have been highly suitable. We may perhaps even say that it could hardly have been omitted, if his worship had been general and familiar in the country. Again, Dionysus is nowhere mentioned in connection with Olympus.
The remaining Homeric notice of this deity which is also the most curious, sustains what has already been advanced. The Arcadian king, Lycoorgus, scourged, and pursued over the hill Nyseion, the μαινομένοιο Διωνύσοιο τιθήνας, the nurses of the frantic Bacchus; they in dismay cast down their vine branches (θυσθλὰ), while he plunged into the sea, and Thetis gave him refuge[510]. Jupiter, in retribution, struck Lycoorgus blind, and cut short his days. Whatever explanation may be adopted of its details, this legend seems to signify, beyond all doubt, that some forty or fifty years before the Troica (for Lycoorgus was contemporary with the youth of Nestor[511]), the introduction of the drunken worship of Bacchus was resisted by the Pelasgians of Arcadia, and was for a time, at least, expelled by them. The mention of Dionysus as a child probably imports a further reference to the recency of his worship: and there is something remarkable and significant in this apparent commencement of violent opposition to it at the point when women were beginning to be corrupted by excess of liquor.
Even the later tradition of Hesiod, which makes Dionysus the husband of Ariadne, by thus giving him a Phœnician connection, so far sustains his Phœnician origin[512].
As Dionysus is one of the most recent of the Homeric deities, so likewise is he one of the most purely heathenish[513]. He has not, even in Homer, a divine maternity assigned to him, and he is the only one of the Homeric deities who stands in this predicament[514]. The anomaly was felt and provided for, in the later traditions at least, by the deification of Semele after death. But perhaps another mode of statement may be adopted. As it is evident that the original tradition made him the son of a woman, and as all those with whom he is classed in Homer are probably historical personages, it seems possible that he may have been one of our own race, whose discovery or extension of the use of wine may, by its rapid and powerful effect upon the countries which it had reached, have led to his adoption into the order of the Immortals, by a process more rapid than took place in the case of Hercules or any other person. Upon this supposition, he stands altogether alone among the gods of Homer. But, be this as it may, he is, when considered in the capacity of a deity, the representation of an animal instinct in its state of gross excess, and of nothing more. He is the god of drunkenness, as Mars is the god of violence, and Venus the goddess of lust: and there are no three other deities, from whom Homer has so remarkably withheld all signs of his reverence.
Though I state this as an historical possibility, I think it is certain that, according to the Poet, Dionysus was from his birth one of the Immortals: but it is also very doubtful whether he was one, to whom a place belonged in the smaller Olympian Assembly. Even in later times, he was not one of the Dii Majores: and his being the son of a mortal in Homer would tend to make it probable that he was not invested by the Poet with Olympian dignity. Again, he is only four times mentioned in the whole of the poems; nor is a single act of his manhood recorded, except his information against Ariadne. That information seems to imply, that a known Greek island was sacred to him; and it was followed by the death of Ariadne under the darts of Diana. These circumstances may perhaps raise a presumption of his Olympian rank, equal to the adverse one which has been stated above. So far as this inquiry is concerned, the question must remain unsolved. But little of interest can attach to these, the shameful parts of the Greek mythology, which boast, as if it were our strength, of what can scarcely be excused as our weakness, and which treat our shame as our joy. The real point of interest is to learn whether there was a time when man, even though he had lost the clear view of the guiding hand from above, yet revolted against, or had not become familiar with, the deification of vicious passion. And we seem to find the note of such a time in Homer. Only one laudatory phrase is applied throughout the poems to Dionysus; it is the χάρμα βροτοῖσιν, and these words are not the sentiment of the Poet, or of any character that represents his mind; they are put into the mouth of Jupiter, when he is speaking under a paroxysm of sensual passion.
I have not adverted to the tradition which places the Lycoorgus of Il. vi. in Thrace, but have simply followed what appears to be the suggestion of the Homeric text.