Thus guiding
the ploughshare and scattering the seed as he went, Dionysus is said
to have eased the labour of the husbandman. Further, we are told
that in the land of the Bisaltae, a Thracian tribe, there was a
great and fair sanctuary of Dionysus, where at his festival a bright
light shone forth at night as a token of an abundant harvest
vouchsafed by the diety; but if the crops were to fail that year,
the mystic light was not seen, darkness brooded over the sanctuary
as at other times. Moreover, among the emblems of Dionysus was the
winnowing-fan, that is the large open shovel-shaped basket, which
down to modern times has been used by farmers to separate the grain
from the chaff by tossing the corn in the air. This simple
agricultural instrument figured in the mystic rites of Dionysus;
indeed the god is traditionally said to have been placed at birth in
a winnowing-fan as in a cradle: in art he is represented as an
infant so cradled; and from these traditions and representations he
derived the epithet of _Liknites,_ that is, "He of the
Winnowing-fan.
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