The story of the two daughters of Eteokles who fell into a well while dancing in honour of Demeter and Kore, and were turned into cypresses, probably owes its origin to the desire to account for the reason why sacred dances were performed under these trees, in which the _numen_ of one or other of these goddesses was supposed to reside[263]. The story is given in _Geoponica_, XI. 4: The cypresses have two names, and they are indeed called _Charites_ on account of their delectable quality, and _Cypresses_ on account of their bearing and producing branches and seeds in such regular order. They were the daughters of Eteokles; and when dancing in imitation of the goddesses, they fell into a well; and the earth, commiserating their misfortune, produced flourishing plants like damsels[264]. It is unnecessary to give further examples; generally speaking, among the Greeks dancing at festivals, so far as their religious character is concerned, was performed in honour of some deity. A magical purpose is sometimes to be discerned, though rarely[265]; the ecstatic dance seems sometimes to have had this object, and this, as one would expect, is only the case in the earliest period of Greek religion[266]. We have dealt in Chap. VII. with the ecstatic dance and its objects. V As illustrating this type of dance among the Romans we may instance the festival of the _Ambarvalia_; this festival was not celebrated on a fixed date, but varied according to the state of the crops. The duties at the festival were carried out by _Fratres Arvales_, “the Brethren of the Ploughed Fields.” With solemn prayers, addressed primarily to Mars[267] to keep away all harm from the crops, these Brethren led round in formal procession the victims destined for sacrifice to Mars as the god of vegetation, viz. a pig, a ram, and a bull. The Arval Brothers had a special three-step dance (_tripudium_) which they performed in honour of Mars and the Lares; it was repeated three times, and during its performance they sang a hymn of praise to the god[268]. A minute account of their three days’ festival is given in the _Acta_ of the year 218 (Elagabalus, _CIL_, VI. 2104)[269]; the dance, which took place on the second, and most important, day is described as follows: “... Then the priests, shut up in the temple, girding up their togas, took the song-books and, marking the time, danced the three step singing thus ...[270].” Again, at the festival of the _Lupercalia_, held in February, when the sacrificial feast was ended, the _Luperci_, crowned and anointed, and, but for an apron of goatskin, entirely naked, ran round the Palatine Hill with thongs cut from the skin of the sacrificed goats in their hands[271]. The feast was held in honour of Faunus (the Greek Pan), who was worshipped under the name of Lupercus, in a grotto in the Palatine Mount called the Lupercal. The running round of the _Luperci_ with the goats’ thongs had a purificatory object[272] (see p.