15. We have as yet omitted the mention of two great national festivals celebrated at Amyclæ by the Spartans in honour of the chief deity of their race,(1478) viz., the _Hyacinthia_ and the _Carnea_, from a belief that they do not properly belong to Apollo. That the worship of the Carnean Apollo, in which both were included, was derived from Thebes, whence it was brought over by the Ægidæ to Amyclæ, has been proved in a former work;(1479) our present object is to show, from the symbols and rites of this worship, that it was originally derived more from the ancient religion of Demeter than from that of Apollo. The youth Hyacinthus, whom the Carnean Apollo accidentally struck with a quoit,(1480) evidently took his name from the flower (a dark-coloured species of iris), which in the ancient symbolical language was an emblem of death; and the fable of his death is clearly a relic of an ancient elementary religion. Now the hyacinth most frequently occurs, in this sense, in the worship of Demeter; thus, for example, it was under the name Κοσμοσάνδαλος sacred to Demeter Chthonia at Hermione.(1481) We find further proof of this in the ancient sculptures with which the grave, and at the same time the altar of Hyacinthus, was adorned: the artists indeed appear to have completely comprehended the spirit of the worship. We find Demeter, Cora, Pluto, and the Cadmean Dionysus, with Ino and Semele, and Hyacinthus himself, together with a sister named Polybœa.(1482) Polybœa is hardly, if at all, distinct from Cora,(1483) whom Lasus of Hermione called Melibœa. To this may be added the sacrifices to the dead, and lamentations customary on the first day(1484) (which were forbidden at all other festivals of Apollo); nightly processions,(1485) and several other detached traces of the symbols of Demeter and Dionysus,(1486) which, by an attentive observer, may be easily distinguished from those of Apollo. The time of the festival was also different: it took place on the longest day of the Spartan month Hecatombeus, which corresponds to the Attic Hecatombæon,(1487) at the time when Hylas was invoked on the mountains of Bithynia, and the tender productions of nature droop their languid heads.