through the Alcyonian lake; and his return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the warder of the dead.[1] Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to bring the season with him.[2] Deities of vegetation, who are supposed to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris were so conceived.[3]
A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as “cow-born,” “bull,” “bull-shaped,” “bull-faced,” “bull-browed,” “bull-horned,” “horn-bearing,” “two-horned,” “horned.”[4] He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull.[5] His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape,[6] or with bull horns;[7] and he was painted with horns.[8] Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the sur-
- ↑ Pausanias, ii. 37, 5 sq.; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; id., Quaest Conviv. iv. 6, 2.
- ↑ Himerius, Orat. iii. 6, xiv. 7.
- ↑ For Dionysus, see Lenormant in Daremberg et Saglio, i. 632. For Osiris, see Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 65
- ↑ Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; id.,H; Quaest. Grace. 36; Athenaeus, xi. 476 a; Clemens Alexandr., Protrept. ii. 16; Orphica, Hymn xxx. vv. 3, 4, xlv. 1, lii. 2, liii. 8; Euripides, Bacchae, 99; Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 357; Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 31; Lucian, Bacchus, 2.
- ↑ Euripides, Bacchae, 920 sqq., 1017.
- ↑ Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; Athenaeus, l.c.
- ↑ Diodorus, iii. 64, 2, iv. 4, 2; Cornutus, De natura deorum, 30.
- ↑ Diodorus, l.c.; Tzetzes, Schol. in Lycophr. 209; Philostratus, Imagines, i. 14 (15).
