DADUCHI, in Antiquity, priests of Ceres. That goddess having lost her daughter Proserpine, began, according to the mythologists, to make search for her at the beginning of the night. In order to do this in the dark, she lighted a torch, and thus set forth on her travels throughout the world; for which reason it is that she is always represented with a lighted torch in her hand. On this account, and in commemoration of her pretended exploit, it became a custom for the priests, at the feasts and sacrifices of the goddess, to run about in the temple, with torches in their hands. One of them took a lighted torch from off the altar, and holding it in his hand, ran with it to a certain part of the temple, where he gave it to another, saying to him, Tibi trado; the second, in like manner, ran to another part of the temple, and gave it to the third, and so of the rest. From this ceremony the priests came to be denominated daduchi, δαδυχοι, or torch-bearers; from δαδ, an unctuous resinous wood, as pine or fir, of which the ancients made torches; and υχο, I have or I hold. The Athenians also gave the name daduchus to the high-priest of Hercules.