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The rite of purification (as performed by Circe for Jason and Medea) is described in Apol. Rhod. iv. 693 seq.; among other ceremonies a sucking pig was slain, and the blood poured on the guilty hands. The rite never occurs in Homer; it first appears in Gk. literature in the fragment of the Aethiopis of Arctinus, where Achilles is purified for the murder of Thersites. The old view was (Grote, i. 25) that the idea of purification was not Greek and was introduced from abroad; the usual modern view (Harrison, Prol. to Study of Gk. Rel.) is that the chthonian worships, with which rites of purification were connected, were pre-Homeric, i. e. pre-Achaean, and deliberately ignored by Homer in the interests of the Olympian deities. Cf. Frazer, P. iii. 53 seq. for rites of purification generally.

For the similarity between Greeks and Lydians cf. App. I. 5.

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