American Geographical Society
Dionysus Westward: Early Religion and the Economic Geography of Wine
Author(s): Dan Stanislawski
Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Oct., 1975), pp. 427-444
Published by: American Geographical Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/213743
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The
VOLUME 65
GeographicalReview
October,
1975
NUMBER 4
DIONYSUS WESTWARD: EARLY RELIGION AND THE
ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY OF WINE
DAN STANISLAWSKI
INE has been neglected in North America, receiving attention infrequently
and, at least until recently, considered a luxury product perhaps morally
suspect. Aside from occasional "human interest" notices in newspapers, or
statistical reports of comparative production figures, or references to it (incorrectly)
as a gout producer among nineteenth- and early twentieth-century leisure-class
Englishmen, it is usually treated only in publications that deal with gourmet delights.
One is given the impression that wine is desired by so few people that it is economically dispensable. Yet in Mediterranean Europe it is a staple, economically more important than are most industrial products given extended attention in textbooks. If the
production of wine were to be stopped, the Greek economy would suffer; the
economies of Italy and Portugal would collapse; and those of France and Spain would
be put in serious disarray.
This article is concerned with the early function of wine in Mediterranean commerce, with the growth of its importance, and with the mode of that growth. It is a
statement of the efficacy of one factor in commerical expansion and of the resulting
regional changes in economic geography.
An historical geographer must use the materials of many people and must go into
many fields of study, with all of the interest and danger that such trespass entails.
Although many of the following pages are concerned with materials not immediately
geographical, the structure of the argument can be compared to that of an arch, for
which the many voussoirs, that individually give no suggestion of a vault, must be put
in place before the final form is apparent. For example, consideration at large of the
subject of the Earth Mother cult is necessary because of its immemorial importance
and because Dionysus, who later became specifically associated with wine, was an
early congener. The long prehistoric existence and association of the Great Mother
cult and Dionysus have important bearing on the acceptance of the Dionysus cult and
wine, and on expanded commercial production. Because new cults must overcome
initial inertia or, more commonly, resistance, while those of ancient presence are not
arbitrarily rejected, it was important that Dionysus had been part of a cult of ancient
familiarity and thus did not have to surmount the instinctive fear of and opposition to
the unknown. But the cult met serious opposition in some places because, in its
growth, it became a threat to encysted orthodoxy and established institutions.
* DR. STANISLAWSKI,
professor emeritus of geography at the University of Arizona, Tucson,
is a research associate in geography at the University of California, Berkeley.
Copyright? 1975 by the AmericanGeographical
Societyof New rork
428
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
In its early phases the worship of Dionysus constituted a subcult, and its association with the vine might be compared to that of the olive with Athena and those of
various plants and animals with other gods and goddesses; but in the case of Dionysus
and wine another factor was of primary importance-that of the euphoria induced by
alcohol and the feeling that the worshiper was being transported into the presence of
the deity. Its votaries became so utterly involved that it was a complete religion to
them. In that fact lay the distinction between the Dionysus subcult and others: the association of the plant and the god was more than a pro forma sponsorship.
In its earliest stages, at least, dedication to Dionysus was subsidiary to a larger
devotion to a nature and fertility cult personified by the figure of the Great Earth
Mother Goddess; but later dedication was made explicitly to the male god. Although
based in religious or mystical devotion, it permeated the social and economic lives of
its adherents and affected the whole political economy of the lands where it became
firmly established. Dionysus was the tutelary deity of the vine, but not simply in gentle beneficence: he became the totem of a group that developed activist and explosive
fervor. This quality contributed to the transformation of the early economic
geography of the Mediterranean culture realm.
That Dionysus was no upstart deity is shown by the fact that for at least nine thousand years a Dionysian figure has been known in religion and legend, although in a
suffragan position for about two-thirds of that time. Only in the early centuries of the
first millennium B.C.did events conduce to the dramatic improvement of his status. At
that time the internal affairs of several nations were changed by such innovations as
new types of ships, transport of products previously not common to sea trade, and the
release of trade from the shackles of ancient localized systems. This economic and
social flux created further consequences, one of which was an enhancement of the
Dionysian cult. Furthermore, the conjunction of dynamic commercial growth with
the intensification of the cult symbiotically gave impetus to economic and territorial
expansion attested not only by history but also by effects still visible in the Mediterranean region.
Among the fields of study not necessarily or frequently associated with geography
that must be entered in order to understand the place of the vine and wine in the
economic context of the Mediterranean countries are those of viticulture and
oenology; but because the evidence is available in reverseorder, it is better to consider
the product before the plant.
A seductive beverage, wine is immediately attractive to many initiates and to
others after brief experimentation. The assumption can reasonably be made that
when contacts are made between wine dispensers and folk who have not known the
drink, most of the latter will quickly acquire a taste for it; and a persistent demandand trade-will begin, even in areas where another alcoholic beverage has been common. In support of that contention the best early exemplars are Egypt and
Mesopotamia, where beer was the basic drink but where wine was sought avidly by
all who could afford it.
EARLIEST WINE
The earliest realization of the delights of wine has not been dated, but one can
speak with some assurance of the fortuitous discovery of wine making: the event
could hardly be avoided for long. Grapes crushed, whether by accident or intent, even
in some mixture with other fruits, will ferment. The yeasts on the grape skins
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
429
guarantee that process. Archaeological discoveries of the residues of such crushing,
including a miscellany of fruits as well as wild grapes, indicate that the fermented potion was known in the Neolithic period.1 Of course, under such simple conditions the
fermented juice must be consumed within a relatively short time, for the stage in
which the juice is potable as wine is limited and in the normal course of fermentation
it becomes vinegar. But the difference between such casual, early use of grapes (and
other fruits) to make wine and sophisticated viticulture and wine making is enormous.
The latter involves recognition and selection of hermaphrodite vines, planting,
grafting, pruning, weeding, cultivation, and sealing of the vessels to impede fermentation; and finally it involves places of storage in which temperatures change only
slightly. Such a complexity of conditions and procedures could not be-or have not
been-accomplished by unskilled people. Viticulture is the product of highly informed agriculturists with sufficient social organization and capital to meet the
seasonal labor demands of the plant and to live through several years of its unproductivity before the first vintage. The same degree of sophistication is requisite to wine
making. Yet, surprisingly, such skills appeared in obscure ages of prehistory.
