19
There was one Cyanippus a Syracusan, that sacrificed to all the Gods but Bacchus; who took the contempt so heinously that he made him drunk, in which fit he got his daughter Cyane into a corner and lay with her. She in the mean time slipped his ring off his finger, and gave it to her nurse to keep, as a circumstance that some time or other might come to be brought in evidence. There brake out a pestilence, and the Pythian oracle advised the sacrificing of an incestuous person to the Gods that are the averters of such calamities, as the only remedy. Cyane, that understood the meaning of the oracle better than other people, took her father by the hair of the head and dragged him forth, first stabbing him and then herself.— Dositheus, in the Third Book of his Sicilian History.
19
In the time of celebrating the Bacchanalia at Rome, Aruntius, that had never drunk any wine since he was born, did not show such reverence for the power of the God as he ought to have done, so that Bacchus intoxicated him; and in that freak, Aruntius ravished his daughter Medullina. She came to know the ravisher by his ring, and an exploit came into her head, above what from her age could have been expected. She made her father drunk and set a garland upon his head, carrying him to the altar of Thunder, where with tears she killed him for robbing her so treacherously of her virginity.—Aristides, in the Third Book of his Italian History.
20
Erechtheus was told in a war he had with Eumolpus, that he should have the better of his enemy if he would but sacrifice his daughter. He advised upon the matter with his wife Praxithea, and delivered up his daughter after the manner of a common sacrifice.—Euripides, in his Erechtheus.
