Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/366

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358
PHOCION.

the garrison was brought in on the twentieth of the month of Boedromion, just at the time of the great festival, when they carry forth Iacchus with solemn pomp from the city to Eleusis; so that the solemnity being disturbed, many began to call to mind instances, both ancient and modern, of divine interventions and intimations. 2For in old time, upon the occasions of their happiest successes, the presence of the shapes and voices[1] of the mystic ceremonies had been vouchsafed to them, striking terror and amazement into their enemies; but now, at the very season of their celebration, the gods themselves stood witnesses of the saddest oppressions of Greece, the most holy time being profaned, and their greatest jubilee made the unlucky date of their most extreme calamity. Not many years before, they had a warning from the oracle at Dodona, that they should carefully guard the summits of Diana,[2] lest haply strangers should seize them. 3And about this very time, when they dyed the ribbons and garlands with which they adorn the couches and cars of the procession, instead of a purple, they received only a faint yellow color; and to make the omen yet greater, all the things that were dyed for common use, took the natural color. While a candidate for initiation was washing a young pig in the haven of Cantharus,[3] a shark seized him, bit off all his lower parts up to the belly, and devoured them, by which the god gave them manifestly to understand, that having lost

  1. ↑ He alludes particularly to the appearances noticed at the battle of Salamis. See the life of Themistocles, Vol. I., p. 248. The 20th of Boedromion was the great day of the feast, on which they carried the image of the mystic Iacchus (Bacchus), son of Demeter (Earth-mother), in solemn procession to Eleusis.
  2. ↑ To whom Munychia was dedicated.
  3. ↑ One of the small basins or recesses (cantharus means a cup) of the Piraus. It was part of the preliminaries performed by the mystæ, to wash a young pig in this piece of water.
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