[313] ἀπολυμαίνεσθαι: they were to purify themselves symbolically from the sin of Agamemnon which had brought upon them the pestilence. cf. the action of the children of Israel, after their idolatry: ‘And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the Lord,’ 1 Sam. vii. 6. They trusted that the pollution would depart from them into the sea, where they washed themselves.
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Homer's Iliad, Books I-III. Thomas D. Seymour. Boston. Ginn and Company. 1891.
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