Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/324

272 cannot be imputed to intoxications by wine, but must needs have had a deeper foundation. What this was, we may gather large hints, from certain circumstances in the course of their mysteries. For, in the first place, there was, in their processions, an intire mixture and confusion of sexes; they affected to ramble about hills and deserts: their garlandgarlands [sic] were of ivy and vine, emblems of cleaving and clinging; or of fir, the parent of turpentine. It is added, that they imitated satiressatyrs [sic], were attended by goats, and rode upon asses, all, companions of great skill and practice, in affairs of gallantry. They bore for their ensigns certain curious figures, perched upon long poles, made into the shape and size of the virga genitalis, with its appurtenances; which were so many shadows and emblems of the whole mystery, as well as trophies set up by the female conquerors. Lastly, in a certain town of Attica, the whole solemnity, stripped of all its types, was performed in puris naturalibus, the votaries not flying in covies, but sorted into couples. The same may be farther conjectured from the death of Orpheus, one of the institutors of these mysteries, who was torn in pieces by women, because he refused to communicate his orgies to them ; which others explained, by telling us, he had castrated himself upon grief for the loss of his wife.

Omitting many others of less note, the next fanaticks we meet with of any eminence, were the numerous sects of hereticks, appearing in the five first centuries of the Christian era, from Simon Magus and his followers, to those of Eutyches. I have collected