In Thebes, for example, a certain Alcaeus has a statue which they say is a Heracles and was formerly so called; and among the Athenians there is an image of a boy who was an initiate in the mysteries at Eleusis and it bears no inscription; he, too, they say, is a Heracles. (Dio Chrysostom XXXI, 92)
If one would bring a man, Greek or barbarian, for initiation into a mystic recess overwhelming by its beauty and size, so that he would behold many mystic views and hear many sounds of the kind, with darkness and light appearing in sudden changes and other innumerable things happening, and even, as they do in the so-called enthronement ceremony – they have the initiands sit down and they dance around them – if all of this were happening, would it be possible that such a man should experience just nothing in his soul, that he should not come to surmise that there is some wiser insight and plan in all that is going on, even if he came from the utmost Barbary? (Dio Chrysotom. Or. 12-33.)
