n the image, the mental
image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the
_birth_ of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a
child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original
form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in
Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called _Liknites_, "Him of the
Cradle."[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child
Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women.

But it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship
and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in
the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when,
Homer says, "youth is most gracious." This is the Dionysos that we know
in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the
Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty
like a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of
birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of
the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born.

This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the
word _Dithyrambos_ as meaning "He of the double door," their word
_thyra_ being the same as our _door_. They were quite mistaken;
_Dithyrambos_, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer,
and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it
shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos
was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his
father's thigh, like no man.

But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the
Tree-God, arises from a _dromenon_, a rite, what is the rite of second
birth from which it arises?

* * * * *

We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth
existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and
find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over
half the savage world.

With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his
first birth he comes into the world, by his second he is born into his
tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk;
at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society
of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult
fo