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Virgil made Theocritus and Hesiod speak in Latin. Horace had brought over the old Aeolian bards; Propertius, too, must make his boast of having enticed Callimachus to the Tiber's banks "Primus ego ingredior puro de fonte sacerdos Itala per Graios orgia ferre chores."
"Alii multis diebus abstinent cibo, alii igne uruntur, ac ferro secantur, nullum doloris vestigium preferentes; multi sunt vocem e pectore mittentes, qui olim engastrimuthi dicebantur; hoc autem maxime eis contingit cum orgia quædam exercent, atque circumferuntur in orbem.
These antique obsequies were undoubtedly affecting; but the return of the mourners from the burning is the most appalling orgia, without the horror of crime, of which I have ever heard.
At the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus, the customary sacrifice to be offered, because it fed on vines, was the goat. The vine, ivy, laurel, asphodel, the dolphin, lynx, tiger, and ass were all sacred to Bacchus. The acceptable sacrifice to Venus was a dove; Jupiter, a bull; an ox of five years old, ram or boar pig to Neptune; and Diana, a stag.
It was a constant practice with them, in their midnight consistories, to swallow such plentiful draughts of inspiration, that their mysteries commonly ended like those of the Bacchanalian orgia; and they were seldom capable of maintaining that solemnity of decorum which, by the nature of their functions, most of them were obliged to profess.
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