The day following I saw them apparelled in divers colours, and hideously tricked out, having their faces ruddled with paint, and their eyes tricked out with grease, mitres on their heads, vestments coloured like saffron, surplices of silk and linen; and some ware white tunics painted with purple stripes which pointed every way like spears, girt with belts, and on their feet were yellow shoes. And they attired the goddess in silken robe, and put her upon my back. Then they went forth with their arms naked to their shoulders, bearing with them great swords and mighty axes, shouting and dancing, like mad persons, to the sound of the pipe. After that we had passed many small villages, we fortuned to come to a certain rich man’s house, where, at our first entry, they began to howl all out of tune and hurl themselves hither and thither as though they were mad. They made a thousand gests with their feet and their heads; they would bend down their necks, and spin round so that their hair flew out at a circle; they would bite their own flesh; finally, everyone took his two-edged weapon and wounded his arms in divers places. Meanwhile, there was one more mad than the rest, that fetched many deep sighs from the bottom of his heart, as though he had been ravished in spirit, or replenished with divine power, and he feigned a swoon and frenzy, as if (forsooth) the presence of the gods were not wont to make men better than before, but weak and sickly.... And therewithal he took a whip, such as is naturally borne by these womanish men, with many twisted knots and tassels of wool, and strung with sheep’s knuckle-bones, and with the knotted thongs scourged his own body, very strong to bear the pain of the blows, so that you might see the ground to be wet and defiled with the womanish blood that issued out abundantly with the cutting of the swords and the blows of the scourge...[193]. The close parallel of this procedure of these Syrian priests with that of the prophets of Baal needs no insisting upon. III We turn now to Greek sources; and here the material is as abundant as it is interesting; the examples to be given are therefore restricted in number, but they will be sufficient to illustrate the important part that this type of dance played in Greek religious ritual. By way of introduction the following words of Farnell[194] will be found instructive; he is dealing with the earliest period of Greek religion, and in writing about the worship of Dionysos, says he was vaguer in outline (than Apollo or Athene), a changeful power conceived more in accordance with daimonistic, later with pantheistic, thought, incarnate in many animal-shapes, and operative in the life-processes of the vegetative world; and an atmosphere of Nature-magic accompanied him; then he goes on to say that