(), a surname of Dionysus, which signifies the
Lord, or Ruler, and under which he was worshipped at Aroe in Achaia. The story about the
introduction of his worship there is as follows: There was at Troy an ancient image of
Dionysus, the work of Hephaestus, which Zeus had once given as a present to Dardanus. It was
kept in a chest, and Cassandra, or, according to others, Aeneas, left this chest behind when
she quitted the city, because she knew that it would do injury to him who possessed it. When
the Greeks divided the spoils of Troy among themselves, this chest fell to the share of the
Thessallian Eurypylus, who on opening it suddenly fell into a state of madness. The oracle of
Delphi, when consulted about his recovery, answered, " Where thou shalt see men performing a
strange sacrifice, there shalt thou dedicate the chest, and there shalt thou settle." When
Eurypylus came to Aroe in Achaia, it was just the season at which its inhabitants offered
every year to Artemis Triclaria a human sacrifice, consisting of the fairest youth and the
fairest maiden of the place. This sacrifice was offered as an atonement for a crime which had
once been committed in the temple of the goddess. But an oracle had declared to them, that
they should be released from the necessity of making this sacrifice, if a foreign divinity
should be brought to them by a foreign king. This oracle was now fulfilled. Eurypylus on
seeing the victims led to the altar was cured of his madness and perceived that this was the
place pointed out to him by the oracle; and the Aroeans also, on seeing the god in the chest,
remembered the old prophecy, stopped the sacrifice, and instituted a festival of Dionysus
Aesymnetes, for this was the name of the god in the chest. Nine men and nine women were
appointed to attend to his worship. During one night of this festival a priest carried the
chest outside the town, and all the children of the place, adorned, as formerly the victims
used to be, with garlands of corn-ears, went down to the banks of the river Meilichius, which
had before been called Ameilichius, hung up their garlands, purified themselves, and then put
on other garlands of ivy, after which they returned to the sanctuary of Dionysus Aesymnetes.
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