at the city of
Papremis for Ares. Now, when they are coming to the city of Bubastis
they do as follows:--they sail men and women together, and a great
multitude of each sex in every boat; and some of the women have rattles
and rattle with them, while some of the men play the flute during the
whole time of the voyage, and the rest, both women and men, sing and
clap their hands; and when as they sail they come opposite to any city
on the way they bring the boat to land, and some of the women continue
to do as I have said, others cry aloud and jeer at the women in that
city, some dance, and some stand up and pull up their garments. This
they do by every city along the river-bank; and when they come to
Bubastis they hold festival celebrating great sacrifices, and more wine
of grapes is consumed upon that festival than during the whole of the
rest of the year. To this place (so say the natives) they come together
year by year even to the number of seventy myriads of men and women,
besides children. Thus it is done here; and how they celebrate the
festival in honour of Isis at the city of Busiris has been told by
me before: for, as I said, they beat themselves in mourning after the
sacrifice, all of them both men and women, very many myriads of people;
but for whom they beat themselves it is not permitted to me by religion
to say: and so many as there are of the Carians dwelling in Egypt do
this even more than the Egyptians themselves, inasmuch as they cut their
foreheads also with knives; and by this it is manifested that they are
strangers and not Egyptians. At the times when they gather together
at the city of Sais for their sacrifices, on a certain night they all
kindle lamps many in number in the open air round about the houses; now
the lamps are saucers full of salt and oil mixed, and the wick floats by
itself on the surface, and this burns during the whole night; and to
the festival is given the name _Lychnocaia_ (the lighting of lamps).
Moreover those of the Egyptians who have not come to this solemn
assembly observe the night of the festival and themselves also light
lamps all of them, and thus not in Sais alone are they lighted, but over
all Egypt: and as to the reason why light and honour are allotted to
this night, about this there is a sacred story told. To Heliopolis and
Buto they go year by year and do sacrifice only: but at Papremis they
do sacrifice and worship as elsewhere, and besides that, when the sun
begi