Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

RELIGION AND EROTIC

and hylozoism that is spread throughout the whole of natural religion appears in so many-sided a manner or with such lively and appropriate traits. But, on the other hand, this service is also more rich in pictures, more inspired than any other. If we survey the abundant wealth of poetical compositions and pictorial creations which owe their origin to him, then, full of admiration, we shall renounce the idea of comprising them all in a short sketch. In poetry the dithyramb, comedy, and tragedy—with the satyric drama—sprang, entirely or for the most part, from the stimulus of the service of Dionysus. The livelier music and the homogeneous representation of ideal stories in allegorical dances and choruses has likewise been developed to the greatest extent in his circle. Let anyone who desires to have an idea of the abundance of motives which plastic art received from this service run through any museum, any collection of copies of ancient sculptures, vase-paintings, or other plastic works. Everywhere and always, among new and unexpected forms and in an equally abundant fullness and multiplicity of tones and groups he will be met by Dionysus and his inspired company.”

In Thebes, Semele, one of the famous daughters of Cadmus, had enjoyed the love of Zeus but, being talked about by the jealous Hera, she demanded to see Zeus in his full majesty as the god of thunder and lightning. Human beings cannot, however, endure the sight of the divine majesty, and so the foolish woman dies in the flames, after she had brought forth a foetus, which Zeus sews up in his thigh in order to give birth to it a second time after it had become mature (Lucian, Dial. Deor., 9; see also Stephani, Comptes Rendus, 1861, pp. 12 ff.). This story also, whose deep meaning—the endless toil and care with which the vine must be handledIs easy to recognize, has given Lucian material for joke and jest, for he makes Hermes the midwife, “ who has to fetch water for Zeus and attend to

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