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Besides these which have been here mentioned, there are many other
practices whereof I shall speak hereafter, which the Greeks have
borrowed from Egypt. The peculiarity, however, which they observe
in their statues of Mercury they did not derive from the Egyptians,
but from the Pelasgi; from them the Athenians first adopted it, and
afterwards it passed from the Athenians to the other Greeks. For
just at the time when the Athenians were entering into the Hellenic
body, the Pelasgi came to live with them in their country, whence it
was that the latter came first to be regarded as Greeks. Whoever has
been initiated into the mysteries of the Cabiri will understand what I
mean. The Samothracians received these mysteries from the Pelasgi,
who, before they went to live in Attica, were dwellers in
Samothrace, and imparted their religious ceremonies to the
inhabitants. The Athenians, then, who were the first of all the
Greeks to make their statues of Mercury in this way, learnt the
practice from the Pelasgians; and by this people a religious account
of the matter is given, which is explained in the Samothracian mysteries.
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