gs, purifications, dances, and all that
the Mimetic and the other Arts could convey; add to this the various
coloured lights, and the fairy-like grandeur of the whole, we have
something that may be likened to the Transformation, and other
fairy-like scenes of English Pantomimes and Extravaganzas.

At the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus, the customary sacrifice to be
offered, because it fed on vines, was the goat. The vine, ivy, laurel,
asphodel, the dolphin, lynx, tiger, and ass were all sacred to Bacchus.
The acceptable sacrifice to Venus was a dove; Jupiter, a bull; an ox of
five years old, ram or boar pig to Neptune; and Diana, a stag. At the
inception of the Bacchanalian festivals in Greece, the tragic song of
the Goat, a sacred hymn was sung, and from which rude beginning sprang
the Tragedy and Comedy of Greece. The Greeks place every event as
happening in their country, and it is not surprising that they claim for
themselves the inception of Tragedy and Comedy, which they undoubtedly
were the originators of in Greece, but the religious festivals of
Dionysus, Osiris, and Bacchus, to which we are supposed to owe the
inception of Tragedy and Comedy, were known long before the Greeks knew
them. (Dionysus was the patron and protector of theatres.) "The purport
of the song was that Bacchus imparted his secret of the cultivation of
vines to a petty prince in Attica, named Icarius, who happened one day
to espy a goat brouzing upon his plantations, immediately seized, and
offered it up as a sacrifice to his divine benefactor; the peasants
assembled round their master, assisted in the ceremony, and expressed
their joy and gratitude in music, songs, dances, and Pantomime on the
occasion; the sacrifice grew into a festival, and the festival into an
annual solemnity, attended most probably every year with additional
circumstances, when the countrymen flocked together in crowds, and sang
in rustic strains the praises of their favourite deity."

Amongst the reported followers of these Bacchanalian festivals were
those fabulous race of grotesque sylvan beings, previously referred to,
known as the Satyrs. They were of a sturdy frame, in features they had
broad snub noses, and appeared in rough skins of animals with large
pointed ears, heavy knots on their foreheads, and a small tail. The
elder Satyrs were known as Sileni. The younger were more pleasing and
not so grotesque or repulsive in appearance as the elder Satyrs. To the