eus, the representative of the Hellenic masculine system, not to
venture undisguised among the maenads: "They'll murder you if they
divine your sex," and, knowing the secret of the male and female temper:

. . . . . . . . . First let
His mind be clouded by a slight disorder
For, conscious of his manhood he will never
Wear women's garb; insane, he's sure to wear it.

Pentheus, recognising in Dionysus the foe of a more spiritual conception
of the law, the _effeminate stranger_ who had driven the women to
madness, is torn to pieces by the frenzied bacchantes who fall upon him,
led by Agave, his mother, and sacrificed to the _bull-god_ Dionysus. At
the conclusion of this strange and profound epos, Agave recovers her
senses and curses the acts which she has committed in her madness ...
women submit to the new spiritual dispensation. We realise now why Hera,
the tutelary goddess of the newly introduced monogamous system, hated
Dionysus and attempted to kill him before he was born.

The subject treated in the beautiful myth of Orpheus is the
relationship between the primitive sexual impulse and its
individualisation on a single personality. For seven months Orpheus
bewails the death of Eurydice and regards all other living creatures
with indifference. This loyalty offends and infuriates the women of
Thracia, who divine in it a spirit inimical to a life in harmony with
nature. One night, during the celebration of the Dionysian rites, they
attack the poet--the representative of the higher Hellenic poetical
ideals--and rend him limb from limb. But as the head of the murdered
singer floats down the river, the pale lips still frame the beloved
name: Eurydice! It is certain that in those remote legendary days such
love did not exist. But the prophetic Greek spirit contrasted
promiscuous intercourse with love for a single woman.

So far we have encountered only a general, not an individualised, sexual
instinct and, in a limited measure at least, a struggling tendency
towards individualisation. But even so it was merely a question of
instinct, and did not bear the least resemblance to love as we
understand it to-day. _Love_ did not exist in the old world. I admit
that in the legend of Orpheus we are face to face with a sentiment which
is not unlike modern love, but, as far as I am aware, this is an
isolated case in Greek history, and may be regarded as a divination of
something new, just as we find un