VLVL2 (9.5): "Evoex"

[Dave Monroe]

"Takeshi went on, 'Here, you want to try one of these?
 Huh?  they--they're really good.  Eveoex, ever hear
of them?  Something new!'" (VL, Ch. 9, p. 158)

p. 158 "Evoex"   The etymology of this new
tranquilizer is clearly from the bacchanalian
ejaculation (and crossword puzzle word) "evoe!"

http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/chapter9.htm

Oh! happy that votary, when from the hurrying
revel-rout he sinks to earth, in his holy robe of
fawnskin, chasing the goat to drink its blood, a
banquet sweet of flesh uncooked, as he hastes to
Phrygia's or to Libya's hills; while in the van the
Bromian god exults with cries of Evoe.

http://www.greece.com/library/euripidis/bacchantes_01.html

He marched through Syria, Lebanon, Caucasian Iberia
(modern Georgia), India, Egypt and Libya accompanied
by a retinue of his votaries, dancing ecstatically and
shouting the mystic word "euoi" (Latinized as the
familiar "evoe"). His votaries included the female
maenads or bacchantes, tattooed, clad in fox-skins and
playing frame-drums or cymbals; the male satyrs, clad
in panther-skins and bearing thyrsi (a thyrsus was a
rod tipped with a pine cone, with streamers of ivy);
and Silenus, his fat, aged, drunken companion and
keeper, riding on an ass. Despite his slovenly
appearance and his perpetual drunkenness, Silenus
possessed immense knowledge and wisdom, and was
greatly respected by the votaries of Dionysus.

http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/dionysus.htm

Euripides describes the advent of Dionysiac religion
to Thebes thus:  'This city, first in Hellas, now
shrills and echoes to my women's cries, their ecstasy
of joy' (Bacchae, 11, 20-24)  The word used here for
'cry' is olulugia, defined by the Etymologicum Magnum
as 'the sound which women make to exult in worship'
and by E.R. Dodds as 'the women's ritual cry of
triumph or thanksgiving'.  Pausanias tells of 'the
mountain they say was called Eva from the Bacchic cry
'Evoe' which Dionysus and his attendant women first
uttered there' (Descr. of Greece, IV, xxxi)

http://www.intelligentchristian.cwc.net/pandemonium_and_silence_at_corinth.htm

"Zeus stretched out on Semele's bed in the form of a
bull with human limbs. Then he was a panther. Then a
young man with vine shoots in his curls. Finally he
settled into that most perfect of shapes: the serpent.
Zeus prolonged their union like some story without
end, a rehersal of the life of the god about to be
generated. The snake slithered over Semele's trembling
body and gently licked her neck. Then, gripping her
bust in one of his coils, wrapping her breasts in a
scaly sash, he sprnkled her not with poison but with
liquid honey. The snake was pressing his mouth against
Semele's mouth, a dribble of nectar trickling down
onto her lips intoxicated her, and all the while vine
leaves were sprouting up on the bed and there was a
sound of drums beating in the darkness. The earth
laughed. Dionysus was conceived just as Zeus shouted
the name with which for centuries he was to be evoked:
'Evoe!'" (Calasso, pg 47)

http://ambersdomain.8m.com/greek_quotes.htm

"Hymnos: Evoe" 
from Stephen Sondheim's musical comedy "The Frogs",
based on the play by Aristophanes

http://www.winterscapes.com/thiasos/frogs.htm

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