in accordance with the command of a
herald. In regard to the sacrifice, which doubtless formed part of the
ceremonial, all that is known is that a ram was sacrificed at Thurii.
Other indications point to the festival having assumed a military
character at an early date, as might have been expected among the
warlike Dorians, although some scholars deny this. The general meaning
of the agrarian ceremony is clear, and has numerous parallels in north
European harvest-customs, in which an animal (or man disguised as an
animal) was pursued by the reapers, the animal if caught being usually
killed; in any case, both the man and the animal represent the
vegetation spirit. E.H. Binney in _Classical Review_ (March 1905)
suggests that the story of Alcestis was performed at the Carnea (to
which it may have become attached with the name of Apollo) as a
vegetation drama, and "embodied a Death and Resurrection ceremony."

The great importance attached to the festival and its month is shown in
several instances. It was responsible for the delay which prevented the
Spartans from assisting the Athenians at the battle of Marathon
(Herodotus vi. 106), and for the despatch of a small advance guard under
Leonidas to hold Thermopylae instead of the main army (Herodotus vii.
206). Again, when Epidaurus was attacked in 419 by Argos, the movements
of the Spartans under Agis against the latter were interrupted until the
end of the month, while the Argives (on whom, as Dorians, the custom was
equally binding), by manipulating the calendar, avoided the necessity of
suspending operations (see Grote, _Hist, of Greece_, ch. 56; Thucydides
v. 54).

See S. Wide, _Lakonische Kulte_ (1893), and article "Karneios" in
Roscher's _Lexikon_; L. Couve in Daremberg and Saglio's _Dictionnaire
des antiquites;_ W. Mannhardt, _Mythologische Forschungen_ (1883), p.
170, and _Wald- und Feldkulte_ (2nd ed., 1905), ii. 254; L.R. Farnell,
_Cults of the Greek States_, iv. (1907); G. Schomann, _Griechische
Altertumer_ (ed. J.H. Lipsius, 1902); J.G. Frazer on Pausanias, iii.
13, 3; H. Usener in _Rheinisches Museum_, liii. (1898), p. 377; J.
Vurtheim in _Mnemosyne_, xxxi. (1903), p. 234.

CARNEADES (214-129 B.C.), Greek philosopher, founder of the Third or New
Academy, was born at Cyrene. Little is known of his life. He learned
dialectics under Diogenes the Stoic, and under Hegesinus, the third
leader, of the Academy in descent from Arcesilaus. The c