to bring them within reach of the poor and even of slaves. But the wide diffusion, and the number of voluntary communicants of these solemnities, proves how much they fell in with the feeling of the time and how much respect they enjoyed—a respect, which the more conspicuous establishments, such as Eleusis and Samothrace, maintained for several centuries. And the visit of the Kretan Epimenidês to Athens—in the time of Solôn, and at a season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having offended the gods—illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new orgies[1] and rites of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing high in the favor of the gods and reputed to be the son of a nymph. The supposed Erythræan Sibyl, and the earliest collection of Sibylline prophecies,[2] afterwards so much multiplied and interpolated, and referred (according to Grecian custom) to an age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong to a date not long posterior to Epimenidês. Other oracular verses, such as those of Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities: the sixth century before the Christian asra was fertile in these kinds of religious manifestations.
Amongst the special rites and orgies of the character just described, those which enjoyed the greatest Pan-Hellenic reputation were attached to the Idaean Zeus in Krête, to Dêmêtêr at Eleusis, to the Kabeiri in Samothrace, and to Dionysos at Delphi
- ↑ Plutarch, Solon, c. 12; Diogen. Laërt. i. 110.
- ↑ See Klausen, "Æneas und die Penaten:" his chapter on the connection between the Grecian and Roman Sibylline collections is among the most ingenious of his learned book. Book ii. pp. 210-240; see Steph. Byz. v Γέργις.
To the same age belong the χρησμοὶ and καθαρμοὶ of Abaris and his marvellous journey through the air upon an arrow (Herodot. iv. 36).
Epimenidês also composed καθαρμοὶ in epic verse; his Κουρήτων and Κορυβάντων γένεσις, and his four thousand verses respecting Minôs and Rhadamanthys, if they had been preserved, would let us fully into the ideas of a religious mystic of that age respecting the antiquities of Greece. (Strabo, x. p. 474; Diogen. Laërt. i. 10). Among the poems ascribed to Hesiod were comprised not only the Melampodia, but also ἕπη μαντικὰ and ἐξηγήσεις ἐπὶ τέρασιν. Pausan. ix. 31, 4.
which he sung (or rather, perhaps, recited) with solemnity and emphasis, in public, ὥστε ποιοῦντες χρησμοὺς αὐτοὶ Διδόσ' ᾄδειν Διοπείθει τῷ παραμαινομένῷ. (Ameipsias ap. Schol. Aristophan. ut sup., which illustrates Thucyd. ii. 21).