EARLY CONNECTIONS
BETWEEN WINE
AND RELIGION
One may postulate that the earliest discovery of the delights and dangers of wine
and the continuance of its use for some time had no more significance than would that
of any pleasant drink. A connection between the beverage and religion may not come
to mind immediately in a study of the spread of the wine vine, but early in such an inquiry its importance becomes obvious. Sooner or later-and sooner rather than later
in all probability-the association that has been made, of the release of one's inhibitions and the equation of that release with an approach to powers beyond one's comprehension,a sense of being near a deity, is assumed for the euphoriainduced by wine
drinking. In fact, the earliest written records of viticulture and wine making refer to
the use of the beverage in temples. Such are the records of late fourth millennium B.C.
Egypt, where First Dynasty kings, who were considered divine and who, theoretically,
were chief priests of the temple, had large wine cellars, with wines sealed in jars,
many of which were stamped with vintage date, place, and vintner. As a comment on
progress, the fact is striking that at the time of those early records virtually all of the
methods known to modern vine cultivators and wine makers were used. Few major
changes have been made in the succeeding five thousand years-and those, which
have taken place mostly in recent generations, are no more than the application of
rational understanding to practices learned in ancient ages through experimentation
and perceptive observation.
Yet Egypt could hardly have been the place of earliest cultivationof wine vines: the
absence of wild vines, its unpropitious environmental conditions, and archaeology all
militate against such an assumption. The plant, its cultivation, and wine making were
all introduced from abroad, apparently with all techniques of both viticulture and
wine making fully developed.
1Hans Helbaek: The Paleobotany of the Near East and Europe, in Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi
Kurdistan (edited by Robert J. Braidwood and Bruce Howe; Studiesin AncientOrientalCivilizationNo. 31,
Oriental Inst., Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, 1960),pp. 99-1i8, reference on p. 116;L. Levadoux: Les Populadesplantes,Ser. B, Vol. i, 1956,pp.
tions sauvages et cultivees de Vitis vinifera L., Annalesde l'amelioration
59-1 i8, reference on pp. 102-106; and Gustav Hegi: Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa (7 vols.; Hanser,
Munich, 1909-1936), Vol. 5, Pt. i, p. 369.
430
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
The vine and its fermented product may have been introduced into Egypt from
Mesopotamia (Fig. I)-as were so many other traits and techniques-in the fourth
millennium B.C. The cultivated vine was known in Mesopotamia at that time even
though the climate was not suited to successful cultivation and even though no wild
vines have been found in or near the region. Wine was imported from the north for
FIG. I
Mesopotamian kings and priests, and the association of wine with religion had
begun earlier than records were made. But that subject is too complex to be discussed
here, as is that of Syria, for which there is little objective evidence but which, because
of converging inferences, one is tempted to credit with being the area of earliest
cultivated grapes and earliest wine making. Unfortunately, the evidence is so sparse
and conflicting that it blurs rather than clarifies understanding.
THE EARTH MOTHER CULT
Another subject, also far from clear but for which there is substantive evidence
directly pertinent to the subject of this paper, is that of the Earth Mother cult, in
which there was a religious dedication to the productivity of nature and to the
idealized fertility figure. Much older than Greek legend and history and probably
older than wine itself, a Dionysian figure, the youthful companion of the Great
Mother, has been associated with the cult from the earliest times of which we have
record. To understand Dionysus one must inquire into the cult of the Great Earth
Mother Goddess: the investigation of the historical geography of viticulture has to include matters concerning ancient religious cults, a subject that at first thought may
seem alien to the original inquiry.
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
43I
Direct evidence for the existence of the cult of the Earth Mother has been found in
Neolithic sites of Anatolia, which can be given dates almost as early as any that are
known for agriculture. Her figure appears in a later seventh millennium B.C.shrine at
Catal Hiuyuik,thirty-two miles southeast of Konya in peninsular Turkey, and at
Hacilar in southwestern Anatolia, with an approximately similar date. With her appears the figure of a young male companion.2
The characters in the drama of the Earth Mother move with the cult lhto
Mesopotamia, Palestine, and possibly Egypt. They move across Anatolia and into the
Cyclades Islands of the Aegean Sea (Fig. 2);' but only in the third millennium B.C.do
we have evidence of a name for her. In Mesopotamia she was worshiped as Kubaba,
Khumbaba, and possibly Humbaba. Later in coastal Syria the name Alli-Kubaba appears.4
Only indirect and. inferential evidence connects wine with the goddess in the
third millennium B.C.;but such an inference is not strained. The transfer of the name
of the goddess, the earliest known grapes in Anatolia, and the advent of the Hurrians
-later known for their association with the wine trade-suggest it.5
THE ADVENTOF INDO-EUROPEANS
In the last half of the third millennium a new culture group, the Indo-Europeans,
came out of northeastern Europe and entered Anatolia.6 Although no convincing
claim has ever been adduced for original matriarchal religion among them or for the
origin of grape cultivation by them-and such cultivation was practiced in Anatolia
before their arrival-they were avid pupils. The fact that the Indo-European Hittites
were a patriarchal group did not impede their acceptance of the Earth Mother cult
which they met in the land they conquered. In the second millennium B.C. Kubaba
took the lead over all other feminine figures in their religion, and wine became a
fundamental beverage.7
2James Mellaart: Qatal Hiiyiuk (McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, 1967), pp. 180-184 and 201.
3 Richard D. Barnett: Ancient Oriental Influences on Archaic Greece, in The Aegean and the Near East
(edited by Saul Weinberg; J. J. Augustin, Locust Valley, N.Y., 1956), pp. 212-238; reference on p. 222.
4 For references to Kubaba, see C. Gadd: The Cities of Babylonia, The Cambridge
AncientHistory,3rd
J.
edit., Vol. 1, Pt. 2, 1971,pp. 93-144, reference on pp. 114-I15; and R. D. Barnett: Some Contacts between
Greek and Oriental Religions, in Elements orientaux dans la religion Grecque ancienne, Colloque de
Strasbourg, 22-24 Mai, 1958 (Centre d'Etudes superieures specialit6 d'histoire des religions, Strasbourg;
Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1960), pp. 143-153, reference on pp. 145 and 147. For references to
Ancient
Khumbaba, see R. D. Barnett: Phrygia and the Peoples of Anatolia in the Iron Age, The Cambridge
History,rev. edit., Vol. 2, Chap. 30, Fasc. 56, 1967, p. 21. For references to Humbaba, see Barnett, Some
Contacts, p. 149. For references to Alli-Kubaba, see Emmanuel Laroche: Koubaba, deesse anatolienne, et
le probleme des origines de Cybele, in Elements orientaux, pp. 113-128, reference on p. 116.
5 Personal conversation with Seton Lloyd, London,
1968.According to Lloyd, the earliest known grape
seeds from the site of Beycesultan can be dated at 2500 B.C.See G. Contenau: La civilisation des Hittites et
des Mitanniens (Payot, Paris, 1934), p. 86; James B. Pritchard: Gibeon, Where the Sun Stood Still
(Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, N.J., 1962), p. 30; and idem,Winery, Defenses, and Soundings at Gibeon
(University Museum, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Mus. Monograph, 1964), pp. v, i, and 27.
6James Mellaart: Early Cultures of the South Anatolian Plateau, AnatolianStudies,Vol. 13, 1963, pp.
199-236, references on pp. 210 and 236; R. A. Crossland: Immigrants From the North, The Cambridge
AncientHistory, 3rd edit., Vol. 1, Pt. 2, 1971, pp. 824-876, reference on pp. 831-832; Seton Lloyd and
James Mellaart: An Early Bronze Age Shrine at Beycesultan, AnatolianStudies,Vol. 7, 1957, pp. 27-36,
reference on p. 33; and U. Bahadir Alkim: Anatolia I (World Publishing Co., Cleveland and New
York, 1968), pp. 180-181.
7 Albrecht Goetze: Kleinasien (C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich,
1957), pp. 79 and I18;
idem,Hittite Rituals, Incantations and Description of Festivals, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts (edited by
432
THE GEOGRAPHICALREVIEW
FIG. 2
In that millennium the Earth Mother became the chief deity of almost every part
of Anatolia; but in some areas her name was altered: to Kubil by the Phrygians, latearriving Indo-Europeans who received knowledge of the cult from Hittites and among
whom, in characteristic fashion, the great goddess was accompanied by her young
male companion.8 The name appears in western Anatolia among the Lydians as
Kybebe or Kybele. At Ephesus, on the Aegean shore, not later than the tenth century
B.C., colonizing Greeks found Kybele being worshiped.9 It was this latter form of the
name that was adopted by Greeks. The facts regarding the name and its transmutations are not merely a matter of academic linguistics; they have bearing on events that
occurred westward along the Mediterranean Sea.
THE EARTH MOTHER, DIONYSUS, AND WINE ON CRETE
The tenth century B.C.evidence for the presence of the Earth Mother at Ephesus is
actually latter-day in the history of the deity. I refer to it for reasons of geography, not
to indicate the earliest date of the cult in the Aegean area. Contact between the
James B. Pritchard; Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, N.J., 1950), pp. 346-361, reference on pp. 358-360;
idem, The Hittite Laws, in ibid., pp. 188-197, reference on pp. 194-196; and O. R. Gurney: The Hittites
(Penguin Books Ltd., Melbourne, London, and Baltimore, 1952), p. 81.
8 Barnett,
Phrygia and the Peoples of Anatolia [see footnote 4 above], p. 21.
9 Ekrem Akurgal: Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey (Mobil Oil Tfirk, Istanbul, 1949),p. 142.
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
433
western shores of Anatolia and the Aegean Islands, including Crete, was made in
much earlier time: a considerable list of items, including the snake, the double ax, the
bull, and the "horns of consecration," all associated with the Great Earth Mother
Goddess, have been found in Cretan levels dated to the middle of the third millennium B.C.10 Other evidence for the late centuries of the third millennium B.C. suggests
the use of wine for libations at tombs in southern Crete."
Important and interesting as they may be, evidences of third millennium Cretan
affairs are slight compared to those that cast light on the period after 2000 B.C. It is
clear that early in the second millennium, religion deifying nature was given more
than cursory attention: people devoted themselves to it not only in festivals but also
in daily attitudes toward the land and toward the creative forces of nature. The goddess of fertility was the chief deity; and (Dionysus, as) a son-consort was an important though subsidiary figure in the cult. Ceremonies often involved dancing in a
state of exstasy and abandonment,'2to which wine contributed. Like so many peoples
since-and before-Cretans believed that wine was an aid to religious experience.
Although evidence is not incontestable that there was a god of wine in Minoan and
Mycenaean Crete, it would be surprising if there were not. The denial of a connection between Dionysus and wine in those times rests on the argumentumex silentio,and
it is not satisfactory: the name of Dionysus appears on the Linear B tablets; he was an
associate of the Earth Mother; wine was important in the ceremonies of Minoan
Crete; and he is later known as the wine god. It seems that one must struggle to
believe that he was not a wine god at least as early as second millennium Crete.
If Dionysus was a wine god in early second millennium Crete, the questions arise
as to whether or not he was introduced as such into the island, and from where. Wild
vines are not known on Crete. They could have been introduced from Anatolia, but a
more likely source is Palestine. Vases, presumably containers for Syrian wine from the
ancient Levantine port of Ugarit, were later imported in considerable numbers by
Cretans and carried in Cretan ships as part of their maritime trade. That trade was a
legacy received from earlier Aegean traders, Lemnians and Cycladians; but differing
from either of those ancient sailing traders, the Minoan ships were more than
"tramps" that picked up cargo where they found it and delivered it where they found
markets. Minoans established trading bases on foreign shores: one was at Ugarit;13
and the Minoan palace at Zakro on the eastern coast of Crete was built to serve the
trade, apparently initiated by Minoans, with Asia and Egypt. That Zakro was chosen
for trade is obvious from its usefulness as a harbor in a surrounding area of almost no
productive importance.
Minoans were succeeded in influence and in trade by the Greek Mycenaeans, who
broadened the area of contacts and established bases from the Levant to the central
10Keith
Branigan: The Foundations of Palatial Crete, A Survey of Crete in the Early Bronze Age
(Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1970), pp. Io8, og09,and 112.
n Keith
Branigan: The Tombs of Mesara (Duckworth, London, 1970),p. 93; and Doro Levi: The Recent Excavations at Phaistos, Studiesin Mediterranean
Vol. i i, 1964,pp. 3-14, reference on p. 7.
Archaeology,
Levi's dates are not, however, generally accepted. For more widely accepted dates see Nicolas Platon: Crete
(World Publishing Co., Cleveland and New York, 1966),calendar in folder of chronologies. His dates for
the "pre-palace period" run from 2600 B.C. to 2000 B.C.
12 Platon, op. cit. [see footnote'i i above], pp.
47 and 182-184;Sinclair Hood: The Minoans (Praeger, New
York and Washington, 1971), p. 131;and T. B. L. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer (Methuen, London,
1964), p. 62.
13William Culican: The First Merchant Venturers (Thames and Hudson, London, 1966), p.
47; and
Claude F. A. Schaeffer: Ugaritica (4 vols.; P. Geuthner, Paris, 1939-1962), Vol. 3, p. 54.
