(
Greek characters) , but that they at first consisted only of the two branches
of the family of Ægimius, the Dy manes and the Pamphylians,
and that the Heracleids were not till afterwards incorporated among them[1]. However this may be, the fact is certain ; there were two
leading divinities in the Dorian religion. Now in the elementary
worship of the Pelasgians and Achseans there were also two divinities similarly related. These were the Sun and the Moon, worshipped under the related names of Helios and Selene, and by the
Pelasgian old inhabitants of Italy, as well under appellations connected with the Greek, as under the names of Janus or Dianus,
and Diana[2]. In Greece, however, the original denominations of
these divinities fell into disuse at an early period, and were rather
employed to designate the natural objects themselves than the celestial powers whom they were supposed to typify; and Dionysus or
Bacchus was adopted as a new name for the sun-god, and Deo or
Demeter for the goddess of the Moon[3]. These divinities, as we
have seen above, were Phoenician importations; and, connected as
they were in many of their attributes with the old elementary worship of the Pelasgians, they soon established themselves as constituent parts of that worship, and were at length blended and
confused with the gods of the country. For Dionysus was the
wine-god, and Deo the fertile earth from which the vine sprang
up. How natural, then, was the transition from the god who
gave wine to mortals, to the Sun to whose influence its growth
was mainly owing! But if he ascended from earth to heaven,
it was necessary that his sister deity should go with him; and
as his bride Ariadne shone among the stars, so might Demeter,
Thyone, or Semele, his mother, sister, or wife, be also translated to the Moon, and rule amid the lights of night. Indeed,
Bacchus himself is sometimes represented as a night-god, and in
Sophocles he is invoked as the choragus, or choir-leader, of the
- ↑ See Müller's Dor. I. ch. i, § 8.
- ↑ (
Greek characters) and (Greek characters) are connected like (Greek characters) and silva (cf. the proper name Sila,
Paley, ad Propert. p. 52) ; Sol and (Se)luna are the same words under another form. On Janus, or Dianus, see Niehuhr, Hist. Rom. i. p. 83 ; Buttmann, Mytholog. ii.
p, 73; Döderlein, Lat. Synon. und Etym. 1. p. 6. There was also a (Greek characters) as well as a (Greek characters) (see Alberti's note on Hesych. s. v. (Greek characters)). Mr. Scott, of Brasenose College, Oxford, has given a further development of these principles in a very ingenious and satisfactory essay on the mythology of Io, which appeared in the Classical Museum, No. xii.
- ↑ That Bacchus was the sun-god clearly appears from the authorities quoted by Welcker (Nachtrag zwr Trilogie, p. 190).
