It is well-nigh an article of faith, repeated from one manual to another, that at the end of the third day of the Anthesteria at Athens, the Chytroi, the Athenians used to say θύραζε κῆρες, οὐκέτ᾽ ᾿Ανθεστήρια and that this meant “go away, ghosts, the Anthesteria are over.” It is the more interesting because, if κῆρες means “ghosts” here, it is the only passage in all literature where it does so; and also because this is far from being the only account of the saying, be it an old liturgical formula or not, that has come down to us. In what seems the better tradition of Zenobios the paroemiographer we have Kᾶρες, which probably goes back to Didymos and through him to some older author still, it may be Demon, i.e., to early Hellenistic times. It is accompanied by a silly, pseudohistorical explanation, clearly coined to suit the occasion, that in old days a part of Attica was held by Karians, who were allowed to come into Athens for the festival and then told to go away when it was over. A later MS. tradition, still in Zenobios, says that “some” said κῆρες, but offers no explanation. Photios in his lexicon and Suidas copying him quote the saying in both forms, but this time with a different explanation of Kᾶρες it means “Karian slaves” and bids them go about their work (presumably in the fields) now that the festival, in which they were allowed to share, is at an end.

[I am deeply indebted to Professor A. D. Nock for his kindness in reading this paper in its first draft and for his invaluable criticisms and suggestions.]

In the Christology of the New Testament we are faced with two distinct methods of expressing the belief of the Church as to the person of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Of the belief that He was merely a great human teacher we find no trace; the Church would never have come into being, if it had not believed that He had risen from the dead. As we all know, the Christology that prevailed was that which saw in Him the Incarnation of the divine Word or Wisdom, which was at once the divine and living pattern of the cosmos, the agent by which the cosmos was created, and the divine mind immanent in the cosmos and more particularly in the mind of man. It was inevitable that this cosmogony should triumph in the end, since it was the only one which could, with whatever difficulty, be formally reconciled with Jewish monotheism; moreover it transferred the Lord from the realm of eschatology, which meant nothing to the Greek convert, into the sphere of cosmogony which was one of the central problems of the semi-Gnostic philosophy and theology of the hellenistic age, as we meet it in the Corpus Hermeticum.

Many of the basic issues underlying the complex social, political, and religious problems which stirred France during the lifetime of Lamennais can be found in duplicate in this country. Moreover, it is evident that there is a resurgence of an extremely provincial form of nationalism in the United States together with mounting onslaughts against freedom. This makes increasingly relevant to the concrete lives of all of us an examination of the fundamental ideas of a thinker whose discernment of the disjunctions of his culture is formulated in published writings. Because of this as well as his contribution to the development of democracy in France, it is difficult to understand why the writings of Lamennais have been so singularly neglected in this country. Perhaps a contributing factor is that some of his works have been placed upon the Index Prohibitorum Librorum.

Many inferences have been drawn by liturgical scholars from the letter of Pliny to Trajan, Epist. x. 96, in the year 112. The purpose of this note is to suggest that such inferences are at least partly invalid.