Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/316

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306
HEADERTEXT.
306

306 On the Attic Dionysia. perhaps at the instigation of Delphi, were adopted into the religion of the state. This adoption is not ascribed to Theseus ; but the Oschophoria, a masquerading procession with bunches of grapes, which he is said to have introduced, were probably nothing but an autumnal festival, adopted from one or more of the demes. That the Delphic oracle, in the exercise of its general superintendence of religious concerns, after having itself united Bacchus so closely as it did with its Apollo, because it was necessary for religious establishments of so national a kind to meet the faith of all classes, by the association of different gods, oracles, and ceremonies, directed the cities also to worship Bacchus, is not surprising. With regard to Athens, beside the support which, as Pausanias relates, Pegasus received from Delphi, the oracle cited by Demos- thenes (c. Meidiam, p. 531) is remarkable: Avow EjOe^Oe^oatcrir, baoi Wavpiovo^ clcttv raiGTe^ kcu iraTpiOLCJL vo/uol^ lOvveO eopTas^ ^e^vrjcrdai Ba/c^oto^ Kai evpv^opov^ /car ayvta^ idTavai wpaiwj/ SpojULiw yapiv a/u/xtya iravTa^j Kal Kvtcaav JScjO/uloIcti^ Kaprj (XTeipai/oi^ TrvKaaavTas > The words, ammtya TraVra?, seem not to have been used acci- dentally and unmeaningly, but to recommend the amalga- mation of the different orders. That there was at least occasion for this exhortation, is disclosed by the legend con- cerning the usage that prevailed at the Anthesteria on the day of the Choes, of drinking, not in common out of the same bowl, but each man separately out of his own cup. Demo- phoon, who here stands for the priest of the united people (Ovaia dfjaoTer}s)f or Pandion, who represents the union of the tribes and their modes of worship, is said to have introduced this regulation for the national banquet (€V(0')(^ia SrfjijioTeXr}^)^ and at the same time to have closed the temples, because the matricide Orestes happened just at this time to arrive at Athens, and it was the king'^s object to avoid ad- mitting him to a share in the drinking bout (o/xocrTroi/^o?), and yet not to offend him by making him alone drink apart from the rest. He felt the motive, as Euripides says (Iphig. T. 960), and endured the mortification in silence. Here, as the fiction is palpable, and even contradicts chronology, we