Note 402 — THE LIBATION-POURERS

The words point to the two symbolic aspects of one and the same practice. In both there are some points of analogy with the earlier and later forms of the Nazarite vow among the Jews. (1) As being part of the body, and yet separable from it without mutilation, it became the representative of the whole man, and as such was the sign of a votive dedication. As early as Homer, it was the custom of youths to keep one long, flowing lock as consecrated, and when they reached manhood, they cut it off, and offered it to the river-god of their country, throwing it into the stream, as that to which, directly and indirectly, they owed their nurture. Here the offering is made to Inachos, as the hero-founder of Argos, identified with the river that bore his name. (2) They shaved their head, wholly or in part, as a token as a token of grief, and then, because true grief for the dead was an acceptable and propitiatory offering, this became the natural offering for suppliants who offered their prayers at the tombs of the departed. So in the Aias of Sophocles (v. 1174) Teucros calls on Eurysakes to approach the corpse of his father, holding in his hand locks of his own hair, his mother's, and that of Teucros. In the offering which Achilles makes over the grave of Patroclos of the hair which he had cherished for the river-god of his fatherland, Spercheios, we have the union of the two customs. Homer. Il. xxiii. 141-151.