This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
By this means we shall be able to deal with the
vulgar and more importunate sort also, whether their fancy
be to accommodate the things that refer to these Gods to
those changes which happen to the ambient air at the several seasons of the year, or to production of fruit and to
the times of sowing and earing, affirming that Osiris is
then buried when the sown corn is covered over by the
earth, and that he revives again and re-appears when it begins to sprout. Which they say is the reason that Isis is
reported, upon her finding herself to be with child, to have
hung a certain amulet or charm about her upon the sixth
day of the month Phaophi, and to have been delivered of
Harpocrates about the winter solstice, he being in the
first shootings and sprouts very imperfect and tender. And
this is the reason (say they) that, when the lentils begin to
spring up, they offer him their tops for first-fruits. They
also observe the festival of her child-birth after the vernal
equinox. For they that hear these things are much taken
with them and readily give assent to them, and presently
infer their credibility from the obviousness and familiarness
of the matter.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.