In Laconia also the worship of Demeter had been preserved from ancient times, although it could not have been much respected by the Dorians in Sparta. For the Eleusinia of that country were chiefly celebrated by the inhabitants of the ancient town of Helos, who on certain days carried a wooden statue of Cora to the Eleusinium on the heights of Taygetus.(1677) The Lacedæmonians had also adopted the worship of Demeter under the title of χθονία, or earthly, from the Hermioneans, some of whose kinsmen had settled in Messenia.(1678)
5. POSEIDON was not originally a god of the Doric race, but was suited rather to the character of the Ionians, who, from dwelling near the sea, had acquired a love for foreign communication and a great spirit of enterprise. We therefore find it only in a few places, for example, at Tænarum(1679) (whence it was carried to Tarentum), at Cyrene,(1680) in Ægina,(1681) and particularly on the Corinthian isthmus; also at Trœzen and Calauria, which places (as has been already shown) were among the ancient settlements of the Ionians on the Saronic gulf,(1682) to which the legends concerning Theseus chiefly refer.(1683) From Trœzen the worship of Poseidon was transmitted to Posidonia in Magna Græcia, and also to Halicarnassus, chiefly by the family of the Antheadæ.
6. The worship of DIONYSUS did not enjoy equal honours among all the Dorians. It had indeed penetrated as far as Sparta, where it had driven even the Lacedæmonian women to phrensy;(1684) and the Delphic oracle itself had ordered the institution of a race of Bacchanalian virgins.(1685) But nothing is known of any sumptuous or regular ceremonies in honour of Dionysus; and we might indeed have supposed _à priori_ that the austere and rigid notions of the Spartans would have been very averse to that deity. The same is probably true of Argos, which had for a long time wholly abstained from the worship of Dionysus, but afterwards dedicated to him a festival called τύρβη (_turba_).(1686) The conduct of Corinth and Sicyon was in this respect altogether different. The former city had received from Phlius(1687) the worship of this god under the title of βακχεῖος, _i.e._, “_exciting to phrensy_;” and also under that of λύσιος, the “_appeasing_” or “_soothing_,” from Thebes, whence it was said to have come at the time of the Doric invasion,(1688) and where it was celebrated with festivals, of which we have very ample accounts.(1689) In early times some rude beginnings of tragedy had been formed from the dithyrambic choruses(1690) there performed, as the tradition of Epigenes informs us; though these were not regular dramas; there were likewise the tragic choruses transferred from Bacchus to some of the heroes, and Adrastus had been made the subject of these songs before the tyranny of Cleisthenes.(1691) The worship of this god had also produced a native kind of comic and ludicrous entertainment, the Phallophori.(1692) In the neighbouring city of Corinth, the same worship, with its musical and poetical accompaniments, prevailed;(1693) and it was in this town that, according to Pindar,(1694) the dithyramb was first established, although indeed under the direction of a foreigner (Arion). In the Doric colonies of Magna Græcia this worship preserved the same character of irregularity and excess; the whole town of Tarentum was (as Plato says) drunk at the festival of Bacchus. The painted vases give a perfect representation of the antics and masques of this ancient carnival.