Dionysus

of the Jews clearly befit Dionysus. When they celebrate their so-called Fast, at the height of the vintage, they set out tables of all sorts of fruit under tents and huts plaited for the most part of vines and ivy. They call the first of the two days Tabernacles.(a) A few days later they celebrate another festival, this time identified with Bacchus not through obscure hints but plainly called by his name,(b) a festival that is a sort of 'Procession of Branches' or 'Thyrsus Procession,' in which they enter the temple each carrying a thyrsus.(c) What they do after entering we do not know, but it is probable that the rite is a Bacchie revelry, for in fact they use little trumpets(d) to invoke their god as do the Argives at their Dionysia.

Others of them advance playing harps; these players are called in their language Levites, either from Lysios (Releaser) or, better, from Evius (God of the Cry).(e)