ra aut quos agor in specus
Velox mente nova?"

The Bacchic ecstasy was not merely drunkenness, but an epidemic madness
induced by long-continued dancing and gesticulating to the sound of
cymbals and other noisy instruments, in all respects identical with the
methods of inducing the Hindoo _Waren_. The dancing mania also of the
fifteenth century, described by Hecker in his _Epidemics of the Middle
Ages_, was induced in the same manner, and its effects were the
same,--possession, illumination, and insensibility to external influences.
That the Bacchic and Corybantic frenzies were, in all respects, identical
with the middle age dancing manias, and with the possession of those who
still exhibit the influences of _Waren_ in Hindoostan, can hardly be
doubted. "As for the Bacchanalian motions and friskings of the
_Corybantes_," says Plutarch in his Essay on Love, "there is a way to
allay these extravagant transports, by changing the measure from the
_Trochaic_ to the _Spondaic_, and the tone from the _Phrygian_ to the
_Doric_:" just as with the dancers of St. Vitus, and those bit by the
Tarantula. Hecker states, "The swarms of St. John's dancers were
accompanied by minstrels playing those noisy instruments which roused
their morbid feelings; moreover, by means of intoxicating music, a kind of
demoniacal festival for the rude multitude was established, which had the
effect of spreading this unhappy malady wider and wider. Soft harmony was,
however, employed to calm the excitement of those affected, and it is
mentioned as a character of the tunes played with this view to the St.
Vitus's dancers, that they contained transitions from a quick to a slow
measure, and passed gradually from a high to a low key." After the
termination of the frenzy the conduct of the dancers, as well indeed as of
all the victims of this species of possession, whether _Taratati_,
convulsionnaires, or revivalists, tallied precisely with that of the
Bacchic women. Plutarch, in his thirteenth example of the Virtues of
Woman, has this graphic picture of the condition of a band of Bacchante
after one of their orgies. "When the tyrants of Phocea had taken Delphos,
and the Thebans undertook that war against them which was called the Holy
War, certain women devoted to Bacchus (which they called _Thyades_) fell
frantic, and went a gadding by night, and, mistaking their way, came to
Amphissa, and being very much tired, and not as yet in their right wits,
they fl