previous next


Manetho confirms the fact of this swine offering at a lunat festival. Selene (= ‘Nekhebet’) was the deity of El Kab, and on a tomb there large herds of swine are mentioned. (Ann. du Service des Antiq. xi. 163). Others suppose that Σελήνη here = Isis; cf. 41. 1 n. for her horns. H. is obscure here; he says that swine's flesh was eaten in honour of Dionysus, but in c. 48 he seems to imply it was sent away uneaten; perhaps then the flesh was eaten in honour of Dionysus and Selene together, but not of Dionysus alone.

εὐπρεπέστερος. For the comparative cf. 46. 2 n.; for the sentiment, i.e. reverential silence, cf. 3. 2 n. Plutarch gives the story (I. et O. c. 8, p. 354) that Typhon was pursuing a pig when he found the coffin of Osiris, and scattered its contents; he says, however, this story was rejected by many, and it is obviously a later invention.

καταγίζει (cf. 44. 5 n.) implies that it was a funeral sacrifice, i.e. connected with the dead Osiris.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: