Among the conundrums relating to Roman ritual which Plutarch set himself to solve was this: ‘Why do they part the hair of brides with the point of a javelin?’ To this question Plutarch offers a number of answers, all based on the assumption that the spear was symbolical. Professor Rose in his discussion of the passage makes short work of these fumbling guesses, and points out that the original purpose of the spear was magical.

Eduard Norden, in the second half of his Agnostos Theos, has maintained with great learning and ingenuity the thesis that predications in the style ‘Thou art ,’ ‘I am ,’ are due to Oriental influence; purely Greek religious language does not go beyond ‘Thou dost ,’ ‘We are indebted to thee for .’ This view appears to be substantially correct. To Oriental influence we may, I think, trace also the custom of stringing together a series of brief predications in or (...) of the second person, for the most part not connected by conjunctions, and producing the effect of a rapid fire of assertions. The earlier Greek examples are not, as a rule, asyndetic. In the Hellenistic age and later we see the other style, as in Catullus 34. 13: ‘tu Lucina dolentibus Iuno dicta puerperis, tu potens Triuia et notho es dicta lumine luna, tu cursu dea menstruo … exples’ 61. 51: ‘te suis tremulus parens inuocat, tibi uirgines zonula soluunt sinus, te timens cupida nouus captat aure maritus’; in Lucretius' proem; in Ovid, Met. IV. 17: ‘tibi enim inconsumpta iuuenta est, tu puer aeternus, tu formosissimus alto conspiceris caelo, tibi cum sine cornibus adstas, uirgineum caput est’; in the invocation of Apollo at the end of the first book of Statius' Thebaid; in Capaneus' prayer to his strong right arm : ; in the Orphic hymns, II. 10-, though they consist mostly of accumulations of epithets; in Menander Rhetor περ πιδειкν : περ [al. Θοραι], περ σ Θνδες, παρ σοкα σελνη τν ετνα λαμβνει; in Valerius Maximus VI. (shrink)

That is, Saturno Augusto sacrum. Gaius Memmius Pudens sacerdos intrauit sub iugum libens animo. Intrauit sub iugum is peculiar to this text, but it is reasonable to suppose that the plain intrauit used in other inscriptions of priests of the African Saturnus is a shorter equivalent. Professor Schulten has suggested that some symbolical act indicating the assumption of priesthood is thereby indicated. We may go a little further.

Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, V. 9. 8, p. 99, Wendland preserves a curious hymn to Attis: ετε Κρόνον γένος ετε ‘Pέας μεγάλης, χαρ’ τ κατης κουσμα ‘Pέας Ἄττι σ καλοσι μν’ Ασσύριοι τριπόθητον Ἄδωνιν, δλη δ' Αγυπτος Ὄσιριν, πουράνιον μηνς κέρας ‘Eλληνς σοία, Σαμοθρκες Ἅδαμνα σεβάσμιον, Αίμόνιοι Κορύβαντα, κα ο ρύγες λλοτε μν IIάπαν, ποτ δ’ α νέκυν θεν… It is preceded by a long exegetical disquisition, which treats the various divine names in the order in which they occur in (...) the hymn, and includes the remarks, 8. 13, p. 91, τοτόν, ησι, θρκες ο περ τν Αμον οκοντες Κορύβαντα καλοσι, κα θρξν ο Φρύγες μοίως… τν ατν δ τοτν, Φησι, Φρύγες κα IIπαν καλοσιν . The statement here made is obviously at variance with the hymn: Αμόνιοι are properly Thessalians, and have nothing to do with Mount Haemus. Moreover, we have evidence for the cult of a Korybas, more commonly called a Kabeiros, at the foot of Mount Olympus, and as Mount Olympus lies on the borders of Thessaly and Macedonia, this may be designated as a cult by Thessalians. Αμόνιοι therefore agrees with facts, and the explanation given by Hippolytus or by the authority whom he was following can be explained as due to a confusion of place-names. It led here to the further error of θρκες; the attribution of orgiastic cults to Thracians was natural, but there seems a lack of evidence for Korybas or Korybantes in Thrace. (shrink)

Authorities on Apollo and Apollo cults are still divided into two camps. Some believe the god to have been Anatolian—Homeric god of the Troad, god of Branchidae and Lycia, a hawk-god, Smintheus, Lykios, with a western outpost at Carian-Ionian Delos, worshipped too in Crete, whence he passed to Pytho. In the other camp Apollo is, at least in part, believed to be a northerner, fair-haired, descending on Greece from the land of the Hyperboreans, the people ‘Behind the Beyond.’ And the (...) mainstay of those who claim a partially northern origin for Apollo is in tales which both at Delos and at Delphi link him with the Hyperboreans. (shrink)