The Problem of the Bacchae

Abstract

In two recent numbers of the Classical Review two most interesting notes have appeared, the first by Dr. Verrall under the same title as that of the present paper, and the second a notice of the second volume of Rohde's Psyche by Miss Harrison. Dr. Rohde in his work and both Dr. Verrall and Miss Harrison in these notes are led to the conclusion, if they do not assume the fact as an axiom, that the worship of Dionysus is not an indigenous cult in Greece but came in from Thrace and the north. It is a fact which at first sight appears incontestable: the mythology of nearly every state in Greece has the tale of the incoming of the god from abroad. Thebes and Athens, Argos and Orchomenos, Corinth and Brasiae—all have their own stories of his advent. The very name Dionysus has a foreign, probably a Phrygian, derivation. Thus it is no wonder that modern mythologists almost without exception have adopted the view of the ancients themselves that the worship is one imported into Greece.But, though it is evident that much of the later cult is undoubtedly not indigenous, there does yet seem to be a groundwork of a real old folk religion at the bottom of all these Phrygian and Thracian mysteries of later times. It would seem to be an almost unscientific method, if I may use the term without offence, on the strength of certain similarities in customs and cults between the deities of two different countries, to conclude that therefore the two are identical.