14
These practices are all very well, no doubt, and also those of the Assyrians and those of the Phrygians and Lydians; but if you go to Egypt, then, ah! then you will see much that is venerable and truly in keeping with Heaven—Zeus with the head of a ram, good Hermes with the head of a dog, Pan completely metamorphosed into a goat, some other god into an ibis, another into a crocodile, another into a monkey! Wouldst thou enquire the cause of these doings in order to know it, Iliad6, 150. you will hear plenty of men of letters and scribes and shaven prophets say—but first of all, as the saying goes, Uninitiate, shut up your doors!An oft-quoted tag from a lost Orphic poem. Those who have not been initiated in the mysteries are required to go into their houses and close the doors, because the emblems of Dionysus are going to pass through the streets. —that on the eve of the war, the revolt of the giants, the gods were panic-stricken and came to Egypt, thinking that surely there they could hide from their enemies; and then one of them in his terror entered into a goat, another into. a ram, and others into other beasts or birds; so of course the gods still keep the forms they took then. All this, naturally, is on record in the temples, having been committed to writing more than ten thousand years ago!
15
Sacrifices are the same there as with us, except that they mourn over the victim, standing about it and beating their breasts after it has been slain. In some cases they even bury it after simply cutting its throat.
