1893.] ^■'■^ (Dolley. 



of corrupting influences afiecting the cult during its westward spread. 

 According to Piudar/^ Plutarch'-" and Appolonius.-Mnstead of the wild 

 and wanton Tliyasos depicted by Euripides, who, "at the appointed 

 hour, shoot their wild thyrsi in the bacchic dance," Dionysos was in the 

 earliest times accompanied by the Graces, and near the grove of Pelops, 

 at Olympia,^^ shared an aliar in common with them. In fact, while 

 tracing back the cult through Parthia and the East, we pass from the 

 home of the grape to lands where wine was the product of the date, and 

 if the cone-like structure tipping the thyrsos finally came to symbolize 

 the bacchic and wine-loving attributes of Dionysos, it was through a 

 substitution of the grape for the date, a combining of the Eastern symbol 

 of fertilization with the garlanded rod of the dancers, and a failure to 

 comprehend the significance of the cone-like thyrsos tip, which in reality 

 originally represented the dale inflorescence found in the hands of gods, 

 priests and winged figures on Eastern monuments.^* 



That the Greeks and Latins were for a long time at a loss properly to 

 account for this cone-like tip, being in no position to understand the 

 import which the male date-palm inflorescence and the process of palmiti- 

 cation held in lands further to the East, where dates formed the staple 

 article of food, is shown by the substitution of various plants for the cone. 

 The shaping of ivy and vine leaves into conical form, or "entwining with 

 leafy greens the blades of javelins,"^" shows as little comprehension of the 

 real significance of the tliyisos on the part of the Greeks, as well as the 

 corruption into which the cull had fallen, as does the story of the death 

 of Orpheus the poet-guardian of the bacchic mysteries, at the hands of 

 the frantic throng of Ciconian matrons beside Hebrus' stream. 



Without going into the question of the identity of Dionysos and Osiris,^' 

 or of Dionysos and the Priapus of Lampsacus, there can be no question 

 that the basis of Dionysos worship was the belief in his universal quick- 

 ening or procreative powers. The similarity of Osiris and Dionysos wor- 

 ship, the association of Dionysos with Demeter and the various symbols 

 of his worship — phallus, serpent, bull, goat, fauns, satyrs, and the seasons 

 of the year devoted to his festivals — all go to confirm the conclusion that 

 the original cult rested entirely upon the personification or deification of 

 the active propagative or creative powers of living nature. It is a signifi- 

 cant fact thai the Greeks held and still hold that pulverized date seeds 

 have the property of provoking and facilitating parturition.^^ 



25 01., xiii, 5-10, 20. 

 2« QuaesL, Gr., 36. 

 2'i?Aod., iv, 424. 



-^ Pausanius, v, xiv, or Taylor's traiisl., ii, p. 42. 



29 Cf. Edw. B. Tylor, " The Winged Figures of the Assyrian aud Other Aucient Monu- 

 ments," PruC. Soc. of Biblical Arch seology, Vol. xii, pp. 383-393. 

 a* Ovid, Metam., xi, 27, 28 ; iii, 667. 



siCf. King, The Gnostics and Their Remains, 2d ed., 1887, pp. 321-323. 

 32 Orisard et Vanden Berghe, Les Palmiers Utile et leures Allies, Paris, 1889, p. 146. 



PROC. AMEK. PHILOS. SOC. XXXI. 140. O. PRINTED APRIL 19, 1893. 



