so conceive an image into which the beauty, "born" of the vine, has
passed; and you have the idea of Dionysus, as he appears, entirely
fashioned at last by central Greek poetry and art, and is consecrated
in the Oinophoria and the Anthesteria,+ the great festivals of the
Winepress and the Flowers.

The word wine, and with it the germ of the myth of Dionysus, is older
than the separation of the Indo-Germanic race. Yet, with the people
of Athens, Dionysus counted as the youngest of the gods; he was also
the son of a mortal, dead in childbirth, and seems always to have
exercised the charm of the latest born, in a sort of allowable
fondness. Through the fine-spun speculations of modern ethnologists
and grammarians, noting the changes in the letters of his name, and
catching at the slightest historical records of his worship, we may
trace his coming from Phrygia, the birthplace of the more mystical
elements of [39] Greek religion, over the mountains of Thrace. On
the heights of Pangaeus he leaves an oracle, with a perpetually
burning fire, famous down to the time of Augustus, who reverently
visited it. Southwards still, over the hills of Parnassus, which
remained for the inspired women of Boeotia the centre of his
presence, he comes to Thebes, and the family of Cadmus. From Boeotia
he passes to Attica; to the villages first; at last to Athens; at an
assignable date, under Peisistratus; out of the country, into the
town.

To this stage of his town-life, that Dionysus of "enthusiasm" already
belonged; it was to the Athenians of the town, to urbane young men,
sitting together at the banquet, that those expressions of a sudden
eloquence came, of the loosened utterance and finer speech, its