Excerpt from Origines Kalendarlae Hellenicae, or the History of the Primitive Calendar Among the Greeks, Before and After the Legislation of Solon, 1862, Vol. 5 of 6 Section I. - On the method proposed to be observed in treating of the Dionysia. The Dionysia and the Thesmophoria appear to have been those two of the observances of the ancient Greeks, which were most characteristic of them. These two were as wide spread as the Hellenic name itself; nor was there perhaps a single community of Grecian extraction, howsoever small and obscure, and howsoever remote and isolated, which had not its Dionysia and Thesmophoria, in common with the rest, and celebrated more or less according to the same rule. These two solemnities in particular were the most ancient of the national rites and ceremonies of the Greeks: and being in honour of cognate and correlative principles, predisposed to coalesce with, or to accompany one another, one as the impersonation of a masculine, the other as that of a feminine, idea of the same kind in general, they naturally went together; and wheresoever the one had been introduced, there the other, in the course of time, if not from the first, came to be introduced also. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.