and Thebes.[1] That they were all to a great degree analogous, is shown by the way in which they unconsciously run together and become confused in the minds of various authors: the ancient inquirers themselves were unable to distinguish one from the other, and we must be content to submit to the like ignorance. Bet we see enough to satisfy us of the general fact, that during the century and a half which elapsed between the opening of Egypt to the Greeks and the commencement of their struggle with the Persian kings, the old religion was largely adulterated by importations from Egypt, Asia Minor,[2] and Thrace. The rites grew to be more furious and ecstatic, exhibiting the utmost excitement, bodily as well as mental: the legends became at once more coarse, more tragical, and less pathetic. The manifestations of this frenzy were strongest among the women, whose religious susceptibilities were often found extremely unmanageable,[3] and who had everywhere congregative occasional ceremonies of their own, part from the men—indeed, in the case of the colonists, especially of the Asiatic colonists, the women had been originally women of the country, and as such retained to a great degree their non-Hellenic manners and feelings.[4] The god Diony-
- ↑ Among other illustrations of this general resemblance, may be counted an epitaph of Kallimachus upon an aged priestess, who passed from the service of Dêmêtêr to that of the Kabeiri, then to that of Cybelê, having the superintendence of many young women. Kallimachus, Epigram. 42. p. 308. ed. Ernest.
- ↑ Plutarch, (Defect. Oracul. c. 10, p. 415) treats these countries as the original seat of the worship of Dæmons (wholly or partially bad, and intermediate between gods and men), and their religious ceremonies as of a corresponding character: the Greeks were borrowers from them, according to him, both of the doctrine and of the ceremonies.
- ↑ Strabo, vii. p. 297. Ἅπαντες γὰρ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἀρχηγοὺς οἴονται τὰς γυναῖκας· αὐταὶ δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας προκαλοῦνται ἐς τὰς ἐπὶ πλέον θεραπείας τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ἑορτὰς, καὶ ποτνιασμούς. Plato (De Legg. x. pp. 909, 910) takes great pains to restrain this tendency on the part of sick or suffering persons, especially women, to introduce new sacred rites into his city.
- ↑ Herodot. i. 146. The wives of the Ionic original settlers at Miletos were Karian women, whose husbands they slew.
The violences of the Karian worship are attested by what Herodotus says of the Karian residents in Egypt, at the festival cf Isis at Busiris. The Egyptians at this festival manifested their feeling by beating themselves, the Karians by cutting their faces with knives (ii. 61). The Καρικὴ μοῦσα became proverbial for funeral wailings (Plato, Legg. vii. p. 800): the un-
