Note 1091 — Chapter V · THE MAGICAL CONTROL OF THE WEATHER (continued 2)

Phylarchus, cited by Athenaeus, xv. 48, p. 693 E F. If the conjectural reading τοῖς Ἐμεσηνοῖς were adopted in place of the manuscript reading τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, we should have to suppose that the custom was not observed by the Greeks, but by the people of Emesa in Syria, where there was a famous worship of the sun. But Polemo, the highest authority in such matters, tells us that the Athenians offered “sober” sacrifices to the sun and to other deities (Schol. on Sophocles, Oed. Colon, 100); and in a Greek inscription found at Piraeus we read of offerings to the sun and of three “sober altars,” by which no doubt are meant altars on which wine was not poured. See Ch. Michel, Recueil d’inscriptions grecques, No. 672; Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecorum,² No. 631; E. S. Roberts, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, ii. No. 133; Leges Graecorum sacrae, ed. J. de Prott et L. Ziehen, ii. No. 18. In the passage of Athenaeus, accordingly, the reading τοῖς Ἐμεσηνοῖς, which has been rashly adopted by the latest editor of Athenaeus (G. Kaibel), may be safely rejected in favour of the manuscript reading.