alk. As to the meaning of
the latter very un-Aryan practice, one has no idea, unless it
represents the impure uninitiated condition, cleansed later by
ceremonies of initiation. It is only certain that war parties of
Australian blacks bedaub themselves with white clay to alarm their
enemies in night attacks. The Phocians, according to Herodotus (viii.
27), adopted the same 'aisy stratagem,' as Captain Costigan has it.
Tellies, the medicine-man (~mantis~), chalked some sixty Phocians,
whom he sent to make a night attack on the Thessalians. The sentinels
of the latter were seized with supernatural horror, and fled, 'and
after the sentinels went the army.' In the same way, in a night attack
among the Australian Kurnai,[27] 'they all rapidly painted themselves
with pipe-clay: red ochre is no use, it cannot frighten the enemy.'
If, then, Greeks in the historic period kept up Australian tactics, it
is probable that the ancient mysteries of Greece might retain the
habit of daubing the initiated which occurs in savage rites.

'Come now,' as Herodotus would say, 'I will show once more that the
mysteries of the Greeks resemble those of Bushmen.' In Lucian's
Treatise on Dancing,[28] we read, 'I pass over the fact that you
cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing....
To prove this I will not mention the secret acts of worship, on
account of the uninitiated. But this much all men know, that most
people say of those who reveal the mysteries, that they "dance them
out."' Here Liddel and Scott write, rather weakly, 'to dance out, let
out, betray, probably of some dance which burlesqued these
ceremonies.' It is extremely improbable that, in an age when it was
still forbidden to reveal the ~orgia~, or secret rites, those rites
would be mocked in popular burlesques. Lucian obviously intends to say
that the matter of the mysteries was set forth in _ballets d'action_.
Now this is exactly the case in the surviving mysteries of the
Bushmen. Shortly after the rebellion of Langalibalele's tribe, Mr.
Orpen, the chief magistrate in St. John's Territory, made the
acquaintance of Qing, one of the last of an all but exterminated
tribe. Qing 'had never seen a white man, except fighting,' when he
became Mr. Orpen's guide. He gave a good deal of information about the
myths of his people, but refused to answer certain questions. 'You are
now asking the secrets that are not spoken of.' Mr. Orpen asked, 'Do
you know the secrets?'