[51] Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, 9. Πᾶσα γὰρ Βάκχεια καὶ πᾶσα ἡ
τοιαύτη κίνησις μάλιστα τῶν ὀργάνων ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς αὐλοῖς· τῶν δ᾽
ἁρμονίων ἐν τοῖς Φρυγιστὶ μέλεσι λαμβάνει ταῦτα τὸ πρέπον, οἷον ὁ
διθύραμβος δοκεῖ ὁμολογουμένως εἶναι Φρύγιον. Eurip. Bacch. 58.—
Αἴρεσθε τἀπιχώρι᾽ ἐν πόλει Φρυγῶν
Τύμπανα, Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμὰ θ᾽ εὑρήματα, etc.
Plutarch, Εἰ. in Delph. c. 9; Philochor. Fr. 21, ed. Didot,
p. 389. The complete and intimate manner in which Euripidês
identifies the Bacchic rites of Dionysos with the Phrygian
ceremonies in honor of the Great Mother, is very remarkable. The
fine description given by Lucretius (ii. 600-640) of the Phrygian
worship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing.
From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the Homeric
men, found their way into the Grecian worship: and there is one amongst
them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the
generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions
many persons guilty of private or involuntary homicide, and compelled
either to go into exile or to make pecuniary satisfaction; but he
never once describes any of them to have either received or required
purification for the crime.[52] Now in the time subsequent to Homer,
purification for homicide comes to be considered as indispensable:
the guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society of man or the
worship of the gods until he has received it, and special ceremonies
are prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us
that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydians and
among the Greeks:[53] we know that it formed no part of the early
religion of the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably suspect that
they borrowed it from the former. The oldest instance known to us of
expiation for homicide was contained in the epic poem of the Milesian
Arktinus,[54] wherein Achillês is purified by Odysseus for the
murder of Thersitês: several others occurred in the later or Hesiodic
epic—Hêraklês, Pêleus, Bellerophôn, Alkmæôn, Amphiktyôn, Pœmander,
Triopas,—from whence they probably passed through the hands of the
logographers to Apollodôrus, Diodôrus, and others.[55] The purification
of the murderer was originally operated, not by the hands of any priest
or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king, who goes
through the appropriate ceremonies in the manner recounted by Herodotus
in his pathetic narrative respecting Crœsus and Adrastus.
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