and soon withered away.
For several days troops of women and young girls, with their heads
dishevelled or shorn, their garments in rags, their faces torn with
their nails, their breasts and arms scarified with knives, went about
over hill and dale in search of their idol, giving utterance to cries of
despair, and to endless appeals: "Ah, Lord! Ah, Lord! what is become of
thy beauty." Once having found the image, they brought it to the feet
of the goddess, washed it while displaying its wound, anointed it with
sweet-smelling unguents, wrapped it in a linen and woollen shroud,
placed it on a catafalque, and, after expressing around the bier their
feelings of desolation, according to the rites observed at fanerais,
placed it solemnly in the tomb.*

* Theocritus has described in his fifth Idyll the laying out
and burial of Adonis as it was practised at Alexandria in
Egypt in the IIIrd century before our era.

The close and dreary summer passes away. With the first days of
September the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing
away the ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents
into the hollows of the valleys. The Adonis river begins to swell with
the ruddy waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with
it. The wind from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast,
and forces it to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a
kind of crimson fringe.* This was the blood of the hero, and the sight
of this precious stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who
donned once more their weeds of mourning until the priests were able
to announce to them that, by virtue of their supplications, Adonis was
brought back from the shades into new life. Shouts of joy immediately
broke forth, and the people who had lately sympathized with the mourning
goddess in her tears and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in
expressions of mad and amorous delight. Wives and virgins--all the
women who had refused during the week of mourning to make a sacrifice of
their hair--were obliged to atone for this fault by putting themselves
at the disposal of the strangers whom the festival had brought together,
the reward of their service becoming the property of the sacred
treasury.**

* The same phenomenon occurs in spring. Maundrell saw it on
March 17, and Renan in the first days of February.

** A similar usage was found in later times in the