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

 358 PHOCION. the garrison was brought in on the twentieth of the month of Boedromion, just at the time of the great festi- val, when they carry forth Iacchus with solemn pomp from the city to Eleusis; so that the solemnity being dis- turbed, many began to call to mind instances, both an- cient and modern, of divine interventions and intima- tions. For in old time, upon the occasions of their hap- piest successes, the presence of the shapes and voices * 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 ex- treme calamity. Not many years before, they had a warning from the oracle at Dodona, that they should carefully guard the summits of Diana,f lest haply stran- gers should seize them. And 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 candi- date for initiation was washing a young pig in the haven of Cantharus,J 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 appearanees noticed at the battle of cated. Salamis. See the life of Therui- J One of the small basins or stocles, Vol. I., p. 248. The 20th of recesses (cantharus means a cup) Boedromion was the great day of of the Piraus. It was part of the the feast, on which they carried preliminaries performed by the the image of the mystic Iacchus niystse, to wash a young pig in this (Bacchus), son of Demeter (Earth- piece of water, mother), in solemn procession to Eleusis.
 * He alludes particularly to the t To whom Munychia was dedi-