a heathen festival at Ephesus, celebrated on the 22d of January, in which the devotees ran about the streets, dressed in various antic and unseemly modes, with huge cudgels in their hands, and carrying with them the images of their gods; while in this guise they ravished the women they met with, abused and often killed the men, and committed many other disorders, to which the religion of the day gave a sanction.