Note 143 — Chapter I · LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Ovid, Fasti, iv. 211, about the festivals of Apollo:—
“Priscique imitamina facti Æra Deæ comites raucaque terga movent.”
And Lactantius, v. 19, 15. “Ipsos ritus ex rebus gestis (deorum) vel ex casibus vel etiam ex mortibus, natos:” to the same purpose Augustin. De Civ. D. vii. 18; Diodôr. iii. 56. Plutarch’s Quæstiones Græcæ et Romaicæ are full of similar tales, professing to account for existing customs, many of them religious and liturgic. See Lobeck, Orphica, p. 675.