eration,
and birth should gather around the incarnation of the vine, and that the
_cup_ should become the holiest of symbols. Like the ark, the chest or
coffer, the egg, and a thousand other receptive or _containing_ objects,
the cup appeared to the ancient Initiated as a womb, or as the earth,
taking in and giving forth life. It was in this spirit that NONNUS, in
the fifth century, wrote The Dyonisiacs, a vast poem on Bacchus, in
forty-eight books; 'a magnificent assemblage of the emblematical legends
of Egypt,' and in which modern criticism has discovered a creative
grandeur, a beautiful wildness of fancy, and a romantic spirit, such as
were combined in no other one poem of antiquity.

Bacchus was thus the lord of life, and that in a vividly _real_
sense--the sense of intoxication, of keenly thrilling pleasure, of wild
delight, and headlong rushing joy. He was fabled to have given men the
grape and wine--but to the Initiated of the mystery and orgie there was
higher and more intoxicating wine than that of the grape--the wine of
wild inspiration, drawn from the keenest relish of beauty, of nature, of
knowledge, and of love. Drunk with this wine of the soul, the Moenad
and Bacchante rushed forth into lonely forests, amid rocks, by silent
lake, and streamlet lone, and cried in frantic joy, bewildered with
passion, to the Great Parent, or shouted in praise: 'Bacche, Evoe,
Bacche!'

'Then chaunted rose
The song of Bacchic women: all the band
Of shaggy Satyrs howled with mystic voice,
Preluding to the Phrygian minstrelsy
Of nightly orgies. Earth around them laughed;
The rocks reechoed; shouts of revelling joy
Shrilled from the Naiads, and the river nymphs
Sent echoes from their whirlpool-circled tides,
Flowing in silence; and beneath the rocks
Chanted Sicilian songs, like preludes sweet,
That through the warbling throats of Syren nymphs,
Most musical drop of honey from their tongues.'

NONNUS.

For all this wild joy, all this exquisite union of all the pleasures
known to man, whether in the mad embraces of passionate nymphs, in
draining wine, in tasting the fresh honeycomb, in wild dances under
green leaves, in feasting, or in song, Bacchus was the centre, and the
Cup the symbol. And this cup--the absolutely _feminine_ type--the _Iona_
which forms the nucleus of so great and so curious a family of words in
the Indo-Germanic and Shemitic languages--was fabled to have