Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

XXXIV. 1. Moreover, they say that sun and moon do not use chariots for vehicles, but sail round in boats — [thus] riddling their being nourished by and being born in the " Moist."

2. And they think that Homer also, like Thales, set down Water as source and birth of all things, after learning [it] from Egyptians ; for that Oceanus is Osiris, and Tethys * Isis, as nursing all things and rearing them all up together.

3. For Greeks also call " emission of seed " cnr-ovariav and "intercourse" (rvv-ov<riav, and "son" (viov) from " water " (vSaros) and " moisten " (vcrai) ', 2 and [they call] Dionysus Hues, as lord of the Moist Nature, in that he is no other than Osiris.

4. In fact, Hellanicus3 seems to have heard Osiris called Hu-siris by the priests ; for he persists in thus calling the god, presumably from his nature and power of invention.*

CONCERNING OSIRIS AND DIONYSUS

XXXV. 1. That, however, he is the same as Dionysus — who should know better than thou thyself, 0 Klea, who art Archi-charila 5 of the Thyiades at Delphi,

1 As connected with TfiOi), the Nurse of all, and identified by some with the Primal Earth ; and so signified by the word-play TijBuv and n0r;»'-oujieVi?»/ ("nursing").

2 The word-play runs : ap-ows-ia, sun-ows-ia, hu-ion, hud-atos, /ius-ai.

3 The most eminent of the Greek logographers ; fl. 553-504 B.C.

4 tvpfffKos — probably another word-play, heuresis and husiris.

6 The text reads apxut\a — an apparently impossible collection of letters. As no one has so far purged the reading, I would suggest xdpt\av or a.pxi-x&piKa.v. Stending (in Roscher, s.v.) reminds us of the myth of the orphan maid Charila, who during a famine begged alms at the gate of the palace of the King of ancient Delphi ; the King not only refused her, but drove her away slapping her face with his shoe. Whereupon the little maid for shame hanged herself. After the famine was over the Oracle decreed an atonement for her death. And so every nine years an effigy made to represent Charila was done to death, and then carried oft7 by the leader of the Thyiades (or priestesses of Bacchus), and buried, with a rope round its neck, in a gorge. Cf. Harrison (Jane E.), Prolegomena to the Study of and wast dedicated to the Osiriaca before thou. wert born ? 1

But if for the sake of others we must quote testimonies, let us leave the things that must not be spoken of in their proper place.

2. The rites, however, which the priests perform in burning the Apis, when they transport its body on a raft, in no way fall short of a Bacchic Orgy. For they put on fawn-skins and carry thyrsuses,2 and shout and dance just like those inspired at celebrations of the Mysteries of Dionysus.

3. Wherefore many of the Greeks make Dionysus also bull-formed; while the women of the Eleians invoke him praying "the god with the bull's foot to come " to them.

4. The Argives, moreover, give Dionysus the epithet of " bull-born," and they call him up out of the water with the sound of trumpets, casting a lamb into the abyss for the Gate-keeper.3 The trumpets they hide in thyrsi, as Socrates has said in his " [Books] on Rites."4

5. The Titanic [Passions] also and the [Dionysian]
Night-rites agree with what we are told about the
tearings-in-pieces and revivings and palingeneses of
Osiris ; and similarly the [stories] of the burials.

Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1903), p. 106. As Klea was leader of the Thyiades, this office fell to her ; it may, therefore, even be that her name is some play on Charila.

1 Lit., " from father and mother."

2 Symbolic wands, generally cane-like or knotted like a bamboo, and sometimes wreathed in ivy and vine leaves, with a pine-cone at top.

3 rip irv\adx<f.

4 Mliller, iv. 498. This was probably Socrates of Cos, who is known to have been the author of a work entitled 'EirtK\-f)fftts 0twv (e.g. Dion. Lae'rt., ii. 4), meaning either " Prayers to the Gods," or " Surnames of the Gods."

6. For both Egyptians point to tombs of Osiris everywhere, as has been said,1 and [also] Delphians believe the relics of Dionysus are deposited with them by the side of the Oracle, and the Holy Ones offer an offering, of which we must not speak, in the fane of Apollo, when the Thyiades awake "Him of the winnowing fan."