434
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
Mediterranean. The Mycenaeans were heirs not only to Minoan trade but also to Minoan cult attitudes, among which was the enthusiasm for ecstatic dances.'4
DIONYSUS ON MAINLAND GREECE
Since the Minoans of Crete had made contacts with mainland Greece, the incipient cult of Dionysus as god of wine may have entered mainland Greece in the middle of the second millennium B.c.15 Or the introduction could have been made by
Mycenaeans. The antiquity of Dionysian rites in Boeotia, especially at Thebes, the
city that later Greeks thought to be the first to receive them,16must have been considerable. Legend has it that in Thebes Zeus married the Earth Goddess, there called
Semele, but whom the Greeks converted into the daughter of Theban King Kadmos.17
An offspring of that union was Dionysus. It would seem probable that the ecstatic
cult of Dionysus, strong in the Archaic Age of Greece, was a revival of old Cretan
religious ideas and rites.18
Whatever the earliest dates for the Dionysian cult and wherever its place of export,
it was of subsidiary importance during the Bronze Age and during at least part of the
Dark Age that followed.
MYCENAEAN
BREAKDOWN
AND GROWTH
OF THE DIONYSIAN
CULT
Bronze Age conditions, apparently prosperous, were rudely changed when the
Mycenaean Empire was ravished and shattered during the twelfth century B.C.; but
were strains in its
can see now, in hindsight-there
before that cataclysm-we
economic and social order: yellowing days presaging debility. Common lands that
had been available to ordinary people were being appropriated by large landowners
for the cultivation of specialized commercial crops, especially the vine, which was
spread even to the rocky slopes. During the Dark Age the old, extended family was
largely eliminated or made ineffective by the growth of urbanism, a situation in which
values increasingly became those of commerce; debt grew, as did the number of
foreclosures. These events conduced to the growth of capital for a small class of
prosperous owners and to specialized agriculture for the market. Landlessness
became the condition of the mass of the population, while an aristocracy burgeoned.
By the end of the Dark Age subsistence agriculture, once the universal profession,
had become specialized; and the vine and the olive, products exported earlier (but not
intensively and not from monocultural production) had become sufficiently important
by the sixth century to be recorded as a special category.19 Clearly there had been a
change from subsistence, familial, conservative, and stable conditions to early mercantilism, trade, and the shipment of bulk products of agriculture. A new public psychology emerged: a combination of the ancient Cretan agricultural bent with Greek
patriarchal, buccaneer values. The Heroic Greeks, whom the spear never disgraced
but who were willing to add to their material possessions by trade, were given a new
orientation. Trade, professedly contemptible to Odysseus, became primary, and
14 Martin P. Nilsson: The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion (2nd, rev.
edit.; C. W. K. Gleerup, Lund, 1968), pp. 277, 503, and 574-583.
"5Gaetano de Sanctis: Storia dei Greci dalle origini alla fine del secolo V (2nd edit.; 2 vols.; La Nuova
Italia, Florence, 1954), Vol. i, p. 296.
16W. K. C. Guthrie: The Greeks and Their Gods (Beacon Press, Boston, 1966), pp.
153-154.
17
Ibid.; and Herbert J. Rose: Dionysiaca, AberystwythStudies, Vol. 4, Univ. College of Wales,
Aberystwyth,1922, pp. 19-29.
8 Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion [see footnote 14 above], p. 575.
'9 Gustav Glotz: Ancient Greece at Work (A. A. Knopf, New York, 1926), p. 129.
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
435
raiding was made secondary to amicable contacts conducing to profitable exchange,
including the products of commercial agriculture. The best people were so engaged;
and the priests of Apollo encouraged colonization for that specific purpose. But the
mass of people lost the ancient solidarity and support of the family on its own land
and found the unfamiliar burden of landless individual responsibility insupportable.
It is not surprising that the destruction of the Mycenaean Empire altered attitudes
of ordinary people toward Mycenaean religion: the respect for the Uranian gods of
the Greeks was diminished because of their failure in material affairs (their primary
justification was material); and a romantic, but in many respects reasonable, tradition of former days of peace and well-being was recalled. The ancient cults of the
earth, of fertility, of plenty, gained strength again as dispossessed migrants spread
through the Aegean area.
But not all migrations were made up of the dispossessed; new invaders arrived. A
latter-day contingent of Indo-Europeans came from the north in the thirteenth century B.C.: Phrygians crossed from Europe into Anatolia following the spoor of the
earlier Indo-European Hittites. Although at first the Phrygians were dominantly
pastoral, by the eighth century B.C. they had become sophisticated by association
with Anatolian peoples. Remnants of Hittite culture and its cult associations appeared in their myth and religion.20Sabazius, an Anatolian analogue of Dionysus,
was, according to legend in Phrygian territory, the son of the Earth Goddess; and his
annual vicissitudes of death and rebirth were represented in the rites of his
worshipers, who ceremonially bewailed his anguish and death and rejoiced in his
rebirth.
Some of the Earth Mother-Dionysus-Sabazius votaries found their way into Lydia
of western Anatolia, where the god of wine appeared under the name Bacchus.
"Thence am I come, my country Lydia," said the wine god in Euripides' play.
In certain places and at certain times the ambivalence in practice of his cult was
terrifying, running a gamut from benevolence to violence and, at times, to temporary
madness.21Commonly, dances were a part of the worship, a tarantism provoked by
contagious religious fervor. This frenzied, orgiastic savagery has been attributed to
Anatolia, particularly to Phrygians and Lydians, from whom, apparently, such traits
were acquired by Greeks.
In Thrace, where great excesses were performed in the ceremonies-Thracians
having appropriated traits from both Lydian Bacchus and Phrygian Sabazius-a
great fervor grew, at least as early as the ninth century B.C. The newly designed cult
moved down both sides of the Aegean Sea, especially to Lesbos on the east;22and
westward from Thrace the cult spread into Macedonia and down the western side of
the Aegean into Boeotia, where it probably met the earlier Cretan version. The cult
was known in Athens in that century. Finally it spread throughout all of Greece and
as a refluence into Crete, where (in considerably changed form) it met its early
precursor.23Even greater vigor and expansive energy were given the cult in the succeeding century.24
20
21
I51.
Barnett, Ancient Oriental Influences [see footnote 3 above], p. 221.
Walter F. Otto: Dionysus, Myth and Cult (Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, 1965), pp. 103-105and
22
There, its reflux may have preceded the advent of Greek gods (see Denys Page: Sappho and Alchaeus
[Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1955], pp. 168-169).
23
Guthrie, Greeks and Their Gods [see footnote i6 above], pp. 155-156.
24 de
Sanctis, op. cit. [see footnote 15 above], Vol. i, p. 300.
