{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th1/th132.htm","path":"gno/th1/th132.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th1/th132.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nXXXV. 1. That, however, he is the same as Dionysus\u2014who should know better than thou thyself, O Klea, who art Archi-charila 5 of the Thyiades at Delphi,\nand wast dedicated to the Osiriaca before thou wert born? 1\nBut if for the sake of others we must quote testimonies, let us leave the things that must not be spoken of in their proper place.\n2. The rites, however, which the priests perform in burning the Apis, when they transport its body on a raft, in no way fall short of a Bacchic Orgy. For they put on fawn-skins and carry thyrsuses, 2 and shout and dance just like those inspired at celebrations of the Mysteries of Dionysus.\n3. Wherefore many of the Greeks make Dionysus also bull-formed; while the women of the Eleians invoke him praying \u201cthe god with the bull\u2019s foot to come\u201d to them.\n4. The Argives, moreover, give Dionysus the epithet of \u201cbull-born,\u201d and they call him up out of the water with the sound of trumpets, casting a lamb into the abyss for the Gate-keeper. 3 The trumpets they hide in thyrsi, as Socrates has said in his \u201c[Books] on Rites.\u201d 4\n5. The Titanic [Passions] also and the [Dionysian] Night-rites agree with what we are told about the tearings-in-pieces and revivings and palingeneses of Osiris; and similarly the [stories] of the burials.\n6. For both Egyptians point to tombs of Osiris everywhere, as has been said, 1 and [also] Delphians believe the relics of Dionysus are deposited with them by the side of the Oracle, and the Holy Ones offer an offering, of which we must not speak, in the fane of Apollo, when the Thyiades awake \u201cHim of the winnowing fan.\u201d\n7. And that Greeks consider Dionysus to be lord and prince not only of wine, but of every moist nature, Pindar witnesses sufficiently when he sings:\nMay gladsome Dionysus make the pasturage of trees to grow\u2014\nPure light of autumn. 2\n8. For which cause also they who give worship to Osiris are forbidden to destroy a cultivated tree or to stop up a water-source.\n310:5 The text reads \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03b9\u03ba\u03bb\u1f70\u2014an apparently impossible collection of letters. As no one has so far purged the reading, I would suggest \u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03bb\u03b1\u03bd or \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03b9-\u03c7\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03bb\u03b1\u03bd. Stending (in Roscher, s.v.) reminds us of the myth of the orphan maid Charila, who during a famine begged alms at the gate of the palace of the King of ancient Delphi; the King not only refused her, but drove her away slapping her face with his shoe. Whereupon the little maid for shame hanged herself. After the famine was over the Oracle decreed an atonement for her death. And so every nine years an effigy made to represent Charila was done to death, and then carried off by the leader of the Thyiades (or priestesses of Bacchus), and buried, with a rope round its neck, in a gorge. Cf. Harrison (Jane E.), Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1903), p. 106. As Klea was leader of the Thyiades, this office fell to her; it may, therefore, even be that her name is some play on Charila.\n311:1 Lit., \u201cfrom father and mother.\u201d\n311:2 Symbolic wands, generally cane-like or knotted like a bamboo, and sometimes wreathed in ivy and vine leaves, with a pine-cone at top.\n311:3 \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03c0\u03c5\u03bb\u03b1\u03cc\u03c7\u1ff3.\n311:4 M\u00fcller, iv. 498. This was probably Socrates of Cos, who is known to have been the author of a work entitled \u1f18\u03c0\u03b9\u03ba\u03bb\u03ae\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u1ff6\u03bd (e.g. Dion. La\u00ebrt., ii. 4), meaning either \u201cPrayers to the Gods,\u201d or \u201cSurnames of the Gods.\u201d\n312:1 Cf. xx. 5.\n312:2 Bergk, i. 433.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1: IX. Plutarch: Concerning ...","type":"page"}