Hipponax makes his statements apparently, not from any abstract interest in ritual, but as part of an insult levelled at his enemy Boupalos. This is made almost certain by another fragment of Hipponax[259] in which he says, ‘as they uttered imprecations against that abomination (ἅγος) Boupalos.’ The fragments belong obviously to one or more iambic poems in which Hipponax expresses the hope that Boupalos will share the fate of a pharmakos, will be insulted, beaten, driven out of the city, and at last presumably put to death. Hipponax is _not_ describing an actual historical ceremony, but to make his insults have any point he must have been alluding to a ritual that was, in the 6th century B.C., perfectly familiar to his hearers. Some of the statements of Hipponax as to the details of the ritual are confirmed from other sources, and are given in these with certain slight variations which seem to show that Hipponax was not the only source of information. Helladius[260] the Byzantine, quoted by Photius, says that ‘it was the custom at Athens to lead in procession two pharmakoi with a view to purification; one for the men, one for the women. The pharmakos of the men had black figs round his neck, the other had white ones, and he says they were called συβάκχοι.’ Helladius added that ‘this purification was of the nature of an apotropaic ceremony to avert diseases, and that it took its rise from Androgeôs the Cretan, when at Athens the Athenians suffered abnormally from a pestilential disease, and the custom obtained of constantly purifying the city by pharmakoi.’ The man and woman and the black and white figs are variant details. Helladius is our sole authority for the curious name συβάκχοι: what this means is not certain. The term may have meant ‘pig-Bacchoi.’ The Bacchoi, as will later be seen, were sacred and specially purified persons with magical powers, and the term may have been applied to mark analogous functions. Crete was the home of ceremonies of purification. Harpocration, in the passage already quoted, confirms the view that there were two pharmakoi, but he says they were both men: one for the women, one for the men. The discrepancy is not serious. It would be quite easy if necessary to dress up a man as a woman, and even a string of white figs would be sufficient presentment of gender; _simulata pro veris_ is a principle of wide acceptation in primitive ritual.