VI. 1. And as for wine, the servants of the God in Sun-city 2 do not at all bring it into the sacred place, as ’tis not right [for them] to drink by day while He, their Lord and King, looks on.
2. The rest [of them 3] use it indeed, but sparingly.
They have, however, many times of abstinence at which they drink no wine, but spend them in the search for wisdom, learning and teaching the [truth] about the Gods.
3. The kings used to drink it, though in certain measure according to the sacred writings, as Hecatæus has narrated, 4 for they were priests [as well].
4. They began to drink it, however, only from the time of Psammetichus; 5 but before that they used not to drink wine.
Nor did they make libation of it as a thing dear to the Gods, but as the blood of those who fought against the Gods, 6—from whom, when they fell and mingled with
the earth, they think the vines came, and that because of this wine-drenching makes men to be out of their minds and struck aside, 1 in that, forsooth, they are full-filled with the forefathers of its 2 blood. 3
5. These things, at any rate Eudoxus says, in Book II. of his Circuit, 4 are thus stated by the priests.
268:2 Heliopolis—the God being the “Sun.”
268:3 Sc. the priests.
268:4 Müller, ii. 389. H. flourished last quarter of 6th and first 5th century B.C.
268:5 Reigned 671-617 B.C.
268:6 Sc. the Titans or Daimones as opposed to the Gods.
269:1 Or “de-ranged”—παραπλῆγας. Paraplēx is the first of the daimonian rulers in The Books of the Saviour (Pistis Sophia, 367).
269:2 Sc. the vine’s.
269:3 Or “with the blood of its forefathers.”
269:4 Or Orbit. Eudoxus flourished about the middle of the 4th century B.C.; he was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, and a great astronomer, obtaining his knowledge of the art from the priests of Isis.