Nor merely is sorrow efficient in those who hope, but in even a higher sense does it attach to the character of Saviour.  Apollo is, therefore, fabled to have been an exile from heaven and a servant of Admetus; indeed, Danaues, in “The Suppliants” of AEschylus, appeals to Apollo for protection on this very plea, addressing him as “the Holy One, and an exiled God from heaven.”  Thus Hercules was compelled to serve Eurystheus; and his twelve labors were typed in the twelve signs of the zodiac.  AEsculapius and Prometheus both suffered excruciating tortures and death for the good of men.  And Dionysus—­himself the centre of all joy—­was persecuted by the Queen of Heaven and compelled to wander in the world.  Thus he wandered through Egypt, finding no abiding-place, and finally, as the story runs, came to the Phrygian Cybele, that he might know in their deepest meaning—­even by the initiation of sorrow—­the mysteries of the Great Mother.  And, very significantly, it is from this same initiation that His wanderings have their end and his world-wide conquest its beginning; as if only thus could be realized the possibility both of triumph for himself and of hope for his followers.  For these wanderers can find rest only in a suffering Saviour, by the vision of whose deeper Passion they lose their sense of grief,—­as Io on Caucasus in sight of the transfixed Prometheus, and the Madonna at the Cross.

It is worthy of more attention than we can give it here, yet we cannot pass over in silence the fact, so important in this relation, that Grecian Tragedy, in all its wonderful development under the three great masters, was directly associated, and in its ruder beginnings completely identified, with the worship of Dionysus.  And this confirms our previous hint, that the same element which made tragedy possible for Greece must also be sought for in the development of its faith.  There are those who decry Grecian faith,—­at the same time that they laud the Grecian drama to the skies:  but to the Greeks themselves, who certainly knew more than we do as regards either, the drama was only an outgrowth of their faith, and derived thence its highest significance.  Thus the mystic symbolism of the dramatic Choruses, taken out of its religious connections, becomes an insoluble enigma; and naturally enough; for its first use was in religious worship,—­though afterwards it became associated with traditionary and historic events.  Besides, it was supposed that the tragedians wrote under a divine inspiration; and the subjects and representations which they embodied were for the most part susceptible of a deep spiritual interpretation.  Indeed, upon a careful examination, we shall find that very many of the dramas directly suggest the two Eleusinian movements, representing first the flight of suppliants—­as of the Heraclidae, the daughters of Danaues, and of Oedipus and Antigone—­from persecution to the shrine of some Saviour Deity,—­and finally a deliverance effected through sacrifice or divine interposition.  Examples of this are so numerous that we have no space for a minute consideration.