Where the resurrection formed part of
the myth, it also was acted at the rites, and it even appears that a
general doctrine of resurrection, or at least of immortality, was
inculcated on the worshippers; for Plutarch, writing to console his
wife on the death of their infant daughter, comforts her with the
thought of the immortality of the soul as taught by tradition and
revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus. A different form of the myth
of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he descended into
Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead. The local Argive
tradition was that he went down through the Alcyonian lake; and his
return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was
annually celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him
from the water by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the
lake as an offering to the warder of the dead. Whether this was a
spring festival does not appear, but the Lydians certainly
celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was supposed to
bring the season with him.
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