The epic movement of Eleusinian triumph was in its range as unlimited as the movement of sorrow.  Each found expression in sculptured monument,—­the one hinting of flight into darkness, and the other of resurrection into light; each in its cycle inclosed the world; each widened into the invisible; as the wail of Achtheia reached the heart of Hades, so the paean of Dionysus was lost in the heavens.

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But in what manner did this Dionysus make his avatar in the world?  For he must needs have first touched the earth as human child, ere he could be worshipped as Divine Saviour.  Latona must leave the heavens and come to Delos ere she can give birth to Apollo; for, in order to slay the serpent, the child must himself be earth-born,—­indeed, according to one representation, he slew the Python out of his mother’s arms.  Neither the serpent of Genesis nor the dragon of Revelation can be conquered save by the seed of the woman.  From this necessity of his earthly birth, the connection of the Saviour-Child with the Mater Dolorosa becomes universal,—­finding its counterpart in the Assyrian Venus with babe in arm, in Isis suckling the child Horus, and even in the Scandinavian Disa at Upsal accompanied by an infant.  It is from swaddling-clothes, as the nursling of our Lady, and out of the sorrowful discipline of earth, that the child grows to be the Saviour, both for our Lady and for all her children.

Hence, according to the tradition, Dionysus was born of Semele of the royal house at Thebes; and Jove was his father.  A little before his time of birth,—­so the story goes,—­Jove visited Semele, at her own rash request, in all the majesty of his presence, with thunderings and lightnings, so that the bower of the virgin mother was laid in ruins, and she herself, unable to stand before the revealed god, was consumed as by fire.  But Jove out of her ashes perfected the birth of his son; whence he was called the Child of Fire, ([Greek:  puripais],)—­which epithet, as well as this part of the fable, probably points to his connection with the Oriental symbolism of fire in the worship of the Sun.

And it is worth while, in connection with this, to notice the gradations by which in the ancient mind everything ascended from the gross material to a refined spirituality.  As in Nature there was forever going on a subtilizing process, so that

“from the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More aery, last the bright consummate flower Spirits odorous breathes,”—­

and as, in their philosophy, from the earth, as the principle of Nature, they ascended through the more subtile elements of water, air, and fire, to a spiritual conception of the universe; so, as regards their faith, its highest incarnation was through the symbolism of fire, as representative of that central Power under whose influence all things arose through endless grades of exaltation to Himself,—­so that the earthly rose into the heavenly, and all that was human became divine.