in the Lydian Katakekaumene, otherwise called Meonia. Here an old Meonian or Lydian popula- tion was mixed with a body of colonists introduced by the Persian kings five centuries B.c.; and in the Roman inscriptions six or seven hundred years later the goddess is called Artemis Anaitis, the first name being her ordinary title in Lydian cities, and the second being Persian. In other Lydian cities, where the same mixture of population took place, the goddess is called Artemis Persike, in which the same religious mixture is even more clearly expressed. In cultus, obscure as that sub- ject always is, it is certain that the fire-worship and Magian priests of the Persians were thus in- troduced into those Lydian cities.* :
(6) There was often a conscious and deliberate elaboration of forms and ritual by the priesthood. This enlargement of the ceremonial was the result of an attempt to adapt the established religion to popular taste, and was accomplished chiefly by in- troducing rites that had proved fashionable. The Mysteries celebrated at different religious centres competed with one another in attractiveness, for there was much to gain from a great concourse of worshippers in any city. Hence all of them adapted to their. own purposes elements which seemed to be effective in others; and thus a marked similarity of character between the rites of Eleusis, Samothrace, and Anatolia came to exist. Sometimes, at least, new priests were added along with the new ceremonies. These ceremonies were often derived from or influenced by the growth of mythology, and they seem (so far as the scanty evidence justifies an opinion) to have generally tended to obscure any healthy religious idea that lay in the ritual, and to have increased the ugly and repulsive element.
The older forms of religion are the simpler, but it is not probable that any form was ever abso- lutely simple. There is a certain tendency in human nature to mingle forms, and to see the Divine idea under several aspects. Just as in early literary expression metaphors are often mixed, so in primitive thought different envisage- ments of the Divine power arise simultaneously, and these pass into one another without the in- consistency being felt. Still, it is beyond question that, when we get any of these religious ideas at an early stage, it has a simpler form and embodies a single process, though the accompanying religious myth may express the process in a way that in- volves some inconsistency in details. ‘This ancient form is markedly and unmistakably different from the elaborate and artificial ritual of later times.
Especially, the elaborate dramas of the later Mysteries, as played before the initiated in the Roman Imperial ‘period, are obviously composed by a process of syncretism out of various inhar- monious and inconsistent cults. In the story enacted in the Eleusinian Mysteries, as described by Clemens Alexandrinus, there are traces so obviously Phrygian, that many modern scholars have regarded his whole description as applying to the Phrygian Mysteries alone. But Clemens distinctly implies that he is describing the Eleu- sinian Mysteries, and he illustrates his description and his invective by quoting other details, saying that these are taken fron the Phrygian Mysteries. The explanation of these facts, undoubtedly, must be that the later Eleusinian Mysteries had been influenced by the Phrygian Mysteries.
That details from various sources were united in those later Mysteries is shown by their composite character: there is not merely the fundamental element, the story of the Divine father and mother
* Pausanias, vy. 27. 6, vul.6. 6; the name Artemis Persike ig found often on coins of Hierocesarea in Lydia. See also Head, Catalogue of Coins, Brit. Mus. : Lydia, pp. lviii-lxvi and 111 ff,
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and the birth of the child: there are several such stories interlocked in one another: the god-bull, the god-ram, the god-serpent, appear in different details, and pass into each other in kaleidoscopic fashion. There is here an original germ and a series of successive additions due to the reception of new religious forms and ideas, which were in- corporated in the growing ceremonial.
(6) Purification.—This subject has been alluded to in § III (6), where the later rules of ceremonial purity are mentioned. But there can be no doubt that certain practices of purification were prescribed in the original Anatolian ritual. The Greek puri- ficatory rules for homicides were identical with the Lydian ;* and, as the Lydian cannot be supposed to be derived from the Greek, we must here see an example of the influence which throughout ancient times was exerted by Anatolian religion on Greek. In these and in the preparation for the Mysteries the swine was the cleansing animal.
The ceremonial of purification after homicide carries the inquirer back to a very primitive stage. As the ritual was common to Greece and Lydia (and doubtless Phrygia also, as is probable though unattested), we may presume that the early Greek ideas connected with it are true of ‘Anata also. Now, one of the rites of the Dionysiac festival Anthesteria was called ‘the Cans’ (Xées), because every celebrant drank out of a separate can ; and the myth explained that Demophon, son of Theseus, instituted the custom when Orestes came to Athens unpurified: wishing to receive him hos- pitably, yet not to let an impure person drink out of the same cup as the pure worshippers, the king ordered that every person should drink from his own can separately, and proposed a prize to the best drinker. Here the rite of competition and prize-giving to an individual victor is Hellenic, and belongs to the later development (B, § III). But other elements in the ceremony point to an early date ; the chief rite was the marriage of the representative woman or queen among the people (the wife of the Archon Basileus) to the god; and the idea was also associated with this day that it was accursed, for the dead arose on it and must be propitiated. Here again the idea of connecting evil omen and a curse with the dead is Hellenic and late (see B, § V); but the association of the rising from the dead with the Divine marriage is