On the Mysteries (Thomas Taylor trans.)

on Isis and Osiris. A reference to Plutarch’s famous philosophical essay De Iside et Osiride, which interprets Egyptian mythology through a Platonic lens. All the works of Plato, indeed, evince the truth of this position,

len.) distinguishes between the honors of heroes and Gods, when he speaks of Menelaus and Helena. Menelaus and Helen of Troy were legendary figures who received religious veneration in Sparta as "heroes"—a status between humans and gods. But the distinction is nowhere more fully expressed than in the Greek inscription upon the statue of Regilla, wife to Herodes Atticus, Herodes Atticus (101–177 AD) was a prominent Greek aristocrat and Roman senator known for his immense wealth and public monuments. as Salmasius Claude Saumaise (1588–1653), a renowned French classical scholar. thinks, which was set up in his temple at Triopium, and taken from the statue itself by Sirmondus Jacques Sirmond (1559–1651), a French Jesuit scholar and historian.; where it is said, That she had neither the honor of a mortal nor yet that which was proper to the Gods. original Greek: Ουδε ιερα θνητοις, αταρ ουδε θεοισιν ομοια It seems by the inscription of Herodes, and by the testament of Epicteta, Epicteta was a 3rd-century BC noblewoman from Thera whose surviving will established a family society to maintain the cult of her deceased relatives. extant in Greek in the Collection of Inscriptions, that it was in the power of particular families to keep festival days in honor of some of their own family, and to give heroical honors heroical honors: religious rites, such as sacrifices and feasts, dedicated to deceased humans who were elevated to the status of a "hero" or protector spirit. to them. In that noble inscription at Venice, we find three days appointed every year to be kept, and a confraternity confraternity: a formal religious brotherhood or association formed to observe specific rituals or care for a shrine. established for that purpose with the laws of it. The first day to be observed in honor of the Muses, and sacrifices to be offered to them as deities. The second and third days in honor of the heroes of the family; between which honor and that of deities, they showed the difference by the distance of time between them, and the preference given to the other. But whereinsoever the difference lay, that there was a distinction acknowledged among them appears by this passage of Valerius, in his excellent oration, extant in Dionysius Halicarnass. Antiq. Rom. lib. ii. p. 696. Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a 1st-century BC historian; this reference is to his Roman Antiquities. I call, says he, the Gods to witness, whose temples and altars our family has worshiped with common sacrifices; and next after them, I call the Genii of our ancestors, Genii: the protective spirits or souls of deceased ancestors in Roman belief. to whom we give the second honors original Greek: δευτερας τιμας, the second honors next to the Gods, (as Celsus A 2nd-century philosopher who defended traditional polytheism against early Christianity. calls those, the due honors original Greek: τας προσηκουσας τιμας, the due honors that belong to the lower dæmons.) dæmons: in ancient philosophy, "daimones" were intermediary spirits between gods and men, not necessarily "demons" in the modern evil sense. From which we take notice, that the Heathens did not confound all degrees of divine worship, giving to the lowest object the same which they supposed to