LXIX. 1. What use, then, must one make of those

melancholy and laughterless and mournful sacrifices, if it is not right either to omit the rites of custom, or to confound our views about Gk)ds and throw them into confusion with absurd suspicions ?
» Of. Ixv. 2. « Cf. Md., 3.
' Copt. Mesore— corr. roughly with Angoft * Sc, at Delphi.
350 THRICB-OREATBST
2. Yea, among Greeks, too, many things are done, just about the same time also, similar to those wiaA Egyptians perform in the sacred [rites].
3. For instance, at Athens, the women fast at the Thesmophoria, sitting on the ground. While BoBotiaiu move the palace of Achsa,^ giving that festival the name of Epachthg [the Orief-bringiiig], as though Demeter were in grief (axdec) on account of the Descent ' of Eore.
4. And this month is the one for sowing when the Pleiades rise, which Egjrptians call Athyr,' Greeks PyanepsioQ, and Bcsotians Damatrios.^
5. Moreover, Theopompus* tells us that the Westmi peoples^ consider and name the winter Slronos, the summer Aphrodite, and the spring Persephone; and [say] that all things are bom from Kronos and Aphrodite.
6. While the Phrygians, thinking that the God slesps in winter, and wakes in summer, celebrate in hii honour the Orgies of his " Going to sleep " at one time, and at another of his "Waking up"; while the Paphlagonians pretend that he is bound hand and fool and imprisoned in winter, and in spring is set in motion and freed from his bonds.