The whole compass of the idea of Dionysus, a dual god of both summer
and winter, became ultimately, as we saw, almost identical with that
of Demeter. The Phrygians believed that the god slept in winter and
awoke in summer, and celebrated his waking and sleeping; or that he
was bound and imprisoned in winter, and unbound in spring. We saw
how, in Elis and at Argos, the women called him out of the sea, with
the singing of hymns, in early spring; and a beautiful ceremony in
the temple at Delphi, which, as we know, he shares with Apollo,
described by Plutarch, represents his mystical resurrection. Yearly,
about the time of the shortest day, just as the light begins to
increase, [44] and while hope is still tremulously strung, the
priestesses of Dionysus were wont to assemble with many lights at his
shrine, and there, with songs and dances, awoke the new-born child
after his wintry sleep, waving in a sacred cradle, like the great
basket used for winnowing corn, a symbolical image, or perhaps a real
infant. He is twofold then--a Doppelganger; like Persephone, he
belongs to two worlds, and has much in common with her, and a full
share of those dark possibilities which, even apart from the story of
the rape, belong to her. He is a Chthonian god, and, like all the
children of the earth, has an element of sadness; like Hades himself,
he is hollow and devouring, an eater of man's flesh--sarcophagus--the
grave which consumed unaware the ivory-white shoulder of Pelops.

And you have no sooner caught a glimpse of this image, than a certain
perceptible shadow comes creeping over the whole story; for, in
effect, we have seen glimpses of the sorrowing Dionysus, all along.
Part of the interest of the Theban legend of his birth is that he
comes of the marriage of a god with a mortal woman; and from the
first, like merely mortal heroes, he falls within the sphere of human
chances. At first, indeed, the melancholy settles round the person