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What is that which is called an enknisma (a
roast) among the Argives?1
It is the custom for those who have lost a relative
or an intimate friend to sacrifice to Apollo2 immediately after the mourning, and again thirty days later
to Hermes. For they believe that, just as the earth
receives the bodies of the dead, even so Hermes
receives their souls. They give barley to the priest
of Apollo and receive some meat of the sacrificial
[p. 207]
victim ; and when they have put out their fire, since
they believe it to be polluted, and have relighted it
from the hearth of others, they proceed to roast
this flesh which they call enknisma.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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