THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS 15

lineage and engendered a new, semi-divine race of heroes
through the woman lo, a purified one, horned, met in the
guise of a cow or new moon. Io was the sacramental animal
segregated from all creatures of earth to bear the seed of
Prometheus’ de.iverance. She was the ancestress of Heracies,
his reconciier, and a long line of heroes. Through these heroes
men received a portion of the gods’ being, and when this being
1s the measure, he sow of man may be filled by very ljttle,
yet the universe itseif cannot contain it. Master-men they
become at last.

Prometheus, in forcing Zeus to send an intercessor in
his behalf, brought about the necessity for the religious
institution of tragic drama, in which a god is made to appear
among men as a refreshment from Olympus and as a gift of
freedom from the awful burdens of Prometheus.

Central to Greek tragic drama was the god-man Dionysus,
whom, as with each of the sacramental race, Earth was loath
to bear, fearing his mastery. So, he was snatched up and was
born a second time in Zeus, whereupon he descended to earth
and mingled first with the uncorrupted beasts, who immediate-
ly recognized him. Chief among his followers was the goat-
man Silenus, who taught that men in their natural state
were abandoned creatures, made in mockery of the true,
sacramental man. He sang out his own longing for fulfilment
through Dionysus. Without illusion or self-deceit he showed
himself as a living mockery of the god he desired. He instruct-
ed men in the ways of a world which was, after all, but
mock scene and drama to the audience of gods, among whom
the real drama had been determined from eternity. Yet,
he taught, even by this mockery one night engage their atten-
tion, their favor, and even their participation.

Silenus and his followers therefore mocked, with their
drunken fertility orgies, the life-giving god Dionysus. They
mocked the painfulness of their own abundance, mimicked
the grotesqueness of their creaturliness, and the god, drawn
by the simulation of this powers, first appeared to these