Among the Romans, under the Empire and onwards, this worship became prominent, and was still existent in the 4th century, for Symmachus tells of the celebrations of the festivals of Magna Mater[214]. Its special feature was the orgiastic dance of the priests[215], accompanied by song, which culminated in self-laceration. The third day of this festival of Kybele and Attis was known as the Day of Blood (_Dies Sanguinis_); the Archigallus or high-priest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. Nor was he alone in making this bloody sacrifice: Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt in a frenzy of excitement, and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood[216]. Thus, while among the Romans during the early centuries of the Christian era, and owing to the influx of oriental cults, the ecstatic dance in its most barbaric form was prominent, among the Greeks this form of it made but little appeal, and it is only rarely that reference is made to it. But although this extreme and sanguinary form was distasteful to the Greeks, the ecstatic dance was with them of a very wild character; and it is possible that the _purpose_ of this type of dance among Greeks and Romans respectively may have had something to do with its form. Reference is made to this point below (see p. 138), but we must first take a brief glance at the ecstatic dance as practised among some of the uncultured races. IV Among uncultured peoples the ecstatic dance appears both in its milder and its more barbaric forms. To take a few examples of the former first. The means employed to become “possessed” are various, but the most usual is the dance accompanied by the rhythmic beating of a drum or other instrument; this is persisted in until with the rising excitement it becomes wilder and wilder, and ultimately brings about unconsciousness, or at least semi-consciousness, in the dancer. Thus, the Vedda form of “possession” is attained by a dance which began with moderate movements in which “the shaman, while uttering invocations to the spirits, circles round the offerings; the dance increases in speed until the seizure takes place[217].” Again, in Southern India we have the example of the so-called “devil-dancers,” who work themselves into paroxysms in order to gain inspiration, whereby they profess to cure their patients. So, with furious dancing to music and chanting of the attendants the Bodo priest brings on a fit of maniacal inspiration in which the deity fills him and gives oracles through him[218].