ZEUS AND DIONYSOS.*

IT might seem at first matter for regret that a work so momentous ea Mr. Cook's Zeus should appear at a time when public and even specialist attention is distracted from research. But, after all, it is the very big books that are most independent of time and space, and we may fairly predict that some of the questions raised in Zeus will be ardently discussed long after the map of Europe has been redrawn and our swords have been beaten into ploughshares.

The inception of the book is interesting. It grew out of six papers ou "Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak," which in their turn may be fathered on The GoldenBough. The parentage is significant. In matters confessional Sir James Frazer and Mr. A.B. Cook are poles aaunder. To the author of The Golden Bough religion is mainly a delusion and a darkness, a savage thing, a snake hardly scotehed; to the author of Zeus pagan religion is mainly of interest because it dimly foreshadowed revelation, because "in thousands of wistful hearts throughout the Hellenic world it awakened longings that could only be satisfied by the coming of the very Christ." But beneath these alien conclusions there lies a very real kinship of soul. Both have in common immense learning—rare, almost unique in England—and in both breathe the same burning devotion to truth, the same steadfast and unflinching scholarship that forbids the intrusion into argument of mere theological prejudice. We rise from the reading of such books feeling that "it was good for us to have been there."

The volume before us deals with Zeus as god of the Bright Sky, but it is only the first of two, and with unusual con- sideration for his reader Mr. Cook, in a paragraph of " General Conclusions," relates the two volumes to each other. In Vol. I. we are led to consider the development from the merely natural and, as Mr. Cook calls it " zoistio" conception to the anthropomorphic—we prefer anthropopluie—Zeus. This was effected not, as Dr. Frazer would assume, by any despair of magic, " but rather by a naive attempt to express heaven in terms of earth." The divine sky developed into the supreme weather-maker, fashioned in the likeness of the mere human medicine-man or weather-king. The shift was accom- plished well before the end of the second millennium B.C., and henceforth Zeus is not the sky but the sky-god. But the sky aspect still larks in such epithets as Dios, Aithrios, Lykaios. As sky-god Zeus was also mountain-god, bat the ladder was from heaven to earth, not vice-trend. The luminous dome of leaven takes shape in three manifestations. San, moon, and stars are to the Greek mind made of the fiery nether, the sky-stuff. Hence Zeus is " contaminated " with countless sun and moon and star deities and symbols, such as the wheel, the eye, the bird, the ram, the bull ; now and again he monies the moon. But—and we are grateful to the author for this elear pronouncement—" genuine Greek religion never identified Zeus with sun or moon or star."

• Zeus: a Study is Amend RoO$na. Fly Arthur Dermal Cook, Peltom and Lecturer of Queens' College, Cambridge, Ender In Ckseleal Arebassolomt le the University of Cambridge. Vol. L, • Zen. and of the Bright sky,- Cambridge : at the University Press. f.b2 55. net] For why? Zeus the sky-god is greater than either sun or moon or star. Zeus is not only god of the Bright but of the Dark Sky : be is " lord of the drenching rain-storm," and as such he is husband and fertilizer of the earth, and becomes father of a divine son, of Dionysos, god of animal and vegetable life, a son in some ways greater than his father. Zeus of the Dark Sky, Zeus the husband of the Earth-Mother and the father of Dionysos, is in the main reserved for the second volume and must not be prejudged. It is, however, we think, quite clear that when Mr. Cook began his book he wee obsessed by Zeus as the Bright Sky, and it was only as hie inquiries pushed further on that the true significance of the Dark Sky, the rain-storm god, broke in on him. This is not to blame his book, but to acclaim it as a live growth rather than a dead dogma. If a writer completely marshals and controls his material at the outset, ipso facto his work is life- less. If his material controls him, forces him to modify his plot, then the seeds of life are there, and we have living growth in place of dead analysis. In any real drama the plot controls the dramatist.

