Greek and savage mysteries. Both Greeks and savages employ the
bull-roarer, both bedaub the initiated with dirt or with white paint or
chalk. As to the meaning of the latter very un-Aryan practice, one has
no idea. 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
([Greek]), 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, {41a}
'they all rapidly painted themselves with pipe-clay: red ochre is no use,
it cannot frighten an 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, {41b} 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 Liddell 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
[Greek], 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