[65] 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 of 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 unmeasured effusions and demonstrations of sorrow for the departed, some times accompanied by cutting and mutilation self-inflicted by the mourner was a distinguishing feature in Asiatics and Egyptians as compared with Greeks. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 22, p. 123. Mournful feeling was, in fact, a sort of desecration of the genuine and primitive Grecian festival, which was a season of cheerful harmony and social enjoyment, wherein the god was believed to sympathize (εὐφροσύνη). See Xenophanes ap. Aristot. Rhetor. ii. 25; Xenophan. Fragm. 1. ed. Schneidewin; Theognis, 776; Plutarch, De Superstit. p. 169. The unfavorable comments of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in so far as they refer to the festivals of Greece, apply to the foreign corruptions, not to the native character, of Grecian worship.
[66] The Lydian Hêraklês was conceived and worshipped as a man in female attire: this idea occurs often in the Asiatic religions. Mencke, Lydiaca, c. 8, p. 22. Διόνυσος ἄῤῥην καὶ θῆλυς. Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28; Æschyl. Fragm. Edoni, ap. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 135. Ποδαπὸς ὁ γύννις; τίς πάτρα; τίς ἡ στολή;
[67] Melampos cures the women (whom Dionysos has struck mad for their resistance to his rites), παραλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους τῶν νεανίων μετ᾽ ἀλαλαγμοῦ καί τινος ἐνθέου χορείας. Apollodôr. ii. 2, 7. Compare Eurip. Bacch. 861.
Plato (Legg. vii. p. 790) gives a similar theory of the healing effect of the Korybantic rites, which cured vague and inexplicable terrors of the mind by means of dancing and music conjoined with religious ceremonies—αἱ τὰ τῶν Κορυβάντων ἰάματα τελοῦσαι (the practitioners were women), αἱ τῶν ἐκφρόνων Βακχείων ἰάσεις—ἡ τῶν ἔξωθεν κρατεῖ κίνησις προσφερομένη τὴν ἐντὸς φοβερὰν οὖσαν καὶ μανικὴν κίνησιν—ὀρχουμένους δὲ καὶ αὐλουμένους μετὰ θεῶν, οἷς ἂν καλλιερήσαντες ἕκαστοι θύωσιν, κατειργάσατο ἀντὶ μανικῶν ἡμῖν διαθέσεων ἕξεις ἔμφρονας ἔχειν.
[68] Described in the Bacchæ of Euripidês (140, 735, 1135, etc.). Ovid, Trist. iv. i. 41. “Utque suum Bacchis non sentit saucia vulnus, Cum furit Edonis exululata jugis.” In a fragment of the poet Alkman, a Lydian by birth, the Bacchanal nymphs are represented as milking the lioness, and making cheese of the milk, during their mountain excursions and festivals. (Alkman. Fragm. 14. Schn. Compare Aristid. Orat. iv. p. 29). Clemens Alexand. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 9, Sylb.; Lucian, Dionysos, c. 3, T. iii. p. 77, Hemsterh.
[69] See the tale of Skylês in Herod. iv. 79, and Athenæus, x. p. 445. Herodotus mentions that the Scythians abhorred the Bacchic ceremonies, accounting the frenzy which belonged to them to be disgraceful and monstrous.
[70] Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 69, p. 378; Schol. ad Aristoph. Thesmoph. There were however Bacchic ceremonies practised to a certain extent by the Athenian women. (Aristoph. Lysist. 388).
[71] “Ægyptiaca numina fere plangoribus gaudent, Græca plerumque choreis, barbara autem strepitu cymbalistarum et tympanistarum et choraularum.” (Apuleius, De Genio Socratis, v. ii. p. 149, Oudend).
[72] The legend of Dionysos and Prosymnos, as it stands in Clemens, could never have found place in an epic poem (Admonit. ad Gent. p. 22, Sylb.). Compare page 11 of the same work, where however he so confounds together Phrygian, Bacchic, and Eleusinian mysteries, that one cannot distinguish them apart.