The cult of this Thracian divinity differed in every particular from anything that we know of from Homer as Greek worship of the gods. On the other hand, it was closely related to the cult paid by the Phrygians, a people almost identical with the Thracians, to their mountain-mother Kybele. It was thoroughly orgiastic in character. The festival was held on the mountain tops in the darkness of night amid the flickering and uncertain light of torches. The loud and troubled sound of music was heard; the clash of bronze cymbals; the dull thunderous roar of kettledrums; and through them all penetrated the "maddening unison" of the deep-toned flute,[12\8] whose soul Phrygian _aulêtai_ had first waked to life. Excited by this wild music, the chorus of worshippers dance with shrill crying and jubilation.[13\8] We hear nothing about singing:[14\8] the violence of the dance left no breath for regular songs. These dances were something very different from the measured movement of the dance-step in which Homer's Greeks advanced and turned about in the _Paian_. It was in frantic, whirling, headlong eddies and dance-circles[15\8] that these inspired companies danced over the mountain slopes. They were mostly women who whirled round in these circular dances till the point of exhaustion was reached;[16\8] they were strangely dressed; they wore _bassarai_, long flowing garments, as it seems, stitched together out of fox-skins;[17\8] over these were doeskins,[18\8] and they even had horns fixed to their heads.[19\8] Their hair was allowed to float in the wind;[20\8] they carried snakes sacred to Sabazios[21\8] in their hands and brandished daggers or else thyrsos-wands, the spear-points of which were concealed in ivy-leaves.[22\8] In this fashion they raged wildly until every sense was wrought to the highest pitch of excitement, and in the "sacred frenzy" they fell upon the beast selected as their victim[23\8] and tore their captured prey limb from limb. Then with their teeth they seized the bleeding flesh and devoured it raw.