THF CRIME OF PROMETHEUS : 17

The dramatic offering which would find favor with the
god must be a high minicry, as Silenus showed, of man in
his natural state. His mock joy at the success of his own world-
ly contrivances, as if he had obtained some real good, and
then his being tripped up in them by Silenus, provoked in
the spectators laughter, which is mock joy, and summoned
forth the god as revel-leader, wearing the comic mask, to
share with the spectators his scoffing, cruel high comedy that
spared not men’s hopeful schemes and saved them from de-
veloping a bad taste for their own *“‘good works.” The god
and his followers thus communed by a mutual mockery.
When the chorus called forth upon its stage high and mighty
passions and plans ending in ruin, the spectators wore faces
of mourning and the god appeared on the scene in tragic mask,
attracted by the parody of his own sorrow. Again the victim,
vainly lamenting his grief, and the god were united by mutual
mockery and the witnesses partook of the god. The audience,
giving laughter and tears—a common mock joy and sorrow—
received in exchange a portion of that godly being, of whose
joy and suffering in his longing to bestow fulness of life their
laughter and tears were but shadows. Dionysus thus purified
their taste. He saved them from sympathy with suffering and
from delight in mere depravity.

Dionysus was the twice-born, once of woman, to be per-
secuted and destroyed by men, and again born of his father,
to become a sacramental word. He found more purity among
the satyrs then in men and used them to introduce his rites.
These satyrs found quick acceptance, for when the natural
vitality of men is on the wane they show a closer affinity for
the animal and a tendency toward aggresive bestiality in
their critical longing for health, instinctively coupling
health of soul with the condition of animal innocence.

The worship of Dionysus through tragedy was capable
of uniting that highly diverse, talented, speptical, anarchis-
tic, wilful Athenian public throughout the period of its uni-
que emunence, and upon the deciine of this art Athens, as