There is one central stage indeed in which Dionysus
does seem to appear. And he appears in a very significant way, to
conduct a Sacred Marriage. For, why do you suppose the dead are summoned
at all? What use to the tribe is the presence of all these dead
ancestors? They have come, I suspect, to be born again, to begin a new
life at the great Spring festival. For the new births of the tribe, the
new crops, the new kids, the new human beings, are of course really only
the old ones returned to earth.[17:2] The important thing is to get them
properly placated and purified, free from the contagion of ancient sin
or underworld anger. For nothing is so dangerous as the presence of what
I may call raw ghosts. The Anthesteria contained, like other feasts of
the kind, a +hieros gamos+, or Holy Marriage, between the wife of the
Basileus or Sacred King, and the imaginary god.[18:1] Whatever reality
there ever was in the ceremony has apparently by classical times faded
away. But the place where the god received his bride is curious. It was
called the Boukolion, or Bull's Shed. It was not originally the home of
an anthropomorphic god, but of a divine animal.

* * * * *

Thus in each of these great festivals we find that the Olympian gods
vanish away, and we are left with three things only: first, with an
atmosphere of religious dread; second, with a whole sequence of magical
ceremonies which, in two at least of the three cases,[18:2] produce a
kind of strange personal emanation of themselves, the Appeasements
producing Meilichios, the Charm-bearings Thesmophoros; and thirdly, with
a divine or sacred animal. In the Diasia we find the old superhuman
snake, who reappears so ubiquitously throughout Greece, the regular
symbol of the underworld powers, especially the hero or dead ancestor.
Why the snake was so chosen we can only surmise. He obviously lived
underground: his home was among the Chthonioi, the Earth-People. Also,
says the Scholiast to Aristophanes (_Plut._ 533), he was a type of new
birth because he throws off his old skin and renews himself. And if that
in itself is not enough to show his supernatural power, what normal
earthly being could send his enemies to death by one little pin-prick,
as some snakes can?

In the Thesmophoria we found sacred swine, and the reason given by the
ancients is no doubt the right one. The sow is sacred because of its
fertility, and possibly as practical people we