The forty-eight other Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze.

The office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the origin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expression that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the equator was considered as their true paradise.
** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets and the heavens.

The initiated took the name of constellations, and assumed the figures of animals.

One was a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram.

Hence the use of masks in the first representation of the drama.