The children of both sexes closed the pomp of the procession.

In this august ceremony, the singers of heroic verses were appointed to sing certain verses of Homer; a manifest proof of their estimation for the works of that poet, even with regard to religion. Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, first introduced that custom.

I have observed elsewhere, that in the gymnastic games of this feast, an herald proclaimed, that the people of Athens had conferred a crown of gold upon the celebrated physician Hippocrates, in gratitude for the signal services which he had rendered the state during the pestilence.

In this festival the people of Athens put themselves, and the whole republic, under the protection of Minerva, the tutelary goddess of their city, and implored of her all kind of prosperity. From the battle of Marathon, in these public acts of worship, express mention was made of the Plateans, and they were joined in all things with the people of Athens.

Feasts of Bacchus. The worship of Bacchus had been brought out of Egypt to Athens, where several feasts had been established in honour of that god; two particularly more remarkable than all the rest, called the great and the less feasts of Bacchus. The latter were a kind of preparation for the former, and were celebrated in the open field about autumn. They were named Lenea, from a Greek words that signifies a winepress. The great feasts were commonly called Dionysia, from one of the names of that

god, and were solemnized in the spring within the city.

In each of these feasts the public were entertained with games, shows, and dramatic representations, which were attended with a vast concourse of people, and exceeding magnificent, as will be seen hereafter. At the same time the poets disputed the prize of poetry, submitting to the judgment of arbitrators, expressly chosen, their pieces, whether tragic or comic, which were then represented before the people.

These feasts continued many days. Those who were initiated, mimiced whatever the poets had thought fit to feign of the god Bacchus. They covered themselves with the skins of wild beasts, carried a thyrsus in their hands, a kind of pike, with ivy leaves twisted round it. They had drums, horns, pipes, and other instruments proper to make a great noise; and wore upon their heads wreaths of ivy and vinebranches, and of other trees sacred to Bacchus. Some represented Silenus, some Pan, others the Satyrs, all dressed in suitable masquerade. Many of them were mounted on asses; others dragged goats along for sacrifices. Men and women, ridiculously transformed in this manner, appeared night and day in public; and imitating drunkenness, and dancing with the most indecent postures, ran in throngs about the mountains and forests, screaming and howling furiously; the women especially seemed more outrageous than the men, and quite out of their senses, in their

A Dionysius.

Goats were sacrificed, because they spoiled the vines.

furious transports invoking the god, whose feast they celebrated with loud cries.'

This troop of Bacchanalians was followed by the virgins of the noblest families in the city, who were called," from carrying baskets on their heads, covered with vine and ivy leaves.

To these ceremonies others were added, obscene to the last excess, and worthy of the god who could be honoured in such a manner. The spectators were no schismatics; they gave into the prevailing humour, and were seized with the same frantic spirit. Nothing was seen but dancing, drunkenness, debauchery, and all that the most abandoned licentiousness could conceive of gross and abominable. And this an entire people, reputed the wisest of all Greece, not only suffered, but admired and practised. I say an entire people; for Plato, speaking of the Bacchanals, says, in direct terms, that he had seen the whole city of Athens drunk at once.

Livy informs us, that this licentiousness of the Bacchanalians having secretly crept into Rome, the most horrid disorders were committed there under the cover of night; besides which, all persons, who were initiated into these impure and abominable mysteries, were obliged, under the most horrid imprecations, to keep them inviolably secret. The senate, being apprized of the affair, put a stop to those sacrilegious feasts by the most severe penalties; and banished the

* From this fury of the Bacchanalians, these feasts were distinguished by the name of Orgia. Ogy", ira, furor.

I suoi Baxxe, or w Iaxxe, or Iobaxxe, or Iæ Baxxe.

• Πασαν εθεασάμην την πόλιν περί τα Διονυσία μεθύεσαν. Lib. i. de leg. p. 637. • Liv. i. xxxix. n. 8, 18.

practisers of them first from Rome, and afterwards from Italy. These examples inform us," how far a mistaken sense of religion, that covers the greatest erimes with the sacred name of the Divinity, is capable of misleading the mind of man.

The feast of Eleusis. There is nothing in all the Pagan antiquity more celebrated than the feast of Ceres Eleusina. The ceremonies of this festival were called, by way of eminence, the mysteries, from being, according to Pausanias, as much above all others, as the gods are above men. Their origin and institution are attributed to Ceres herself, who, in the reign of Erectheus, coming to Eleusis, a small town of Attica, in search of her daughter Proserpine, whom Pluto had carried away, and finding the country afflicted with a famine, she invented corn as a remedy for that evil, with which she rewarded the inhabitants. She not

only taught them the use of corn, but instructed them in the principles of probity, charity, civility, and humanity; from whence her mysteries were called, and Initia. To these first happy lessons fabulous antiquity ascribed the courtesy, politeness, and urbanity, so remarkable among the Athenians.

Nihil in speciem fallaciùs est quam prava religio, ubi deorum numen prætenditur sceleribus. Liv. xxxix. n. 16.

9 Multa eximia divinaque videntur Athenæ tuæ peperisse, atque in vitam hominum attulisse; tum nihil melius illis mysteriis, quibus ex agresti immanique vita exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus, initi. aque ut appellantur, ita re vera principia vitæ cognovimus. Cic. 1. ii. de leg. n. 36.

Teque Ceres, et Libera, quarum sacra, sicut opiniones hominum ac religiones ferunt, longè maximis atque occultissimis ceremoniis continentur: à quibus initia vitæ atque victus, legum, morum, mansuetudinis, humanitatis exempla hominibus et civitatibus data ac dispertita esse dicuntur. Id. Cic. in Verr. de supplic. n. 186.

These mysteries were divided into the lesser and the greater; of which the former served as a preparation for the latter. The less were solemnized in the month Anthesterion, which answers to our November; the great in the month Boedromion, or August. Only Athenians were admitted to these mysteries; but of them each sex, age, and condition, had a right to be received. All strangers were absolutely excluded; so that Hercules, Castor, and Pollux, were obliged to be adopted by Athenians, in order to their admission; which, however, extended only to the lesser mysteries. I shall consider principally the great, which were celebrated at Eleusis.

Those who demanded to be initiated into them, were obliged, before their reception, to purify themselves in the lesser mysteries, by bathing in the river Hissus, by saying certain prayers, offering sacrifices, and, above all, by living in strict continence during an interval of time prescribed them. That time was employed in instructing them in the principles and elements of the sacred doctrine of the great mysteries.

When the time for their initiation arrived, they were brought into the temple; and, to inspire the greater everence and terror, the ceremony was performed in the night. Wonderful things passed upon this occasion. Visions were seen, and voices heard of an extraordinary kind. A sudden splendor dispelled the darkness of the place, and, disappearing immediately, added new horrors to the gloom. Apparitions, claps of thunder, earthquakes, improved the terror and amazement; whilst the person admitted, stupid, sweating through fear, heard, trembling, the mysterious