De Iside et Osiride

How, then, are we to deal with their gloomy, solemn, and mournful sacrifices, if it be not proper either to omit the customary ceremonials or to confound and confuse our opinions about the gods by unwarranted suspicions ? Among the Greeks also many things are done which are similar to the Egyptian ceremonies in the shrines of Isis, and they do them at

about the same time. At Athens the women fast at the Thesmophoria sitting upon the ground; and the Boeotians move the halls of the Goddess of Sorrow and name that festival the Festival of Sorrow,[*](Cf. Pausanias, ix. 8. 1, and Preller, Griechische Mythologie ⁴, i. 752, note 3; but the matter is very uncertain.) since Demeter is in sorrow because of her Daughter’s descent to Pluto’s realm. This month, in the season of the Pleiades, is the month of seeding which the Egyptians call Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, and the Boeotians Damatrius.[*](The month sacred to Demeter.) Theopompus[*](Frag. 335.) records that the people who live toward the west believe that the winter is Cronus, the summer Aphrodite, and the spring Persephonê, and that they call them by these names and believe that from Cronus and Aphroditê all things have their origin. The Phrygians, believing that the god is asleep in the winter and awake in the summer, sing lullabies for him in the winter and in the summer chants to arouse him, after the manner of bacchic worshippers. The Paphlagonians assert that in the winter he is bound fast and imprisoned, but that in the spring he bestirs himself and sets himself free again.