Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/317

307 On the Attic Dionysia. 307 see a separation between the worshippers, for which it is diffi- cult to account on any other ground but a reluctance in a part of those who met at the festival to holding entire fellow- ship with the rest. In the same way I explain the custom of keeping silence at this Orestean meal during the eating and drinking (Plut. Sympos. ii. 10. l). It is however very probable that Orestes was selected for the purpose of the legend, for the sake of a covert allusion to the real motive, the desire of the higher classes to keep aloof from the rustics {ppecfTai)^ who had been admitted into the phratries : for this same mythical Orestes makes his appearance in another legend, where the allegorical meaning can admit of no doubt ^^. C. T. ^* The author alludes to a passage which Stanley in his Commentary on the Greek life of ^schylus quotes from an old Scholiast: kv n-oi's xpovoL's'OpeGirov edavfiaX^eTo Trap' "EXXtjo-i 060/xts, o§ tt/ocotos egeupe Tpayw^iKci^ pLeXcoSia^, He observes, p. 225 " Bentley (Epistola ad Mill. p. 45) quotes these words to ridicule them as a clumsy fiction, because he did not comprehend them as a poetical one. Orestes here again designates the old times and the rustic mode of life, as in the ^Etolian legend (Heca- teeus in Athen. ii. p. 35. Orestheus is father of <^NTto9, father of Oli/ev^y KXrjdeh cLTTo n-Mv dpiTreo)v)y and as in the Athenian of the Choes : Oeo/xis is nothing but AiopLo^^ who in Sicily passed for the inventor of the herdsman's song {BovKoXLaapLo^ Athen. XIV. p. 619.) and who in Attica was the first who slaughtered the ox at the Buphonia, and is termed priest of Jupiter (Porphyr. de Abstin. ii. 22.)"