436
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
But in Greece itself, cult practices had not been forgotten in the unlettered days:
they were present at the end of the Dark Age, with many characteristics obviously inherited from Crete26but with their spirit, intensity, and orientation changed in the intervening four centuries. Cults were more apt to be dedicated to the divine child,
Dionysus, than to the Great Earth Goddess, and they had acquired a greater phallic
emphasis as well as a greater violence. Association with the sexually potent bull, with
the goat and the donkey of similar repute, and with the supposedly aphrodisiac wild
fig tree had become important.26
EPIPHANY OF DIONYSUS AS AN INDEPENDENT DEITY
During the Dark Age, when the transformation in cult practices took place,
Dionysus-Bacchus-Sabazius came of age as a god in his own right, as a clearly
characterized deity with an assemblage of his own votaries. And what a raffish,
polymorphous group of rioters they were: maenads, satyrs, nymphs, and others. The
ecstatic, even orgiastic, yet not savage, Cretan cult of fertility was transformed into a
wild and bloody form of sacramental communion. Feverish dances, disordered acts,
shouts and other noises were typical of the ceremonies; and the more they were accentuated the more the participant felt the presence of the god who granted
beatitude.27
What had been a fervid but not savage celebration of the cult of the Earth Mother
in Crete became violent in its recrudesence; and in considerable part it was a rebellion
against a growing imposition of the cold impersonal Apollonian order that was part of
the class structure of the new aristocratic society. It was a rebellion of people who
lived in the memory and traditions of the Great Mother cult with its reverence for
nature and its accessibility to individuals. Understandably, many of the oppressed Attic women joined the cult when the opportunity came.
Only with his advent as an independent god-that of wine-did Dionysus assume
a salient place in religion. This event may have been adumbrated in early second millennium B.C.Crete, but only in the first millennium B.C.did it become clear.
From early in that millennium onward his stature and independence grew, with the
most rapid growth beginning in the eighth century, the century that was, not coincidentally, the period of earliest important Greek colonization-a movement largely
based on commercial agriculture. From that century onward Dionysian cults and
wine were symbiotic.
The reasons for the appeal of the Dionysian cult to its votaries are not difficult to
discern: during the Dark Age, when Greeks were forced to establish new values for
their disparate regional societies because ancient organizations had been shattered,
the memories of earlier regional cultural values determined the selection of
innovations-or atavisms. Attic Greeks reverted to a hierachical organization of
society reminiscent of that of their Ionian ancestors.28An Asiatic god, Apollo, was
25
Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion [see footnote 14 above]; and idem,The Mycenaean Origin of
Greek Mythology (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1932).
26
Otto, op. cit. [see footnote 21 above], pp. 164-165, 167, and 170.
27 Goffredo Bendinelli: La vite e il vino nei monumenti antichi in
Italia, in Storia della vite e del vino in
Italia (edited by Arturo Marescalchi and Giovanni Dalmasso; 3 vols.; E. Gualdoni, Milan, 1931-1937),Vol.
i, pp. 23-133; reference on p. 56.
28 Dan Stanislawski: Culture Zones of the Ancient
Assn. of PacificCoastGeogrs.,
Aegean Area, Yearbook
Vol. 35, 1973, pp. 7-25; reference on pp. 22-25.
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
437
added to their pantheon of Uranian deities. This choice was made either because he
was the type of figure that appealed to their sense of tight, clear-cut organization or
because they saw in him one who could be converted, as were many other Asiatic
deities, into a god suited to their tastes. It is commonly said that he was the
most Greek of all gods, a statement that may be true for the articulate Athenians but
is not necessarily so for others.
Apollo moved only among the best people. He promised order and security. If his
cult existed today, and if this god were considered-as a Greek Uranian god was considered-a larger-than-life immortal man, he might well be pictured in the attire of a
Boston executive: in a neat gray suit, a Brooks Brothers shirt, buttoned down, of
course, and a sincere tie. He was an organization man, with all the warmth of a State
Street banker.
The mass of the people, the disinherited, were hardly enticed by Apollo's proposition that acceptance of their condition of affairs was desirable: they sought relief from
intolerable burdens, and surcease was offered to them by Dionysus, a god of the people, all of the people without distinction as to birth or class.29"Praise him for granting
to high and low the pleasures of wine," wrote Euripides. He offered freedom and joy,
Hesiod said, and a similar expression appears in a Homeric hym. At all levels of
society he was the liberator. He represented the individual as opposed to organization; he encouraged the poet and the dreamer. Nietzsche considered him the symbol
of genius, the force that encourages an individual in his personal response to the
world, as opposed to Apollo's order of rule, regulation, and complacent conformity within the existing order of affairs.30The difference between the gods is
reflected in a work ascribed to Aristotle in which there is a statement to the effect that
the prophets belonging to a Thracian oracle of Dionysus prophesied after they had
imbibed a good deal of wine; while the Apollonian seers in Claros gained their
inspiration by drinking holy water.31
OPPOSITION
TO THE DIONYSIAN
ULTIMATE
ACCEPTANCE
CULT AND ITS
IN GREECE
The acceptance of the cult by the ordinary people is not difficult to understand;
but at no time is pronounced change in any social order effected without opposition. The passage of the Dionysian cult into and throughout Greece was not uneventful.32If the fable of Lycurgus, king of Thrace, is based on fact-and one cannot
dismiss the historicity of Greek fable casually-blunt opposition was dangerous.
Lycurgus attempted to forbid the cult and because of his opposition, was killed
horribly.33Authorities everywhere, following typical conservative, bureaucratic attitudes and prodded by the upper classes, tried to suppress the cult.34 But the new
cult proved to be indomitable. Finally the necessity of its acceptance was made clear
by the increasing demands of the people and by the futility and danger of obdurate
resistance. But it was not the conservative, traditional authorities who recognized
op. cit. [see footnote 27 above], Vol. I, p. 56.
Rose Pfeffer: Nietzsche: Disciple of Dionysus (Bucknell Univ. Press, Lewisburg, Pa., 1972),pp. 32-33,
36, and 40-41.
31Otto, op. cit. [see footnote 21 above], pp.
144-145.
32
Guthrie, Greeks and Their Gods [see footnote16 above], p.I6o.
33 Giovanni Dalmasso: Dal mito de Dioniso al
Italiana
disagio odierno dei viticoltori, Atti dell'Accademia
della Vitee del Vino (Siena), Vol. 2, Pt. 2, 1950.
34 Bendinelli, op. cit. [see footnote 27 above], p.
56.
