We learn from Philo[634] that no slave was allowed to take part in the processions of the Semnae. This in a worship of special antiquity and solemnity is natural enough. But it is strange to hear from Polemon[635] that there was the same taboo on all the Eupatrids. Strange at first sight, but easily explicable. The Semnae are women divinities, and in this taboo on the Eupatrids there seems to lurk a survival of matriarchal conditions. Aeschylus in the _Eumenides_ is not concerned, save incidentally, to emphasize the issue between matriarchy and patriarchy, between kinship through the mother and through the father, but it lies at the back of the legend he has chosen for his plot. The stories of Orestes and Clytaemnestra, of Alcmaeon and Eriphyle, are deep-rooted in matriarchy—both look back to the days when the only relationship that could be proved, and that therefore was worth troubling about, was that through the mother; and hence special vengeance attends the slayer of the mother. In the light of this it is easy to understand why in the worship of the Semnae the family of Eupatrids—those well-born through their fathers—had no part. For them Apollo Patrôos was the fitter divinity. The family of the Eupatrids had their own rites of expiation, ancestral rites significantly called πάτρια, paternal. These rites as described by Dorotheos have been already discussed (p. 60). The name of the family that held the priesthood of the Semnae is also recorded; they were the Hesychidae whom Hesychius[636] describes as ‘a family of well-born people at Athens.’ Polemon is again our authority for connecting these ‘Silent Ones’ with the cult of the Semnae. He is quoted by the scholiast already cited (p. 246 note). In commenting on the expression ‘uttering words inaudible’ the scholiast says ‘This is from the sacrifice performed to the Eumenides. For they enact the sacred rites in silence, and on account of this the descendants of Hesychos (the Silent One) sacrifice to them, as Polemon says in his writings about Eratosthenes, thus: “the family of the Eupatrids has no share in this sacrifice”; and then further, “in this procession the Hesychidae, which is the family that has to do with the Venerable Goddesses, take the lead.” And before the sacrifice they make a preliminary sacrifice of a ram to Hesychos ... giving him this name because of the ritual silence observed. His sanctuary is by the Kyloneion outside the Nine Gates.’