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[1]
These customs, then, and others besides, which I shall indicate, were taken by the Greeks from the Egyptians. It was not so with the ithyphallic images of Hermes; the production of these came from the Pelasgians, from whom the Athenians were the first Greeks to take it, and then handed it on to others.
These customs, then, and others besides, which I shall indicate, were taken by the Greeks from the Egyptians. It was not so with the ithyphallic images of Hermes; the production of these came from the Pelasgians, from whom the Athenians were the first Greeks to take it, and then handed it on to others.
[2] For the
Athenians were then already counted as
Greeks when the
Pelasgians came to live in the land with them and thereby began to be considered as
Greeks. Whoever has been initiated into the rites of the
Cabeiri, which the
Samothracians learned from the
Pelasgians and now practice, understands what my meaning is.
[3]
+Samothrace (island), Nomos Evrou, Western Thrace, Greece, Europe
Samothrace
was formerly inhabited by those
Pelasgians who came to live among the
Athenians, and it is from them that the
Samothracians take their rites.
[4] The
Athenians, then, were the first
Greeks to make ithyphallic images of
Hermes, and they did this because the
Pelasgians taught them. The
Pelasgians told a certain sacred tale about this, which is set forth in the
Samothracian mysteries.
Histories. Herodotus. ed. A.D. Godley. Cambridge. 1920-1925.
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