29 Bendinelli,
30
438
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
the necessity; it was sixth-century opportunists, the tyrants, men such as Pisistratus
in Athens, who saw that the reforms of Solon had failed to satisfy the needs of
the countryfolk. Pisistratus spoke eloquently of the needs of ordinary people, of
small farmers, and he gained popular support. No doubt Pisistratus was a
demogogue, but he was a shrewd one. He recognized the problems of the pauperized
countryside and the value of what later, under the Romans, was seen to be the pacifying effect of circuses on the people. He is to be credited with contributing to the
development of the Dionysian song-dance-mime performance and to its evolution into
classical drama. Being an Athenian, he organized the cult and in doing so subdued its
orgiastic traits and reduced its Dionysian flavor; but a form emerged that was acceptable in somewhat emasculated character to the Dionysians and not unacceptable
to Athenians.
Although the Dionysian cult was important long before its acceptance was forced
on the state, it was only with official sanction that public representations appeared.
One scholar's surprise that there were no representations of Dionysus on Attic
black-figured pottery until the early sixth century35 is itself surprising. To expect such an appearance would be comparable to expecting the appearance of a book
by Solzhenitsyn on the bookstands of Moscow. Not until the early sixth century was
official opposition to the cult overcome. Then, accepted into the state religion, it was
made sanitary for public artistic use. Depictions of Dionysus, Ariadne, maenads,
satyrs, wineskins, vessels, nymphs, flute players (playing an instrument that, supposedly, excited the emotions) became well known.36 It was in that period of time that
Anacreon, sponsored by another tyrant, the son of Pisistratus, could utter his charming, blasphemus waggery: "Nor could I think, unblest by wine, Divinity itself
divine. "37
WINE
IN THE WEST
Wine was brought to southern Italy and Sicily probably by men from Crete,
perhaps by pre-Greek Minoans; but it is likely that the effective introduction was
made later, by the Greek Mycenaeans. Evidence of their presence on the Aeolian
Islands, off northeastern Sicily, is abundant (Fig. 3). They were experienced wine carriers, and either the men from Crete or their Aeolian customers consumed large
amounts of wine: vessels for it comprised about half of the pottery found at one site.38
By the beginning of the fourteenth century B.C. active trade between east coast
Sicily and the Aegean is attested by archaeology. Even more active trade was handled
at the Mycenaean site of Scoglio del Tonno, founded near the site of present Taranto
by about 1400 B.C.,39 a way station for Mycenaean traders coursing the Adriatic Sea.
During its centuries of activity Mycenaean trade with the west was a profitable practice; but by the middle of the twelfth century the Mycenaean Empire was shattered
and its trade routes disrupted. Yet contact between Greece and Italy was not
35J. D. Beazley: The Development of Attic Black-Figure (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley; and
Cambridge Univ. Press, London; 1951), p. 32.
36
Ibid., pp. 26-32,
56-57, 59, 6o, 63, and 68.
37Odes of Anacreon50-52,
(translated by Thomas Moore; 7th edit.; 2 vols.; J. Carpenter, London, 18o6),Ode
LXXIX, Vol. 2, p. 137.
38 Lord William Taylour: Mycenaean Pottery in Italy (Occas.Publs. Cambridge
Univ. Mus. of Archaeology
and EthnologyNo. 5; Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, England, 1958), p. 50.
39 Ibid., pp.
132-133;and David Trump: Central and Southern Italy before Rome (Thames and Hudson,
London, 1966), pp. 122-127.
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
439
FIG. 3
eliminated. Vagrant Greek sailors and/or Phoenicians made occasional trips to
southern Italy and to Sicily throughout the Dark Age.40
Numerous bards before Homer's time must have sung of the Mycenaean exploits
in the west and must have given information regarding the areas to which the Heroes
had sailed. Reference to a Sicula slave may be interpolation in the Odyssey, and it
may not be evidence for Mycenaean times, but it does represent knowledge of the
40Taylour, Mycenaean Pottery [see footnote
38 above], p. 136; Luigi Bernab6 Brea: Sicily before the
Greeks (Frederick A. Praeger, New York and Washington, 1966),pp. 150and 152;and Sabatino Moscati:
The World of the Phoenicians (Frederick A. Praeger, New York and Washington, 1969), pp. 92-99.
440
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
Siculi and of their western location. Although there is dispute about Sicily being the
home of Polyphemus, the Cyclops, there are several reasons for believing such a
claim; and there is no such convincing argument to locate his home elsewhere.
Odysseus dismissed the vines of Polyphemus as those of people who knew no
agriculture; but he also stated that wheat and barley grew wild there. Because neither
wheat, nor barley, nor the vine originally grew wild in Sicily, they must have been introduced by early farmers from abroad. The fact that Polyphemus's vines were not
cultivated is not surprising. Viticulture is not taken up readily by peoples without
training. As the Mycenaean Greeks were in the business of selling wine, not of
teaching its cultivation, instruction of the Siculi in its techniques would not have been
suited to their purposes. With the withdrawal of the viticultural Greeks, neglect of
plants would allow once-cultivated vines to become feral and revert to their vagrant
nature. If one accepts Sicily as the place of Cyclops, the "wild" grapes could have
been escapes from earlier cultivation-which, if true, would suggest that at least some
vines were planted there but that the local inhabitants were never given training in
viticulture.
THE EARTH MOTHER CULT IN SICILY AND IN SOUTHERN ITALY
The search for Dionysus in the central Mediterranean region must begin, as did
the inquiry into eastern origins, with the cult of the Mother Goddess. The earliest
evidence now available comes from the island of Malta, where, for the period of the
early third millennium B.C., abundant archaeological information proves that the
goddess was being worshiped as the chief deity. From there one can transfer the
evidence to Sicily. Unmistakable similarities between the Maltese goddess and the
goddess Hybla show the latter to be a Sicilian analogue.41Pre-Indo-European Hybla
represents an analogue, not only of the Maltese deity but also of the goddess known in
pre-Indo-European Greece and Anatolia;42and it is no coincidence that the Earth
Goddess of Sicily was called Hybla, a name correlative with Anatolian Kybele.
Contact between Aegean islands and southern Italy was so frequent that finding
traces of the Earth Mother cult in the west should not be surprising. In both Calabria
and Sicily the large number of sanctuaries dedicated to female deities contrasts with
the paucity of those dedicated to the Olympians.43Most such sanctuaries were built
after colonizing Greeks had arrived. They testify to the continuing devotion of the
local population to an ancient tradition, the cult of the Earth Mother.
An ancient route across present-day Calabria connected the Gulf of Taranto and
the Tyrrhenian Sea. On that route, at S. Agata, a bronze double ax, the most important symbol of the Great Earth Mother cult in Crete, has been found.44Calabria was
41Ginther Zuntz: Persephone (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971), pp. 54, 6o, 64, and 67. Thirdmillennium evidence for the goddess on the island of Malta is clear, but her presence can probably be attributed to the fourth or even the fifth millennium B.C. See J. D. Evans: Malta (Frederick A. Praeger, New
York, 1959), pp. 138-140 (but his dates must be calibrated, according to the following studies: Colin
Renfrew: Before Civilization, The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe [Alfred A. Knopf, New
York, 1973],pp. 147-I55; and idem,Malta and the Calibrated Radiocarbon Chronology, Antiquity,Vol. 46,
1972, pp. 141-144, reference on p. 144).
