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" Every year at the festival of the
Agrionia the priest of Dionysus pursued these women with a drawn
sword, and if he overtook one of them he had the right to slay her.
In Plutarch's lifetime the right was actually exercised by a priest
Zoilus. The family thus liable to furnish at least one human victim
every year was of royal descent, for they traced their lineage to
Minyas, the famous old king of Orchomenus, the monarch of fabulous
wealth, whose stately treasury, as it is called, still stands in
ruins at the point where the long rocky hill of Orchomenus melts
into the vast level expanse of the Copaic plain. Tradition ran that
the king's three daughters long despised the other women of the
country for yielding to the Bacchic frenzy, and sat at home in the
king's house scornfully plying the distaff and the loom, while the
rest, wreathed with flowers, their dishevelled locks streaming to
the wind, roamed in ecstasy the barren mountains that rise above
Orchomenus, making the solitude of the hills to echo to the wild
music of cymbals and tambourines.


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