* * * * *

We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of spring.  We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were performed at Athens, the young men (epheboi) brought in not only the human figure of the god, but also a Bull “worthy” of the God.  We understand, too, why in addition to the tragedies performed at the great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung—­“Bull-driving Dithyrambs.”

* * * * *

We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the drama. The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth.

Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs.  “Some,” he says, “are prayers to the gods—­these are called hymns; others of an opposite sort might best be called dirges; another sort are paeans, and another—­the birth of Dionysos, I suppose—­is called Dithyramb.”  Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs.  To him they are just a particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the information carelessly—­the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the birth or coming to be, the genesis of Dionysos.

The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato’s statement.  When a poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the title Dithyrambos.  Thus an inscribed hymn found at Delphi[28] opens thus: 

“Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come. ...  Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring Holy hours of thine own holy spring. ...  All the stars danced for joy.  Mirth Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth.”

The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull.

* * * * *

And now we come to a curious thing.  We have seen how a spirit, a daemon, and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite.  Dionysos the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once perceived, then remembered and conceived.  Dionysos, the Bull-God, is but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, generalized, conceived.  But the god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental image, of the fact perceived.  If, then, we have a song and dance of the birth of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original form as a calf, then as a human child?  Now it is quite true that in Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called Liknites, “Him of the Cradle."[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women.