at the phenomena of
vegetation spirits, totemism, etc., rose from primary elements, notably
from the belief in the existence of the soul after the death of the
body. Miss Harrison and those who agree with her hold that this view
involves an anthropological heresy. She deprecates the use of the word
"anthropomorphic," which she describes as clumsy and too narrow. She
prefers the expression [Greek: anthropophyes] used by Herodotus (i.
131), signifying "of human growth." She points out that the
anthropomorphism of the Greeks was preceded by theriomorphism and
phytomorphism, that the ritual was "prior to the God," that so long as
man was engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle for bare existence his sole
care was to obtain food, and that during this stage of his existence his
religious observances took almost exclusively the form of magical
inducements to the earth to renew that fertility which, by the
periodicity of the seasons, was at times temporarily suspended. It was
only at a later period, when the struggle for existence had become less
arduous, that the belief in the efficacy of magical rites decayed, and
that in matters of religion the primitive Greeks "shifted from a
nature-god to a human-nature god."

In her more recent work Miss Harrison reverts to this theme, and
subsequently carries us one step further. She maintains that the
original conception of the Greek drama was in no way spectacular. The
Athenians went to the theatre as we go to church. They did not attend to
see players act, but to take part in certain ritualistic things done
(_dromena_). The priests of Dionysos Eleuthereus, of Apollo
Daphnephoros, and of other deities attended in solemn state to assist in
the performance of the rites. With that keen sense of humour which
enlivens all her pages, and which made her speak in her _Themis_ of the
august father of gods and men as "an automatically explosive
thunderstorm," Miss Harrison says, "It is as though at His Majesty's the
front row of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the
Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned in the central stall." The actual
_dromenon_ performed was of the same nature as that which in more modern
times has induced villagers to make Jacks-in-the-Green and to dance
round maypoles. It was always connected with the recurrence of the
seasons and with the death and resurrection of vegetation. In fact, the
whole ritual clustered round the idea represented at a later period in