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18 THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS

if suddenty deprived of its healing potion, feir from glory.
Dionysus had been the common meal that sustained society.
© Yet, all the elements of the crisis had been present when
the worship of Dionysus had been introduced—fanatical per-
sonal rivalry, free-thinking, political treachery, foreign in-
fluences, and the shift from iand aristocracy to commericia:
democracy. It was to a declining society, one becoming relig-
jousty remiss, that Dionysus appeared, not as an innovator
but as a restorer of his father’s worship. His mission was to
revivify in men the vision of the higher man by being sacra-
mentaily present as the offering of the ritual drama.

A god, yet a man, ambiguous, ironic, self-mocking, Dio-
nysus dies, as a man, in order to scoff, as a god, at all that men
consider profitable, useful, virtuous, and correct. He 1s law-
breaker and misleader. He causes men to stray from their
beaten paths, to become blind among familiar scenes, to be
proved ignorant in their knowledge, and to feel themselves
barren in their fertility. He taught that there was sight, and
again sight; hearing, and again hearing. Being of two-fold
nature he spoke in parable. The god-man is the living par-
able.

Dionysus is concealed by his manhood, and he shows
himself as a man. As man, he suffers from the richness of his
godliness. He desires to be seen, to bestow, and to be known
in his word.

Desiring vessels for his overfiow, he descended upon the
human stage to be sacrificed. Onty a man-god coutd feer this
necessity for being partaken of. He was the fire of the vine,
needing a culture wherein his virtue could seed. A holy pre-
cinct, fenced off from the universe, must be his bestowing
place.

The Greek theater was designed as such a sanctuary. It
was laid out like an altar for him, Dionysus, gentle physician,
the feast of plenty, wine to be spilt on the stone. The taste
of him restored the innocent animality of men. He made the
human appetite sounder, purer, more bestial, more sensible,