But Dionysus not only looks back with triumphant remembrance to ancient conquest, but has his victories in the present, also, and in the great Hereafter. For triumph was connected with all Dionysiac symbols, hints of which are preserved to us in representations found upon ancient vases: such, for instance, as the figure of Victory surmounting the heads of the ivy-crowned Bacchantes in their mystic orgies; or the winged serpents which bear the chariot of the victor-god,--as if in this connection even the reptiles, whose very name (_serpentes_) is a synonyme for what creeps, are to be made the ministrants of his conquering flight. The tombs of the ancients from Egypt to Etruria are full of these symbols. Many of them have become dim as to their meaning by oblivious time; but enough is evident to indicate the prominence of hope in ancient faith. This appears in the very multiplicity of Dionysiac symbols as compared with any other class. Thus, out of sixty-six vases at Polignano, all but one or two were found to be Dionysiac in their symbolism. And this instance stands for many others. The _character_ of the scenes represented indicates the same prominence of hope, sometimes as connected with the relations of life,--as, for example, the representation, found upon a sepulchral cone, of a husband and wife uniting with each other in prayer to the Sun. Frequent inscriptions--such as those in which the deceased is carefully committed to Osiris, the Egyptian Dionysus--point in the same direction; as also the genii who presided over the embalmed dead, a belief in whose existence surely indicated a hopeful trust in some divine care which would not leave them even in the grave. Statues of Osiris are found among the ruins of palaces and temples; but it was in the monuments associated with death that they dwelt most upon his name and expressed their faith in most frequent incarnation and inscription.
The epic movement of Eleusinian triumph was in its range as unlimited as the movement of sorrow. Each found expression in sculptured monument,--the one hinting of flight into darkness, and the other of resurrection into light; each in its cycle inclosed the world; each widened into the invisible; as the wail of Achtheia reached the heart of Hades, so the paean of Dionysus was lost in the heavens.