Later on we shall find that some savages
propitiate dead bears and whales by offering them portions of their
own bodies.
All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should
appear in animal form. But the consideration of that point had
better be deferred till we have discussed the character and
attributes of Demeter. Meantime it remains to mention that in some
places, instead of an animal, a human being was torn in pieces at
the rites of Dionysus. This was the practice in Chios and Tenedos;
and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had been
formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a
child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted. At Orchomenus, as
we have seen, the human victim was taken from the women of an old
royal family. As the slain bull or goat represented the slain god,
so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him.
The legends of the deaths of Pentheus and Lycurgus, two kings who
are said to have been torn to pieces, the one by Bacchanals, the
other by horses, for their opposition to the rites of Dionysus, may
be, as I have already suggested, distorted reminiscences of a custom
of sacrificing divine kings in the character of Dionysus and of
dispersing the fragments of their broken bodies over the fields for
the purpose of fertilising them.
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