Exhortation to the Greeks 2.17

Shall I tell you of Persephone's flower-gathering, and the basket, and the abduction by Aidoneus, and the chasm in the earth, and the swine of Eubuleus that were swallowed up with the two goddesses, the reason why at the Thesmophoria the women throw pigs into the sacred pits? The women celebrate this myth in various ways in the different cities, in the Thesmophoria, the Scirophoria, and the Arrhetophoria, turning the abduction of Persephone into tragedy in many forms. And the mysteries of Dionysus are utterly inhuman. When he was still a child, the Curetes were dancing around him in armed motion, but the Titans crept in by guile, deceived him with childish toys, and tore him apart while he was still an infant, as the poet of the Initiation, Orpheus the Thracian, says: “Top, and bull-roarer, and dolls with jointed limbs, and fair golden apples from the clear-voiced Hesperides.”