he machinations of Hera and Athene he is overcome by
human heroes, the poet's feeling being, possibly, contempt for the mere
savage fighter; in fact, Ares in the Iliad is, from our point of view,
hardly a respectable character--he violates his promise, and when
wounded cries out like a hurt child. But as war-god he was widely
revered in Greece; in Thebes especially he was honored as one of the
great gods. Hesiod makes him the son of Zeus and Hera,[1337] but he
never attains moral or other dignity; in the popular cult he remained,
probably, merely the patron of war. In the later artistic
representations he is the ideal of warlike vigor and grace. In the
Homeric hymn (which may be of Orphic origin) he is transformed into a
lover of peace and a source of all pure and lofty aspirations--a violent
procedure, induced by the poet's unwillingness that an Olympian should
represent anything but what was morally good.

+776+. The process of development of a god's character is illustrated
with special clearness by the history of Dionysus. It is generally
agreed that he was of foreign origin, an importation from Thrace. The
features of his earliest cult known to us are marked by bald savagery.
His worshipers indulged in wild orgies, probably excited by intoxicating
drinks, tore to pieces a goat (as in Thrace) or a bull (as in Crete) and
ate the flesh raw;[1338] and the evidence goes to show that they
practiced human sacrifice. All these procedures have parallels in known
savage cults. Omophagic orgies are described by Nilus (among the
Saracens), and such customs are reported as existing or having existed
in the Fiji Islands and elsewhere.[1339] Among many tribes intoxication
is a common preparation for the work of the shaman; and human sacrifice
has been practiced in all parts of the world. There is nothing peculiar
in the office of soothsayer that accompanied the Dionysiac cult; mantic
persons and procedures have formed a prominent part of the constitution
of the lower peoples everywhere.

+777+. Dionysus, in a word, was originally the local god of a savage
community; the data are not sufficient to fix precisely his original
place and the original conception of him. His mantic function does not
necessarily show that he was a ghost. It is true that the dead were
often consulted (and necromancy long survived among civilized peoples),
but any spirit or god might take possession of a worshiper and make him
the vehicle of revelation. N