456 REMARKS ON THE AMYCL^AN MARBLES. 



ancient Amyclae ; he at once appropriated them to the temple of 

 Apollo, and followed up this decision by the brilliant invention of the 

 catalogue which I have mentioned. Other antiquaries have also spoken 

 of the priestesses of Apollo, but so far as I have been able to learn, 

 on no other foundation than the pretended discoveries of this person. 



Although the village of Slavo-chori appears indisputably to mark the 

 situation of Amyclae, and although these marbles were discovered in 

 the immediate neighbourhood, I am inclined to believe that they ori- 

 ginally belonged to a less celebrated spot. Pausanias speaks of a 

 ruined town near Amyclae, called Bryseae, where was a temple of 

 Bacchus and certain sculptures. He adds, that it was permitted only 

 to women to enter the temple ; and that women only performed the 

 sacrifices. * The plants sacred to Bacchus, which are represented on 

 the marbles, indicate the connection, and it appears not improbable 

 that they were brought from this temple, which could not have been 

 distant, for it is evident they were not in their original position when 

 discovered in the ruined Greek chapel of Slavo-chori. 



It is not easy satisfactorily to explain the purpose of these sculp- 

 tures, but they seem perhaps to have been a kind of votive offering on 

 the part of the priestess when entering on her sacred functions. The 

 practice among the Greek women was not unfrequent of dedicating 

 their ornaments to some deity on particular occasions ; and if a lady 

 offers her mirror to Venus when no longer young, it is not unreasonable 

 to imagine that these articles of female decoration should be thus 

 ostensibly abandoned on the assumption of the priesthood. If we 

 look to the inscriptions, with a view to a more clear explanation of 

 the marbles, I fear that we shall obtain no real solution of the diffi- 

 culty. One of these merely records the name of the priestess ; the 

 other I am not able wholly to explain. The word v-nog-ur^a. is new to 

 me ; but although the precise meaning of the title has eluded my re- 

 search, we may presume that it signifies some office connected with 



* Pausan. Lacon. cap. xx. 



