COMUS, a mythological personage, the god of jollity and festive mirth. The word is Greek, and properly denotes "a merry-making;" thence also applied to a band of revellers, or the village youths and maidens who danced and sung together in the choric performances in honour of the presiding deity of the district. Warton has referred to Æschylus for the first notice of this god; but the passage in the "Agamemnon" to which he alludes scarcely seems to bear out the idea of a personification of the word κῦπος. (See his note on the 58th verse of Milton's Masque of Comus.) It appears rather to be in the Icones of Philostratus (i. 2) that this deity appears for the first time; and there Comus is described as a youth of delicate mien, slumbering in a standing attitude, his legs crossed, his countenance flushed with wine, and his head, which is sunk upon his breast, crowned with dewy flowers; his left hand feebly grasps a hunting spear, while in his right there is an inverted torch.
This deity has been identified by some with the Chemosh of the Moabites, and with Beel-Phegor, Baal-Peor, Priapus, and Bacchus. However this may be, Comus is principally indebted for his celebrity to the genius of Milton; and although he had previously been introduced on the English stage by Decker and by Jonson, yet the coarse deity of those writers can scarcely again be recognized in the exquisite impersonation of Comus in Milton's celebrated masque.