When we consider the practice of portraying the
god as a bull or with some of the features of the animal, the belief
that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred
rites, and the legend that in bull form he had been torn in pieces,
we cannot doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his
festival the worshippers of Dionysus believed themselves to be
killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.
Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his
names was "Kid." At Athens and at Hermion he was worshipped under
the title of "the one of the Black Goatskin," and a legend ran that
on a certain occasion he had appeared clad in the skin from which he
took the title. In the wine-growing district of Phlius, where in
autumn the plain is still thickly mantled with the red and golden
foliage of the fading vines, there stood of old a bronze image of a
goat, which the husbandmen plastered with gold-leaf as a means of
protecting their vines against blight. The image probably
represented the vine-god himself.
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