[50] Herodot. v. 7, vii. 111; Euripid. Hecub. 1249, and Rhêsus, 969, and the Prologue to the Bacchæ; Strabo, x. p. 470; Schol. ad Aristophan. Aves, 874; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1069; Harpocrat. v. Σάβοι; Photius, Εὐοῖ Σαβοῖ. The “Lydiaca” of Th. Menke (Berlin, 1843) traces the early connection between the religion of Dionysos and that of Cybelê, c. 6, 7. Hoeckh’s Krêta (vol. i. p. 128-134) is instructive respecting the Phrygian religion.
[51] Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, 9. Πᾶσα γὰρ Βάκχεια καὶ πᾶσα ἡ τοιαύτη κίνησις μάλιστα τῶν ὀργάνων ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς αὐλοῖς· τῶν δ᾽ ἁρμονίων ἐν τοῖς Φρυγιστὶ μέλεσι λαμβάνει ταῦτα τὸ πρέπον, οἷον ὁ διθύραμβος δοκεῖ ὁμολογουμένως εἶναι Φρύγιον. Eurip. Bacch. 58.—
Αἴρεσθε τἀπιχώρι᾽ ἐν πόλει Φρυγῶν Τύμπανα, Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμὰ θ᾽ εὑρήματα, etc.
Plutarch, Εἰ. in Delph. c. 9; Philochor. Fr. 21, ed. Didot, p. 389. The complete and intimate manner in which Euripidês identifies the Bacchic rites of Dionysos with the Phrygian ceremonies in honor of the Great Mother, is very remarkable. The fine description given by Lucretius (ii. 600-640) of the Phrygian worship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing.
From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the Homeric men, found their way into the Grecian worship: and there is one amongst them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions many persons guilty of private or involuntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile or to make pecuniary satisfaction; but he never once describes any of them to have either received or required purification for the crime.[52] Now in the time subsequent to Homer, purification for homicide comes to be considered as indispensable: the guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society of man or the worship of the gods until he has received it, and special ceremonies are prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydians and among the Greeks:[53] we know that it formed no part of the early religion of the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably suspect that they borrowed it from the former. The oldest instance known to us of expiation for homicide was contained in the epic poem of the Milesian Arktinus,[54] wherein Achillês is purified by Odysseus for the murder of Thersitês: several others occurred in the later or Hesiodic epic—Hêraklês, Pêleus, Bellerophôn, Alkmæôn, Amphiktyôn, Pœmander, Triopas,—from whence they probably passed through the hands of the logographers to Apollodôrus, Diodôrus, and others.[55] The purification of the murderer was originally operated, not by the hands of any priest or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king, who goes through the appropriate ceremonies in the manner recounted by Herodotus in his pathetic narrative respecting Crœsus and Adrastus.