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In Greece and Italy: Euripides

Bacchus, as the distributer of flowers over the meadows, easily became the father of the bees, or the creator of honey, - an honor, however, that he shared with others. Euripides sings thus of Dionysos: - "To Phrygia's steeps, to Lydia's ridges high He leads, exulting leads his train, While Evoe, Evoe, is the joyful cry, And as they pass, through every plain Flows milk, flows wine, the nectar'd honey flows, And round each soft gale Syrian odors throws."

The priestesses of Dionysos brandished in their hands the thyrsos, a cane with a crown of ivy, and as Euripides tells us, "-the ivy wands Distilled from all their tops rich store of honey."

Honey is known to possess a sleep-producing power, and consequently was used as an offering to death, sleep to the ancients being a symbol of death. Beside the body on the bier was placed, in Homeric times, a vessel of honey, as the "Iliad" tells us was done at the burial of Patroclus. Achilles prepared the sacrifices, placing them about the body upon the funeral pyre. "And he set therein two-handled jars of honey and oil, leaning them against the bier."

It was the custom of the survivors to pour honey upon the graves of their beloved dead, and the shepherds o Lokris were wont to smear the grave of Hesiod with honey, as we learn from an inscription on the poet attributed to Alcæus, which runs thus:- In Greece and Italy "Nymphs in their founts, 'midst Locris' woodland gloom, Laved Hesiod's corse, and piled his grassy tomb.

The shepherds there the yellow honey shed, And milk of goats was sprinkled o'er his head."