Throughout the first volume the Bright Sky is dominant. On his first page Mr. Cook tells no that the name of Zeus is referable to a root that means "to shine" and sissy be rendered " the Bright One," and further, "since a whole series of related words in the various languages of the Indo-European family is used to denote ' day' or 'sky,' it can be safely inferred that Zeus was called 'the Bright One' as being the god of the bright or daylight sky." True; but not, we venture to thiuk, the whole truth. The root in question, di, which gives us dieu-s, Zeus, and, of course, in old Indian Lynn*, does mean to shine, but it means also, as Professor Tucker has pointed out, to be moist, as in IhFpfr, the mysterious word which means at once " moist " and " nimble "—mysterious no longer if we remember that things are both moist and nimble for one and the same reason—i.e., that they are alive. Moisture, the men of science now tell us, is life. Behind, then, the figure of Zees is the background of a time when he was god not only of the Bright but of the Dark Sky, when he was both rain and sun- shine, and that because they were conjointly the source of life and food. Zeus himself never forgets his function ae Rain-maker. Is he not, as Mr. Cook reminds us, no less than thirty-six times ha the Iliad and Odyssey alone described as roptAnyvila, "a transparent synonym of Rain-maker"? Does he not by the mere shaking of his aegis cause a thunder- storm, or, more simply still, by the shaking of his ambrosial locks and the nodding of his divine head P Now in view of this double meaning of the root di, "shining" and "moisture," it is not a little interesting to note that another primitive word has the same beautiful duplicity. In the Palaiokastro ritual hymn to the Diktecon Zeus, he is hailed as sarynnis (or is) ydres (or curl—Almighty 7dver; and what is yd., P Professor Murray translates "Lord of all that is wet and gleaming," Mr. Cook "Almighty Radi- acme." We have no one word by which to render Istees; it is just the notion inherent in the old root di—life which is moist and shining—the bloom on the grape. Radiance is too hard and dry; ,deer has in it the moist shining of sap, the gladness of life and youth. Mr. Cook's demonstration would have gained much in cogency had this notion of moist sky been clearly grasped at the outset, hut, as Before said, what it loses in logic his book gains in life and actuality. We feel the writer's mind growing.

Mr. Cook is original often through sheer force of learning. Out of his treasure-house comes all the old knowledge, but also much that is new, both literary and monumental. Take Zeus Olympioa. We all know the holy mountain with its windless radiance as of the uttermost aether. We all knew that there were many Olymposes, and have specnlated as to which was the original—have wondered why the holy mountain of

classical Greece should be on the outskirts of Thesealy, in a region that in classical days was barely Hellenic. But which of us had thought of a mystery cult on Mount Olympos P

Which of us had read in our Acta Sanctorm the " Confession"

of St. Cyprian, who, as a boy of fifteen, was " initiated for forty days on Mount Olympos by seven hierophants into certain obscure mysteries"? On Mount Olympos, of all places, where we thought dwelt only the clear, shining, rationalized Olym- pians. And which of us, save Mr. Cook, if be had made the discovery, would not have written a paper and caused some learned society to ring with his new learning ? The discovery,

indeed, is so momentous that we must quote Mr. Cook's translation, or, rather, summary, of the passage

" In this home of the gods ho [St. Cyprian] was taught the meaning of musical notes and sounds. He had a vision of tree- trunks and herbs of divine potency. He witnessed the succession of seasons and the difference of days, the changing spirits that caused the former, and the opposing influences that determined the latter. He beheld choruses of daimons, chanting, warring, lying in ambush, deceiving and confounding each other. Ho saw too the phalanx of each several god and goddess. After sundown he fed on fruits (not meat), and, generally speaking, he was initiated into the decay and birth of herbs, trees, and bodies."

And what does Mr. Cook say to this amazing document he has unearthed ? "It is altogether a singular recital, but we can hardly be wrong in supposing that these were puberty rites Corybantic or Cabiric in character." If Mr. Cook has a fault, or rather a failing, it is that he lacks tartde as faire For what does it really mean—this extraordinary juxtaposi- tion of primitive mysteries and the cult of Olympian Zeus? Two things that have always seemed poles asunder. It means, we think, though himself be scarcely seems to see it, just the whole gist of Mr. Cook's contention—i.e., that Dionysos is in very truth the son of Zeus, not by adoption or by a theological arrangement to fit him into the orthodox Homeric system, but his real and natural son. Now this is astonishing. In Homer Dionysos was never even " received into Olympus "; how could he then be Zeus's own son P Some of us—the present reviewer is of their number—staggered by the fact that Dionysos was never Olympian, gave up his sonship. It is one of the great values of Mr. Cook's mind and method that with a certain ardent conscientiousness he sticks always to facts—and he has his reward. Dionysos is the son of Zeus, he steadfastly affirms, and here on Mount Olympos itself we have mysteries obviously Dionysian. It means, we think, though here we outrun Mr. Cook and plunge into uncharted country, simply this. Homer's Olympian religion was a passing phase arising out of special social conditions. Zeus and his son Dionysos were seated on Mount Olympos long before Homer. And now we must venture into ethnology and part company for a moment from Mr. Cook, In his preface he says:- " To some it may be a surprise that I have not made mom use of ethnology as a master-key wherewith to unlock the complex chambers of Greek religion. I am far from under-estimating the value of that great science, and I can well imagine that the mythology of the future may be based on ethnological data. But if so it will be based on the data of future ethnology. For at present ethnologists are still at sixes and sevens with regard to the racial stratification of Greece. . . . I shall therefore be content if certain ethnological conclusions can be drawn, as I believe they can, from the materials here collected, materials that have been arranged on other principles."