42 Zuntz, op. cit. [see footnote 41 above], p. 69; and W. K. C. Guthrie: The Religion and Mythology of
AncientHistory,rev. edit., Vol. 2, Chap. 40, Fasc. 2, 1964,pp. 1-55, reference on p.
the Greeks, TheCambridge
27.
43 Zuntz, op. cit. [see footnote 41 above], p. io8.
"4On the double ax, see Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion [see footnote 14above], pp. 183,218, 221,
226, and 229; and Branigan, Foundations of Palatial Crete [see footnote io above], p. o18. For the discovery
at S. Agata, see T. J. Dunbabin: The Western Greeks (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1948), p. 204.
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
441
known in prehistoric times as Oenotria, that is, the land of staked vines. It is significant that the staked vine, a form ultimately used for commercial production, was introduced into the west probably by the middle of the second millennium B.C.45and
was sufficiently important to give its name to this considerable territory. The presence
of the Earth Mother cult in Malta, Oenotria, and Sicily implies that her young male
companion, Dionysus, was with her.
Important Greek colonization in the west began in the eighth century B.C. A
threshold station, to be used in trade with mainland Italy, was established before the
middle of the century on the Island of Ischia, offshore from present-day Naples.46
Another was founded at about the midpoint in the century on the facing mainland at
the site that later Greeks called Kyme.47 (Naples, named Neapolis-that is, new
town-was new compared to Kyme.) From Kyme other colonies were founded to the
south on the mainland and on Sicily. Early concepts of religion were changed in both
areas by Greeks of the colonizing period; characters were added to the pantheon, and
in some cases, the function of the god was changed. It would seem at first thought that
alterations of that nature would have created confusion; but apparently they did not.
Such changes were not surprising either to the hellenized Italians and Sicilians or to
the colonizing Greeks. The latter were not obdurately insistent that their gods and the
form of them be accepted by other culture groups. Although the official cult established by the Greeks in Sicily was Olympian, the form and names werejust appliques
on the old cloth of local religion: the popular religion almost everywhere was
Hyblaic.48In Sicily, Persephone, originally a death figure, was blended with Kore, the
Corn Maiden, a fertility figure and daughter of Hybla.49 The practical Greeks
recognized that metabolism involved both katabolism and anabolism, that death as
well as growth was a part of life. Or, perhaps, the merger was made for immediate,
practical purposes, which does not alter the fact that the attitude was philosophically
reasonable and was an inheritance from their earlier religious experience.
DIONYSUS IN SICILY
Since darkness is the nature of virtually all knowledge of earliest Greek exploits, it
is not surprising that direct evidence of the cult of Dionysus on Sicily and southern
Italy comes from a relatively late date. Perhaps the earliest fact by which one might
place Dionysus in the west is the application of the name Oenotria to present-day
Calabria; but Nilsson's statement that in the area of Magna Graecia the Dionysian
religion had old roots and was very popular can be accepted comfortably.50
One scholar has said that the emphasis on a fertility goddess on Sicily was a shift
46Giovanni Dalmasso: I primordi della coltura della vite e della produzione del vino in Italia, Atti
dell'Accademia
di Agricoltura,Scienzee Letteredi Verona,Ser. V, Vol. i3, 1935,pp. 1i 1-127, reference on p. I18;
and Emilio Sereni: Per la storia delle piui antiche tecniche della nomenclatura della vite e del vino in
Italia, Atti e memoriedell'AccademiaToscana de Scienze e Lettere "La Colombaria,"Vol. 24, 1964, pp.
73-204, reference on pp. 119-121 and 129.
46 Trump, op. cit. [see footnote 39 above], p. 126; Taylour, Mycenaean Pottery [see footnote 38
above],
pp. 8-9; and idem, The Mycenaeans (Thames & Hudson, London, 1964), p. 152.
47Raymond V. Schoder: Ancient Cumae, ScientificAmerican,Vol. 209, No. 6, 1963,pp. 108-121; reference
on p. Io9.
48 Dunbabin, op. cit. [see footnote
44 above], pp. 176-177.
49Zuntz, op. cit. [see footnote
41 above], pp. 82, 149-150, and 157.
5oMartin P. Nilsson: The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age (C. W. K. Gleerup,
Lund, 1957), p. 12.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
442
REVIEW
in Greek religious policy,56 Zeus being neglected in favor of the female deity of fertility. But is that surprising? It was only a matter of degree and easily possible for the
eclectic, ever-practical Greeks in the period of colonization. They recognized the importance of a nature deity in an area already devoted to her and from which the
products of nature were essential both to Greek colonization and to mainland Greek
economy. Settlers had to be fed, and the importation of food had become essential to
the mother country.52The opportunity for agriculture on available lands was quickly
grasped by colonizers from Dorian areas, where agriculture had been honored from
time out of mind: Crete, Rhodes, Corinth;53and among the first group of settlers in
Sicily in the eighth century B.C. must have been many from Naxos island of the
Cyclades group, where Ariadne, a Cretan fertility goddess, was widely venerated. She
was, according to legend, either killed by Artemis because of information given by
Dionysus or she became the wife of Dionysus after being deserted by Theseus. The
contrasting myths suggest that two cults were in opposition to each other; either the
cult of Ariadne was eliminated or, probably, in view of Greek syncretism, they were
united.54
The first colony-town established on Sicily in the eighth century B.C.by Greeks
was named Naxos. The name suggests that settlers from the Cycladic island made up
the strongest contingent among the settlers; and they would have brought with them
their cult practices, in which Dionysus was the most important figure.55Understandable, then, is the fact that Naxos, one of the earliest of Greek colonies to strike coins,
put a depiction of Dionysus on one side and grapes and grape leaves on the other.56
The likeness of the wine god on their first coins asserted the continuance of cult devotion that had come with settlers from the Cyclades. Perhaps such an historical fact inspired the design on the famous cup of the mid-sixth-century potter and vase painter,
Exekias, which pictures Dionysus sailing in a boat with a grapevine growing up the
mast. The god was depicted as one who carried abroad not only his cult but also the
plant and product associated with it.
