Exhortation to the Greeks 2.19

If you wish to look also on the orgies of the Corybantes: two of them killed their third brother, covered the head of the corpse with a purple cloth, crowned it, and buried it, carrying it on a bronze shield to the foot of Mount Olympus. And these, in short, are the mysteries: murders and tombs. Their priests, whom those who care to call them so call “Anactotelestae,” add a further marvel to the calamity by forbidding parsley with its root to be put on the table; for they believe that parsley grew from the blood that flowed from the Corybant, just as the women celebrating the Thesmophoria take care not to eat pomegranate seeds that have fallen to the ground, believing that pomegranates sprang from the drops of the blood of Dionysus. They also call the Corybantes Cabiri and proclaim a Cabiric rite. For these two fratricides took up the chest in which the genitals of Dionysus were kept and brought it to Etruria, merchants of a glorious cargo; and there they lived as exiles, handing on to the Etruscans the precious teaching of piety, genitals and a chest, to be worshiped. For this reason some, not unreasonably, would have Dionysus called Attis, since he was deprived of his genitals.