The author's own words provoke our rashness, and on one broad issue ethnologists are not quite "at sixes and sevens."

In determining the stratification of Greek religion, Greek scholars so far have predicated only two layers—the indi- genous layer, called by some "Pelasgian," by others Anatolian or Mycenaean, and the upper layer of the incoming conquerors, which all agree to call Indo-European. But things are not quite so simple. Philologists with one voice tell ns now that very early Indo-European speech divided itself into Eastern and Western—the Eastern or seism branch, so called from satem, old Iranian for " hundred," aibilated their palatals ; the Western or kentum (eentum) peoples retained the guttural. The astern group included the Aryans—i.e., the Iranians and Indians—and for Europe the Thrako-Phrygians. Modern survivals of salon speakers are our allies, the Russians, with all their Slav-speaking kinsfolk. The kentum peoples of the West are the Greeks proper, always north. westerly intruders, the Latina, Teutons, Colts, &c. Now if Dionysos is a Thrako-Phrygian, he stands for a eaters-speaking people, be is non-Greek, and if he is the real son of his father as well as his obviously Thracian mother Semele, the rather astonishing result is inevitable that Zeus also is eaten, is Thrako-Phrygian. The sateen peoples represented by Mr. Wace's mewl& settlements preceded the kentunt Greeks in Greece. The Thracian are a bygone splendour, lapsed from the Greeks into barbarism. Yet Olympos, the home of the gods, is a Thracian word, and at Eleusis, in the heart of the Mysteries, we have the Thracian singer Euinolpos, and again at paella we remember " the Thracian ships and the foreign faces." Orpheus, who taught men the Mysteries, was a Thracian. Now Zeus, the father of gods and men, the sup- posed great Hellenic god, was also—and the crux has never been solved—"Pelasgian." Does "Pelasgian" spell, not Anatolian or Minoan, but simply sateen speaker, magaula dweller? If Dionysos be Thracian, and be the son of his father, some such conclusion seems inevitable. Anyhow Dionysos, lord of tragedy, who brought to Greece the doctrine, the great sacramental doctrine, of immortality through union with the god, the arch-mystic whose mysteries underlay and finally vanquished all the rationalism of the Olympians, was by virtue of his mother Semele a salem god. He, the lord of tragedy, was a god who suffered and died for his people, and it is not a little significant that our allies, the Russians, European survivors of salon peoples, deify and worship suffering in a fashion and with an intensity of con- viction unknown to us Westerners. The Greek proper, and alas ! the Teuton hero, conqueror, colonizer, reserved much of his worship for his own strong right arm. Success, not suffering, was his divinity.

The talc is not yet fully told. We shall look eagerly for Vol. II. Its rich contents are promised in the concluding paragraph a-

" The sky-god, the earth goddess, and their offspring the life of the world are thus already before us ; but as yet in imperfect outline. The more definite and detailed account of their inter- relations we must reserve for another volume."

If Mr. Cook gets through that second volume without com- mitting himself in matters ethnological, he will be indeed a wary man. Meanwhile we must give thanks for certain minor mercies to the Cambridge University Press for issuing a book which can never " pay," and for the extraordinary wealth of illustrations. And not least to Mrs. Cook for the simply admirable index, which again and again we have tested. Here, too, in this matter of indexes the meticulous mantle of Dr. Frazer has fallen on the shoulders of Mr. Cook.

It is not easy to convict Mr. Cook of sins of omission, but in his very full and interesting discussion of the worship of Zeus Ammon the new and, we think, conclusive material supplied by Mr. One Bates in his Eastern Libyans seems to have escaped notice. The cultus.object was supposed to be of omphalos form. The faience statuettes figured by Mr. Bates (Fig. 78-79) show this disputed form to have been that of an ancient Libyan fetish, a rather shapeless mass repre- senting a dead body in a sitting posture and wrapped up in a ball. It strongly recalls the body wrapped in a bull's hide which appears on Egyptian funeral scenes. The fetish was all that remained of a dead ancestor, probably identified with a Royal bull, and the oracular character of Zeus Ammon is at once explained.

To conclude, Zeus is a model of what academic work should be it is a mine of learning in which generations to come will quarry, and it teems with suggestion. Turning to the front page, we see that the author's name is preceded by no title and followed by no string of honorary letters. At this the democratic soul will not altogether repine. And yet, echoing Plutarch's question, we are constrained to ask "Is it good for a man "—a man so learned and so original—is it good for himself and for his fellow-citizens that he should "live con• coaled"?