first introduced music so new and attractive that it drew all the neighbouring cities to take part in these entertainments.

M. Foucart has recently published a Mantinean inscription in which Phaena, a priestess of Demeter, is honoured for the extraordinary zeal and munificence for which she has been distinguished both before and after the term of her office. The decree in her honour is drawn up in the name of a synod or college of priestesses of Demeter, of which college Phaena was doubtless a member.

The decree recounts the sumptuous munificence with which she performed all the liturgies required during her term of office, the magnificent banquets with which she entertained her sister priestesses, the endowment which she settled on their college, and which she made a permanent charge on her estate after death. In reward for all this pious liberality it is decreed that Phaena is to be invited to all the sacrifices and festivals held in honour of the goddess, and this honorary decree is to be engraved on a marble stelè.

It appears from a decree of the city of Ilium (Böckh, No. 3599), that a priest presented to the city a gift of 15,000 drachmæ, about 6001., out of the interest of which a yearly sacrifice was to be provided. These inscriptions in honour of priests become more frequent during the Roman Empire, and we learn from them that it had then become common for the priesthoods of several temples to be held by the same person. There appears to be no evidence of such pluralism in the earlier republican period.

Besides the hiereus or priest, and the hiereia or priestess, we find attached to Greek temples a variety of ministers whose offices are indicated by their names. Thus, the hierophant was the priest who in the Eleusinian rites revealed the mysteries to the initiated; the daduchos bore the sacred torch in the same worship; the kleido phoros was the bearer of the key in the rites of Hekate; the hierokeryx, a title retained to this day in the Eastern Church, was specially charged with making proclamations and announcements in reference to the order of the rites. The loutrophoros and the hydrophoros were the bearers of sacred water used in the ritual. The kosmeteira was, as her name implies, the mistress of the robes or tirewoman of the goddess whom she served, and it was her business to superintend the dress and ornaments with which the sacred image was adorned. The neokoros, a term which originally meant the sweeper out of the temple, became in course of centuries a sacerdotal title of the highest distinction, as we know by the evidence of coins and inscriptions in Asia Minor. In temples where there was an oracle, the will of the god was declared by certain priests or priestesses, to whom the title of mantis or prophetes was given. The prophetes was not a prophet in our sense, but the functionary speaking in the name and authority of the god.

• The persons who professed the science of divination (mantike), and who were the interpreters of oracles, dreams, omens, and other means of prognosticating The sacred functionaries probably multiplied in proportion as the wealth of the temples and the fame of their worship grew, and accordingly we find from inscriptions that time-honoured and celebrated shrines such as that of Ephesus or Eleusis were ministered to by a variety of functionaries. And here the question arises—Were these functionaries coordinate, or in what manner were they organised ? On this point we have very scanty information. At Eleusis the hierophant chosen from the ancient family of Eumolpidæ was certainly the chief priest, and next to him probably ranked the daduchos, who carried the torch in the mysteries, wearing a purple robe and a myrtle crown. The hierophantis or female hierophant at Eleusis, who was also chosen from a sacerdotal family, was also a great personage. On the base of the statue of one of these priestesses found at Eleusis is an inscription in which she thus addresses all future generations. I am the mother of Marcianus, the daughter

" of Demetrius; let no one utter my name which, when severed from the world by becoming hierophantis, I hid in inaccessible depths. I have not initiated the scns of Leda, nor Herakles, but the ruler of the world, Hadrian, who has poured so much wealth on Athens. This emperor was admitted to the novitiate in the Eleusinian mysteries A.D. 125, and to the final initiation in A.D. 135.

At Eleusis, at Delphi, at Ephesus, and other celebrated seats of worship, there must have been a local hierarchy, and it is to be presumed that the priest of highest rank bad a certain authority over the others; but whether these ministers formed a kind of sacred college over which a high priest presided, or whether all differences between them were referred to such a magistrate as the basileus archon, are points about which we have no sure information. In some of the Asiatic sacred communities, such as Strabo describes at both the Komanas and at Zela, the high priest may have been invested with theocratic authority, and in Roman times the title of archiereus appears in various cities of Asia Minor. Sometimes this title is given to the president of a college of priests, sometimes it is assumed by the minister of a dominant cult. It was probably the policy of the Romans to encourage centralisation in the religious organisation of their provinces, and the titles Archiereus of Asia' and Asiarch were probably introduced by them into Asia Minor.

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I have as yet only noticed the higher ranks of the sacerdotal order. But we find in inscriptions mention of diaconi, whence our word deacon,' who were certainly a lower grade of the priesthood, and it is obvious that many offices of a purely menial nature, such as the hewing of wood and drawing of water, must have been required in temples. Hence it was that slaves were in many cases dedicated to the service of a divinity, and were consequently called hierocluli. In the temple of Apollo at Delphi was a host of such slaves, whose ranks were recruited from prisoners of war, and whose condition was very superior to that of ordinary slaves. Such hierodules formed a large part of the population of the sacred island of Delos. enabled by the evidence of inscriptions to distinguish two forms by which a slave was dedicated to the service of a divinity, and which both amounted to enfranchisement subject to certain conditions. According to the first of these forms the master dedicated the slave to the god, and released him from all future liability to servitude ; but in order to give this release a due guarantee, the newly enfranchisei slave was placed henceforth under the protection of the priest of the temple and of the local magistrates, who were bound to punish with a fine any attempt to deprive him of his liberty. This form of dedication occurs in inscriptions from the temples of Sarapis at Orchomenos, Chæronea and Coronea in Baotia, in that of Athene Polias at Daulis, and that of Asclepios at Stiris.

