Note 166 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

In the Iliad and the Odyssey there is a total absence not only of all reference to purification from blood-guiltiness but of the necessary conditions for it. The murderer goes freely among men without there being any fear of others suffering from a μίασμα attaching to him. Cf. the case especially of Theoklymenos, ο 271–8. Lobeck rightly emphasizes this, Agl. 301. K. O. Müller’s attempts to prove in spite of everything that purifications from the stain of murder were a Homeric custom, are failures. See Nägelsbach, Hom. Theol.2, p. 293.—The oldest examples of purifications from murder in the literature are (Lobeck 309): purification of Achilles from the blood of Thersites in the Αἰθιοπίς, p. 33 Kink.; refusal of Neleus to purify Herakles from the murder of Iphitos: Hesiod ἐν καταλόγοις, Sch., Il. Β 336.—Mythical exx. of such purifications in later accounts: Lob., Agl. 968–9.