superintend the instruction of the candidates for initiation, who for that purpose were divided into groups and instructed by officials known as mystagogues. The personal name of the hierophant was never mentioned. It was supposed to be unknown, "wafted away into the sea by the mystic law," and he was known only by the title of the office which he bore. An interesting inscription was found some years ago at Eleusis, engraved on the base of a statue erected to a hierophant: "Ask not my name; the mystic rule (or packet) has carried it away into the blue sea. But when I reach the fated day, and go to the abode of the blest, then all who care for me will pronounce it." One of his sons had written below this inscription, after the death of the hierophant: "Now we, his children, reveal the name of the best of fathers, which, when alive, he hid in the depths of the sea. This is the famous Apollonius." There is extant an epigram by a female hierophant, which runs: "Let my name remain unspoken: on being shut off from the world when the sons of Cecrops made me hierophantide to Demeter, I myself hid it in the vasty depths." Eunapius, in _Vita Maxim_, says: "I may not tell the name of him who was then hierophant, for it was he who initiated me." The manner in which the name was committed to the sea was either by the immersion of the bearer or by writing the name on a leaden tablet, which was cast into the sea. The holy name, by which the hierophant was afterwards known, was derived from the name of some god or bore some ritualistic meaning. Sometimes the hierophant was known simply by the title of his office with the addition of his father's name. The rule as to the public mention of the former name of the hierophant was occasionally transgressed, and there is the instance of the atheistic philosopher Theodorus addressing a hierophant by his discarded name of Lacrateides, and also of Deinias, who was put into prison for the offence of addressing a hierophant by his discarded family name. Lucian refers to this in one passage in _Lexiphanes_: "The first I met were a torch-bearer, a hierophant, and others of the initiated, haling Deinias before the judge, and protesting that he had called them by their names, though he well knew that, from the time of their sanctification, they were nameless, and no more to be named but by hallowed names."