We are told that Dionysus conquered even the Amazons and converted
them to his worship. Euripides described in the _Bacchantes_--the
subject of which is the war between the uncontrolled sexual impulse and
the new order of things--how Dionysus traversed all Asia and finally
arrived in Hellas accompanied by a crowd of abandoned women. But his
religion was more than a cult of wine and sensual pleasure, it embraced
a gentle worship of nature, throwing down the barrier between man and
beast--impassable by the spirit of civilisation--and lovingly including
every living creature. We read in the _Bacchantes_ that the women who
had fled from the town to follow the irresistible stranger, Dionysus,
dwelled in the mountains, binding their hair with tame adders, carrying
in their arms the cubs of wolves and the young deer, and feeding them
with the milk of their breasts; that milk and wine welled up when they
struck the earth with the thyrsus; and so on. Dionysus implores
Pentheus, the representative of the Hellenic masculine system, not to
venture undisguised among the maenads: "They'll murder you if they
divine your sex," and, knowing the secret of the male and female temper:
.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53