* * * * *

And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a dæmon,
and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos
the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once
_per_ceived, then remembered and _con_ceived. 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.

But it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship
and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in
the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when,
Homer says, "youth is most gracious." This is the Dionysos that we know
in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the
Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty
like a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of
birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of
the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born.

This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the
word _Dithyrambos_ as meaning "He of the double door," their word