The Bacchic ecstasy was not merely drunkenness, but an epidemic madness induced by long-continued dancing and gesticulating to the sound of cymbals and other noisy instruments, in all respects identical with the methods of inducing the Hindoo _Waren_. The dancing mania also of the fifteenth century, described by Hecker in his _Epidemics of the Middle Ages_, was induced in the same manner, and its effects were the same,—possession, illumination, and insensibility to external influences. That the Bacchic and Corybantic frenzies were, in all respects, identical with the middle age dancing manias, and with the possession of those who still exhibit the influences of _Waren_ in Hindoostan, can hardly be doubted. "As for the Bacchanalian motions and friskings of the _Corybantes_," says Plutarch in his Essay on Love, "there is a way to allay these extravagant transports, by changing the measure from the _Trochaic_ to the _Spondaic_, and the tone from the _Phrygian_ to the _Doric_:" just as with the dancers of St. Vitus, and those bit by the Tarantula. Hecker states, "The swarms of St. John’s dancers were accompanied by minstrels playing those noisy instruments which roused their morbid feelings; moreover, by means of intoxicating music, a kind of demoniacal festival for the rude multitude was established, which had the effect of spreading this unhappy malady wider and wider. Soft harmony was, however, employed to calm the excitement of those affected, and it is mentioned as a character of the tunes played with this view to the St. Vitus’s dancers, that they contained transitions from a quick to a slow measure, and passed gradually from a high to a low key." After the termination of the frenzy the conduct of the dancers, as well indeed as of all the victims of this species of possession, whether _Taratati_, convulsionnaires, or revivalists, tallied precisely with that of the Bacchic women. Plutarch, in his thirteenth example of the Virtues of Woman, has this graphic picture of the condition of a band of Bacchante after one of their orgies. "When the tyrants of Phocea had taken Delphos, and the Thebans undertook that war against them which was called the Holy War, certain women devoted to Bacchus (which they called _Thyades_) fell frantic, and went a gadding by night, and, mistaking their way, came to Amphissa, and being very much tired, and not as yet in their right wits, they flung themselves down in the market-place and fell asleep, as they lay scattered up and down here and there. But the wives of the Amphisseans, fearing because the city was engaged to aid in the Phocean war, and abundance of the tyrants’ soldiers were present in the city, the _Thyades_ should have any indignity put upon them, ran forth all of them into the market-place, and stood silently round about them; neither would offer them any disturbance while they slept, but when they were awake they attended their service particularly, and brought them refreshments; and,