[311] Lysias cont. Andokid. init. et fin.; Andokid. de Myster. sect. 29. Compare the fragment of a lost Oration by Lysias against Kinêsias (Fragm. xxxi, p. 490, Bekker; Athenæus, xii, p. 551), where Kinêsias and his friends are accused of numerous impieties, one of which consisted in celebrating festivals on unlucky and forbidden days, “in derision of our gods and our laws,”—ὡς καταλεγῶντες τῶν θεῶν καὶ τῶν νόμων τῶν ἡμετέρων. The lamentable consequences which the displeasure of the gods had brought upon them are then set forth: the companions of Kinêsias had all miserably perished, while Kinêsias himself was living in wretched health and in a condition worse than death: τὸ δ’ οὕτως ἔχοντα τοσοῦτον χρόνον διατελεῖν, καὶ καθ’ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἀποθνήσκοντα μὴ δύνασθαι τελευτῆσαι τὸν βίον, τούτοις μόνοις προσήκει τοῖς τὰ τοιαῦτα ἅπερ οὗτος ἐξερματεκόσι. The comic poets Strattis and Plato also marked out Kinêsias among their favorite subjects of derision and libel, and seem particularly to have represented his lean person and constant ill health as a punishment of the gods for his impiety. See Meineke, Fragm. Comic. Græc. (Strattis), vol. ii, p. 768 (Plato), p. 679. When we recollect how highly the Eleusinian mysteries were venerated by Greeks not born in Athens and even by foreigners, we shall not wonder at the violent indignation excited in the Athenian mind by persons who profaned or divulged them; especially at a moment when their religious sensibilities had been so keenly wounded, and so tardily and recently healed, in reference to the Hermæ.[312] It was about this same time[313] that a prosecution was instituted against the Melian philosopher Diagoras for irreligious doctrines. Having left Athens before trial, he was found guilty in his absence, and a reward was offered for his life. [312] Lysias cont. Andokid. sects. 50, 51; Cornel. Nepos, Alcib. c. 4. The expressions of Pindar (Fragm. 96) and of Sophoklês (Fragm. 58, Brunck.—Œdip. Kolon. 1058) respecting the value of the Eleusinian mysteries, are very striking: also Cicero, Legg. ii, 14. Horace will not allow himself to be under the same roof, or in the same boat, with any one who has been guilty of divulging these mysteries (Od. iii. 2, 26), much more then of deriding them. The reader will find the fullest information about these ceremonies in the _Eleusinia_, forming the first treatise in the work of Lobeck called Aglaophamus; and in the Dissertation called _Eleusinia_, in K. O. Müller’s Kleine Schriften. vol ii, p. 242, _seqq._ [313] Diodor. xiii. 6