It is obvious from the play of the _Eumenides_ that the worship of the Semnae at Athens was of hoary antiquity. It is true that Diogenes Laertius[619] states (on the authority of the augur Lobon) that the sanctuary of the Semnae at Athens was founded by Epimenides. The scene of the operations of Epimenides was undoubtedly the Areopagos, but, as the purification of Athens took place in the 46th Olympiad, the statement that he founded the sanctuary must be apocryphal. Very likely he may have revived and restored the cult. Diogenes says that he took a number of black and white sheep and led them up to the Areopagos and thence let them go whither they would, and he commanded those who followed them to sacrifice each of them wherever the sheep happened to lie down, and so the plague would be stayed. Whence even now, adds Diogenes, you may find in the Athenian demes nameless altars in memory of this atonement. Some such altar as this was still to be seen at or near the Areopagos when St Paul preached there, and such an altar may have got associated with the Semnae, who like many other underworld beings were Nameless Ones. The site of the worship of the Semnae was undoubtedly some sort of cave or natural chasm amplified artificially into a sanctuary. Such caves, clefts or chasms are, as has already been shown (p. 125), the proper haunts of underworld beings; they are also usually, though not uniformly, primitive. Of the sanctuary and the cultus images Pausanias[620] speaks as follows. After describing the Areopagos and the two unwrought stones called ‘Transgression’ (ὕβρις) and ‘Pitilessness’ (ἀναιδεία) on which accused and accuser stood, he says ‘And near is a sanctuary (ἱερόν) of the goddesses whom the Athenians call Semnae, but Hesiod in the _Theogony_ calls Erinyes. Aeschylus represents them with snakes in their hair, but in their images there is nothing frightful, nor in the other images of the underworld gods that are set up. There is a Pluto also and a Hermes and an image of Ge. And there those who have been acquitted in a suit before the Areopagos sacrifice. And others besides sacrifice, both strangers and citizens, and within the enclosure there is the tomb of Oedipus.’ Pausanias by his reference to Aeschylus betrays at once the source of his identification of the Semnae with the Erinyes. The statement cannot be taken as evidence that prior to Aeschylus any such identification was current. After the time of Aeschylus, classical writers, except when they are quoting ritual formularies, begin to accept the fusion and use the names Erinyes, Eumenides, and Semnae as interchangeable terms. A like laxity unhappily obtains among modern commentators.