Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/50

 34 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. The pageant attending the resurrection was in brilliant con- trast with that which had preceded it. Branches of pine re- appeared amidst the acclamations and the tumults of joy of the multitude, whose delight at the return of the god was translated by gambols and running about. 1 The music was in harmony with the new mood. It had been grave, sad, and slow before ; now the clapping of hands, the dancing, capering, singing, and striking of brazen shields to mark the time, could scarcely keep pace with its phrenetic, bewildering movements. 2 In order to keep up or renew their flagging spirits, they had recourse to copious libations, until, overcome with fatigue and exhaustion, they one by one fell by the roadside, among the woodlands and vales whither they had wandered. The fifth day was given up to rest, so as to enable them to get over the effect of their violent emotions, and prepare them to return to the routine of daily life. The lavatto, or bath, occurred on the sixth and last day of the performance, when the puppet-god was carried to a clear running stream, stripped of its gay bridal apparel, and plunged into the water, even as a bride on the eve of her marriage. 3 The favour enjoyed by Asiatic rituals away from their original supports with his sinister hand; the dexter holding up an olive branch covered with berries. A thick golden chain goes twice round his neck, and from it hangs a golden shrine of Atys, whose image, crowned with the Phrygian tiara, is distinctly seen. Against the wall is a colonnette topped by a bearded bust, perhaps of the same Atys before his self-mutilation, or Zeus-Pater together with a scourge, flute, tambourine, and the mystic cystus. 1 The solemnity of Cybele was opened with the Dendrophory, or carrying the pine to the temple the arbor intrat of the calendar. With regard to the sacred tree, the fillets always surrounding it, as well as the place it occupied in these mysteries, see ARNOBIUS, Adversus gentes, v. 16; and ZOGA, Bassi rilievi antichi di Roma, torn. i. Plates XIII., XIV. 2 LUCRETIUS, De natura rerum, ii. 621 ; APOLLONIUS, Argonautica, i. 1135-1139. 3 The erection of the famous temple of Cybele and Atys at Pessinus was ascribed to Midas (Diodorus, iii. 58). In obedience to the injunctions of the Sibylline books, the Romans removed, by order of the Senate, the statue, bcetylus, of the goddess to their city, where the rites connected with her mysteries seemed to have followed her. The Italians were particularly careful in washing every year, on the 6th of the calendar of April, her shrine in the waters of the Alno, a rivulet which falls into the Tiber close to Rome. This was in imitation of the ceremony which was yearly enacted at Pessinus, on the banks of the Callus, a stream which flows through the town, where the lavatio could be performed, before it joins the Sanganus. It is evidently in allusion to this rite that Herodotus says, " The Phrygians used to celebrate the orgies of the river Callus, a torrent which flows through the town of Pessinus" (Hist., i. 35).