The other mode of enfranchisement was by a solemn act of sale, by which the ownership of the slave was transferred to a god on pay'ment of a sum of money, which was in fact the ransom of the slave, and which he had to provide for himself.

About five hundred inscriptions relating to this mode of enfranchisement have been discovered at Delphi, and from these we obtain very curious information as to the form of this sale. The master, accompanied by his slave, presented himself before the temple of Apollo at the principal entrance. There the two priests of the god met him to receive the slave, and, in the presence of three senators and of a certain number of witnesses, handed over the purchasemoney to the master. The transaction was not a simple act of sale, but was fenced round with many conditions. The seller had to furnish one or more sureties (bebaioteres), who undertook to maintain the validity of the sale and to defend the slave against all who sought to deprive him of his liberty. If the seller or his sureties failed to fulfil this guarantee, an action might be brought against them in the name of the god, and they were liable, if condemned, to pay a fine equal to the price of the slave and half as much again. The deed of sale, after having been duly certified by the priests, senators, and other attesting witnesses, was handed over to the custody of a citizen designated for that purpose in the deed, and a copy of it was engraved on the walls of the temple. Under the protection of

this instrument the person of the enfranchised slave was safe from all attempt to reduce him back to slavery ; he had a right to resist any such attempt by force, and to invoke the aid of any bystander, nor would any legal liability be incurred by such interference, which was regarded as having the direct authority of the god himself.

While the slave was thus protected, we find associated with this form of enfranchisement certain provisions which were made in the interest of the master. The boon of liberty was not an absolute but a conditional grant. The master, while selling the ownership of his slave to Apollo, often reserved for himself the right of his services for a term of years or for his own life, or even might bequeath such a right to another person after his demise. During this period of service the slave, though sold to the god, was still obliged to execute the orders of his master, who could, in moderation, chastise him for disobedience, but could not sell him to another person.

The particular duties which had to be performed during these. years of mitigated servitude are sometimes specified in the instrument of enfranchisement. It is stipulated in the case of one slave that he must accompany his master in a voyage to Egypt; another has to educate two children; another, the slave of a physician, has to assist his master in his calling for five years; but what is especially insisted on as a duty is the care of the master in his old age and due attention to his funeral rites. If the slave declined to serve out his time of bondage, he was bound to find a substitute, or redeem his liberty by another payment. Another stipulation which we find in these deeds of sale was the right reserved by the master to inherit the slave's property, and sometimes this claim is continued into the second generation, if the children of the slave die without issue. Unless all the conditions specified in the deed of sale were scrupulously fulfilled, the enfranchisement was void. As disputes on these points between master and slave were likely to occur, a tribunal of three arbitrators was appointed, to which both parties could appeal.

a

C. T. NEWTON,

VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DU CHÂTELET

AT CIREY.

The world is brimful of mistakes and misapprehensions concerning its great men both during life and after it; the valets-de-chambre retail all the puerilities, the friends paint their fancy portraits without shadows, the enemies daub theirs with such dark ones that the high lights stand out weird and unnatural, and the picture thus transmitted to posterity would be totally unrecognisable by the original if he could rise from his grave to take a glance at it. Poor human nature seldom receives its due meed of praise or blame; it is vainly expected to be either divine or diabolical, and causes disappointment to one side or the other according as it falls short of either of these standards. Society has an unkind habit of giving a dog a bad name and hanging him, and people who strive to be fair and just in their estimate of their fellows are called Quixotic and eccentric, while their views are not only not sympathised with, but characterised as impracticable and dangerous. Of course a great deal is attributable to ignorance. We get hold, rightly or wrongly, of an isolated fact in a person's life, one of his crotchets or opinions, consider it typical, and laud or condemn it accordingly, when all the time it was called forth by exceptional circumstances, and is at direct variance with the usual tenor of his existence and temper of his mind.

Voltaire is one who has thus suffered at the hands of both his contemporaries and his successors; he was long ago branded as an infidel, and even by those who have the courage to think for themselves on that score, he is regarded as a cynical, unattractive, and unamiable personage. The best known period of his life is that which he spent at the Court of Frederic the Great, the book by which most of us gauge our acquaintance with his works is the Histoire de Charles XII., he has a somewhat misty reputation as a good hater, an allusion to his deathbed is occasionally made by a clergyman eager to point a moral and warn his followers whither the free-thinking proclivities of the present day may tend—and there we stop short. Beyond that point Voltaire is a nonentity–a lay figure, or perhaps even a bête noire in our study of imagination. As poet, dramatist,