THE
EFFECT OF THE CULT OF DIONYSUS
ON THE GROWTH
OF COMMERCE
In Greek religion, which is a mixture of patriarchal and matriarchal traits,
Dionysus served as an effective intermediary: a male and thus satisfactory to the early
Greeks whose gods were clear-cut figures with strong, aggressive,57practical, activist
personalities; and he was at home in the matriarchal Great Mother cult, with which
he had had millenary association. By reason of that association he was acceptable to
the mass of people on the land who clung to their reverence for the earth, for fertility,
growth, death, the underworld, and life after death. He bridged the gap between the
earth gods and the sky gods, between the gods (or goddesses) concerned with fertility,
including that of the vine, of which he became the tutelary deity and commercial
sponsor, and the gods of the sanguinely aggressive lonians as well as those of the
51M. I. Finley: A History of Sicily (Chatto and Windus, London, 1968), p. 27.
52
Dunbabin, op. cit. [see footnote 44 above], p. 214; and Carl Roebuck: Ionian Trade and Colonization
(Archaeological Inst. of America, New York, 1949), p. 41.
53 Finley, op. cit. [see footnote 51 above], p. 33. Athenians took no part in colonization.
54 Nilsson, Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology [see footnote 25 above], p. 172.
55 Herbert A. Cahn: Die MfunzenDer Sizilischen Stadt Naxos (Berkhauser, Basel, 1944), p. 86, fn. 15.
56 Ibid.,
example VI, fn. i6.
57 Guthrie, Religion and Mythology of the Greeks [see footnote 42 above], p. 4.
DIONYSUS WESTWARD
443
trading Corinthians. His cult grew with expanding Greek colonization and with the
concomitant increase in commercial viticulture.
Stated above is the fact that commerce was not in the stage of stumbling infancy at
the time of Mycenaean collapse. Lemnians, Cycladians, Minoans, and Mycenaeans
had established maritime commerce. Although the Dark Age intervened between the
Heroic period and that of eighth-century Greek colonization, the memory and traditions of earlier activity had not been lost, nor had commerce itself disappeared.58But
a fundamental change was made in the Dark Age: mystical sanction had been added
by a dynamic cult that was uniquely missionary in spirit.
With regard to this connection between religion and trade it is well to observe that
Dionysus may have come to Delphi before the advent of Apollo;59and there the two
gods shared the central shrine. It was a seemingly strange combination, but not impossible for Greeks. The importance of Dionysus at Delphi was both in cult and in
economics. At an early date the link between Delphi and Corinth was close,60and it
should be remembered that Corinth was the place of the earliest and greatest development of the Dionysian choruses and dithyrambs.61Dorian Corinth was closely associated with Crete-which was then under Dorian control. Thus the Corinthian
traders in their earliest voyages would have known of Mycenaean connections with
Sicily and southern Italy. The Delphian priests, with information from Crete and
Corinth, knew the nature of the peoples and lands of southern Italy and of eastern
Sicily. That such was the case is attested by the fact that the Delphian oracle was consulted by colonists, and the oracle sent the settlers to the best sites in the western
lands. In fact, it was during the period of colonization-and no doubt a result of its
importance and the Delphian contribution to it-that Delphi first became panHellenic.62Dionysus, an increasingly important figure as god of wine, was part of the
close and practical connection between Delphi, Magna Graecia, as well as the link
between religion and colonization.
What a compelling combination in support of expansive energy was represented
by the cult! Mystical or practical, some characteristic of it would appeal to virtually
any Greek. Commerce in wine, to supply a widening cult and market, would be
enhanced; and with such development would come the organization necessary to
produce and distribute the product. It was trade in a greatly desired product with
greater organization of production and distribution not only expedient but
necessary-and it all spread with a religious cachet. Religion and commerce
stimulated each other: a symbiotic relationship.
If we may use present evidence to interpret past events, the following observations
may be pertinent. Competitive trade trends toward monopoly: wholesale traders try
to establish control not only of production but also of all intermediate activities up to
the sale to the consumer. Such an economic organization is now called "vertical" (of
which, at the present time, the petroleum industries may be the best examples). The
58
Taylour, Mycenaean Pottery in Italy [see footnote 38 above], p. 136;and Sereni, op. cit. [see footnote
45 above], pp. I20-121.
59Taylour, Mycenaeans [see footnote 46 above], pp. 64-65, fn. 26.
60
Dunbabin, op. cit. [see footnote 44 above], pp. 38-39.
61 "The Histories of Herodotus"
(translated by Harry Carter; 2 vols.; Heritage Press, New York,
1958),1.23; Stanislawski, op. cit. [see footnote 28 above], p. 16; C. M. Bowra: Greek Lyric Poetry (Clarendon
Press, Oxford, 1961), p. 8; and Curt Sachs: The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., New York, 1943), p. 267.
62
Dunbabin, op. cit. [see footnote 44 above], pp. 38-39.
444
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
REVIEW
Greeks did not use the word in that sense, but they recognized the profitable nature of
such an arrangement. They pushed the Phoenicians aside and arrogated to
themselves all possible centers for trade and all centers that might contribute to it or
impede it. Were the Greeks inventors of the "vertical economic structure" of their
time, with wine and religion as its plinth? Did they anticipatemodernmercantilismby
nearly 3,000 years? That is, did they encourage monoculture of exportable items in
the colonies while items of high value, demanding technical skills, were the product
of the home country? Were they innovators in skills of salesmanship? Instead of
allowing commerce to respond to demand, did they create the market? The cult
of Dionysus may have been the earliest of proselytizing cults. Greeks exported wine
to some peoples who had not known it previously but who after knowing it would
not relinquish it. Was eighth century B.C. Dionysus an early precursor of that
combination which Tawney described under the title "Religion and the Rise of
Capitalism"?
The advantages of the combination of wine and religion include exaltation for
the mystic; a sense of unity with the whole and of belonging for the disinherited;
courage for the timid; peace for the troubled spirit; nepenthe for the tortured soul;
aphrodisiac for the lover; surcease for the pain-wracked; anesthetic for use in surgery;
gaity for the depressed. In addition to its mystical or personal appeal, wine offered
pecuniary advantages: vines produce a crop with an ever-ready market. They produce
a crop of relatively high value on a wide variety of surfaces and soils: on slopes so steep
that almost no other crop can be cultivated and on virtually sterile rocks; thence
through a gamut of soils to alluvium; and in a wide variety of climates. They do not
demand irrigation. They yield a product that has international appeal and international markets (even in early times). The beverage produced is not only attractive
but also healthy in lands of little and often polluted water. It is a persuasive beverage
that makes lasting friendships. Once it is known, a permanent and probably increasing market is virtually guaranteed.
Few forces in the affairs of men are more effective than profit in the odor of sanctity, especially when the major commercial product is as gustable as wine.