only discountenanced
the eating of raw flesh, which before had been usual. But this could not be
true of Orpheus: for it was a circumstance, which made one part of his
institutes. If there were ever such a man, as Orpheus, he enjoined the very
thing, which he is supposed to have prohibited. For both in the [643]orgies
of Bacchus and in the rites of Ceres, as well as of other Deities, one part
of the mysteries consisted in a ceremony styled [Greek: omophagia]; at
which time they eat the flesh quite crude with the blood. In Crete at the
[644]Dionusiaca they used to tear the flesh with their teeth from the
animal, when alive. This they did in commemoration of Dionusus. [645]Festos
funeris dies statuunt, et annuum sacrum trieterica consecratione componunt,
omnia per ordinem facientes, quae puer moriens aut fecit, aut passus est.
_Vivum laniant dentibus Taurum_, crudeles epulas annuis commemorationibus
excitantes. Apollonius Rhodius speaking of persons like to Bacchanalians,
represents them [646][Greek: Thuasin omoborois ikelai], as savage as the
Thyades, who delighted in bloody banquets. Upon this the Scholiast
observes, that the Maenadas, and Bacchae, used to devour the raw limbs of
animals, which they had cut or torn asunder. [647][Greek: Pollakis tei
maniai kataschisthenta, kai omosparakta, esthiousin.] In the island of
Chios it was a religious custom to tear a man limb from limb by way of
sacrifice to Dionusus. The same obtained in Tenedos. It is Porphyry, who
gives the account. He was a staunch Pagan, and his evidence on that account
is of consequence. He quotes for the rites of Tenedos Euelpis the
Carystian. [648][Greek: Ethuonto de kai en Chio toi Omadioi Dionusoi
anthropon diespontes; kai en Tenedoi, phesin Euelpis ho Karustios.] From
all which we may learn one sad truth, that there is scarce any thing so
impious and unnatural, as not at times to have prevailed.

We need not then wonder at the character given of the Lestiygones, Lamiae,
and Cyclopians, who were inhabitants of Sicily, and lived nearly in the
same part of the island. They seem to have been the priests, and
priestesses, of the Leontini, who resided at Pelorus, and in the Cyclopian
towers: on which account the Lamiae are by Lucilius termed [649]Turricolae.
They are supposed to have delighted in human blood, like the Cyclopians,
but with this difference, that their chief repast was the flesh of young
persons and children; of which they are represented as