Note 48 — Chapter III · CAVE DEITIES: SUBTERRANEAN TRANSLATION

The second day of the festival was sacred to Apollo and not to Hyakinthos: τὸν θεὸν ᾄδουσιν Ath. 139 E. (It has been rightly said that this was when the παιάν mentioned by Xen., HG. 4, 5, 11, must have been sung.) It is impossible to deny, with Unger, Philol. 37, 30, the cheerful character of this second day of the festival as described by Polykrates ap. Ath. 139 E, F. It is true that Didymus (whose words Athenaeus is quoting) begins in a way (139 D) that might lead one to suppose that all three days of the τῶν Ὑακινθίων θυσία διὰ τὸ πένθος τὸ γενόμενον (γινόμενον?) περὶ τὸν Ὑάκινθον were passed in gloom without festivity, crowns, feasting, or Paean, etc. But he refutes himself afterwards in his description of the second day of the festival, at which not merely at the performances but at the sacrifice and the banquetings festivity reigns supreme. We can only suppose that his language at the beginning is inaccurate, and that he means what he says of the solemnity of the occasion “because of the mourning for Hyakinthos” to be taken as limited like the mourning itself to the first day of the feast.