Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/188

 180 STRABO. CASAUB. 466. work, which have been erroneously placed by historians under one head on account of the sameness of name : for in- stance, accounts relating to " Curetic affairs " and " concerning the Curetes " have been considered as identical with accounts " concerning the people (of the same name) who inhabited jEtolia and Acarnania." But the former differ from the latter, and resemble rather the accounts which we have of Satyri and Silenes, Bacchse and Tityri ; for the Curetes are represented as certain daemons, or ministers of the gods, by those who have handed down the traditions respecting Cretan and Phrygian affairs, and which involve certain religious rites, some mystical, others the contrary, relative to the nur- ture of Jupiter in Crete ; the celebration of orgies in honour of the mother of the gods, in Phrygia, and in the neighbour- hood of the Trojan Ida. There is however a very great variety 1 in these accounts. According to some, the Cory- bantes, Cabeiri, Idaean Dactyli, and Telchines are repre- sented as the same persons as the Curetes ; according to others, they are related to, yet distinguished from, each other by some slight differences ; but to describe them in general terms and more at length, they are inspired with an enthusi- astic and Bacchic frenzy, which is exhibited by them as minis- ters at the celebration of the sacred rites, by inspiring terror with armed dances, accompanied with the tumult and noise of cymbals, drums, and armour, and with the sound of pipes and shouting ; so that these sacred ceremonies are nearly the same as those that are performed among the Samothracians in Lemnus, and in many other places ; since the ministers of the god are said to be the same. 2 The whole of this kind of Samothrace. Again, on the other hand, the Curetes have been mistaken for an ^Etolian people, bearing the same name. Heyne, Not. ad Virgil. ^En. iii. 130. Religion, et Sacror. cum furore peract. Orig. Comm. Soc. R. Scient. Getting, vol. viii. Dupuis, origin de tous les cultes, torn. 2. Sainte Croix Mem. pourservir a la religion Secrete, &c., Job. Guberleth. Bias, philol. de Myster. deorum Cabir. 1703. Fr^-ret. Recher. pour servir a 1'histoire des Cyclopes, &c. Acad. des Inscript. &c., vol. xxiii. His. pag. 27. 1749. 1 roaavTT) TToiKiXta, will bear also to be translated, id tantum varietatis, " this difference only," as Groskurd observes. 2 M. de Saint Croix (Recherches sur les MystSres, &c. sect. 2, page 25) is mistaken in asserting that " Strabo clearly refutes the statements of those who believed that the Cabeiri, Dactyli, Curetes, Corybantes, and Telchines, were not only the same kind of persons, but even separate