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To save him from the wrath of
Hera, his father Zeus changed the youthful Dionysus into a kid; and
when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus
was turned into a goat. Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a
live goat and devoured it raw, they must have believed that they
were eating the body and blood of the god. The custom of tearing in
pieces the bodies of animals and of men and then devouring them raw
has been practised as a religious rite by savages in modern times.
We need not therefore dismiss as a fable the testimony of antiquity
to the observance of similar rites among the frenzied worshippers of
Bacchus.
The custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine
more in detail further on, belongs to a very early stage of human
culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance
of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their
bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave their human attributes
(which are always the kernel of the conception) as the final and
sole residuum.


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