418 ARATUS. be buried there with a funeral and monument suitable to his life, but the Sicyonians treated it as a calamity to them if he were interred anywhere but in their city, and prevailed with the Achaeans to grant them the disposal of the body. But there being an ancient law that no person should be buried within the walls of their city, and besides the law also a strong religious feeling about it, they sent to Delphi to ask counsel of the Pythoness, who returned this answer : — Sicyon, whom oft he rescued, " Where," you say, " Shall we the relics of Aratus lay ? " The soil that would not lightly o'ei' him rest, Or to be under him would feel opprest, Were in the sight of earth and seas and skies unblest. This oracle being brought, all the Achaeans were well pleased at it, but especially the Sicyonians, who, chang- ing their mourning into public joy, immediately fetched the body from ^gium, and in a kind of solemn proces- sion brought it into the city, being crowned with garlands, and arrayed in white garments, with singing and danc- ing, and, choosing a conspicuous place, they buried him there, as the founder and savior of their city. The place is to this day called Aratium, and there they yearly make two solemn sacrifices to him, the one on the day he delivered the city from tyTanny, being the fifth of the month Dresius, which the Athenians call Antheste- rion, and this sacrifice they call Soteria ; * the other in
- Soteria, the feast of deliver- the choruses: the president of the
ance or safety, in which the priest gymnastic exercises, the gymnasi- of Zeus Soter, the savior or de- archus, was in the times of politi- liverer, performed the rite. The cal insignificance an important singers, or professional people, of the magistrate in the decaying Greek feasts of Bacchus, is the proper towns ; compare the story at the term used elsewhere for ordinary beginning of the Life of Lucullus. actors, including the performers in
