VI. 1. And as for vrine, the servants of the Grod in

Sun-city ' do not at all bring it into the sacred places as 'tis not right [for them] to drink by day while He^ their Lord and King, looks on.
2. The rest [of them '] use it indeed, but sparingly. They have, however, many times of abetinence at
which they drink no wine, but spend them in the search for wisdom, learning and teaching the [truth] about the Gods.
3. The kings used to drink it, though in certain measure according to the sacred writings, as Hecatseos has narrated,^ for they were priests [as well].
4 They began to drink it, however, only from the time of Psammetichus ; ^ but before that they used not to drink wine.
Nor did they make libation of it as a thing dear to the Gods, but as the blood of those who fought against the (Jods,* — from whom, when they fell and mingled with
1 T^ Ncix^ Hmp — rii NciXf a was the Feaat of the Orerflowi]^ of the Nile. « Heliopolis— the God being the " Sun."
* Scthd priests.
* MiiUer, ii. 389. H. flourished last quarter of 6th and fint 6th century B.C.
» Reigned 671-617 ac.
* i&L the Titans or Daimones as opposed to the QodsL
THE MTSTERIBS OF ISIS AND OSIRIS 269
the earth, they think the vines came, and that because of this wine-drenching makes men to be out of their minds and struck aside,^ in that, forsooth, they are full-filled with the forefathers of its * blood.'
5. These things, at any rate Eudoxus says, in Book IL of his Circuit,^ are thus stated by the priests.
On Fish Taboos