By Water & Blood

Chapter 18: Liber Identified with the Sun

What we have said of Apollo may also be taken as said of Liber. For Aristotle, who wrote the Theologumena, asserting with many other arguments that Apollo and Father Liber are one and the same god, says that among the Ligyrei in Thrace there is also a shrine consecrated to Liber from which oracles are given. But those about to prophesy in this shrine, after taking a great deal of neat wine, utter oracles, just as at Claros they do after drinking water. Among the Lacedaemonians also, in the rites they celebrate for Apollo, calling them the Hyacinthia, they are crowned with ivy in the Bacchic manner. Likewise the Boeotians, while recalling that Mount Parnassus is sacred to Apollo, yet at the same time on that same mountain worship both the Delphic oracle and the Bacchic caves as consecrated to one god; and so sacred rites are celebrated for both Apollo and Father Liber on the same mountain. And although Varro and Granius Flaccus also affirm this, Euripides too teaches it in these words: "Dionysus, fitted with thyrsi and fawnskins, leaps dancing down Parnassus among the pines." On this Mount Parnassus Bacchanalia are held every other year, where, as they affirm, a throng of Satyrs is often seen and their characteristic voices are frequently heard, and the clash of cymbals often reaches human ears. And lest anyone suppose that Mount Parnassus is dedicated to different gods, the same Euripides in the Licymnius, signifying that Apollo and Liber are one and the same god, writes: "Lord Bacchus, lover of the laurel, Paean Apollo of the fair lyre." To the same effect Aeschylus: "Ivy-crowned Apollo, the Bacchic seer."

But although — once it has first been asserted that Apollo is the same as the sun, and then shown that Father Liber is the very one who is Apollo — there can be no doubt from these points that the sun and Father Liber are to be held of the same divinity, yet the matter will be established absolutely by still clearer arguments. For in the sacred rites this observance of a religious mystery is kept: that the sun, when it is in the upper, that is the daytime, hemisphere, is called Apollo; when it is in the lower, that is the nocturnal, it is held to be Dionysus, who is Father Liber.

Likewise images of Father Liber are fashioned partly of boyish age, partly as a youth; moreover with bearded appearance, and also elderly, as the Greeks call him whom they name Bassareus, and likewise him whom they call Briseus, and as the people of Naples in Campania celebrate him under the name Hebon. These diversities of age are referred to the sun: so that he appears as a little child at the winter solstice — such as the Egyptians bring forth from the shrine on a fixed day — because then, on the shortest day, he seems as it were small and an infant; thereafter, as the increases proceed, at the spring equinox he likewise acquires a youth's strength and is adorned with the figure of a young man. Later his age is established at its fullest, with the likeness of a beard, at the summer solstice, when he attains the summit of his increase. From then on, through diminishments, the god is figured in a fourth form as if growing old.

Likewise we learn that in Thrace the same one is held to be both sun and Liber, whom they celebrate with magnificent worship under the name Sebazius, as Alexander writes; and to that god a temple of round form is dedicated on the hill Zilmissus, whose roof stands open in the middle. The roundness of the temple shows the form of this star, and light is admitted through the top of the roof, so that it may appear that the sun surveys all things from the highest summit by the sending-down of light, and because when he rises all things are laid open.

Orpheus too, wishing the sun to be understood, says among other things: "Melting the divine aether that before was motionless, he revealed to the gods to see him fairest to behold, whom now they call Phanes and Dionysus and Lord Eubouleus and Antauges conspicuous; but other names other men of the earth call him. First he came into the light, and was called Dionysus, because he whirls about boundless great Olympus; and changing, he took a name, receiving from each all manner of surnames according to the season, as time alternates." He called the sun Phanes from light and illumination (apo tou photos kai phanerou), because he is seen by all and looks upon all. Dionysus, as the same bard says, from whirling and being carried round (apo tou dineisthai kai peripheresthai), that is because he is carried about in a circuit. Whence Cleanthes writes that he is so named from completing the course (apo tou dianusai), because by his daily rush from east to west, making day and night, he finishes the course of heaven. The natural philosophers say Dionysus is the mind of Zeus (Dios noun), because they have said the sun is the mind of the world. But the world is called heaven, which they name Jupiter. Whence Aratus, about to speak of heaven, says, "Let us begin from Zeus."

He is called Liber by the Romans because he is free and wandering, as Laevius says: "On this path where the wandering sun lets loose his fiery reins and yokes them nearer to the earth." The same Orphic verses, calling him Eubouleus, show this god as the patron of good counsel. For if counsels are born from the conception of the mind, and the authorities hold that the sun is the mind of the world, from whom the principle of understanding flows into men, they have rightly believed the sun to be the president of good counsel. Orpheus plainly declares that Liber is the sun in this verse: "Helios, whom they call by surname Dionysus." And that verse indeed is more absolute; but this of the same bard is more elaborate: "One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysus."

The authority of this verse is grounded on the oracle of Apollo of Claros, in which yet another name is added to the sun, who in the same sacred verses is among other things called IAO. For when Apollo of Claros was asked which of the gods he is to be held who is called IAO, he uttered thus: "Those who have learned the mysteries ought to hide them unspoken; but if your understanding is slight and your mind feeble, learn that IAO is the highest god of all: in winter Hades, Zeus at the beginning of spring, Helios in summer, and in autumn delicate Iacchus." Cornelius Labeo, in the book entitled On the Oracle of Apollo of Claros, has worked out the force of this oracle and the interpretation of the divinity and the name by which Father Liber and the sun are signified as IAO.

Likewise Orpheus, demonstrating that Liber and the Sun are one and the same god, writes thus of his adornment and dress in the Liberalia rites: "And to accomplish all these things in spring, having dressed the body with gear, an imitation of the renowned sun; first, then, to put on a crimson robe like flaming rays, resembling fire; but above, to fasten the broad dappled skin of a fawn, the many-spotted hide of the beast, upon the right shoulder, an imitation of the cunning stars and of the sacred pole. Then above the fawnskin to cast a golden belt, all-shining, to wear about the breast, a great sign, straightway when from the bounds of earth Phaethon rising strikes with golden rays the stream of Ocean, and the light is boundless, and mixed with dew it sparkles, whirling in eddies in a circle before the god; and the belt beneath the immeasurable breast appears as Ocean's circle, a great wonder to behold."

Hence also Virgil, knowing that Father Liber is the sun and Ceres the moon, who alike govern the fertility of the soil and the ripening of crops either by nocturnal tempering or by diurnal heat, says: "by your gift the earth exchanged the Chaonian acorn for rich corn." But that the sun is the author of earthly fecundity the same poet soon taught by a secular example, when he says, "often too it has been of use to burn barren fields," and the rest. For if fire applied by human device affords manifold help, what is to be ascribed to the ethereal heat of the sun?