Note 167 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

E g. offering of cakes, sacrifice of drink-offerings without wine, burning of the materials of sacrifice; cf. the description of ἱλασμός (in this place clearly distinguished from καθαρμός) in A.R. iv, 712 ff. Similar account (offerings without wine, etc.) of the ἱλασμός (which is, however, improperly called καθαρμός, l. 466) of the Eumenides at Kolonos which the chorus recommends to Oedipus, S., O.C. 469 ff. No one might eat of the expiatory sacrifice: Porph., Abst. 2, 44. It is burnt completely: Stengel, Jahrb. f. Phil. 1883, p. 369 ff.—The clash of bronze was used πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀφοσίωσιν καὶ ἀποκάθαρσιν: Apollod. fr. 36 (and in offerings to Hekate, Theoc. ii, 36; as protection against ghosts, Luc., Philops. 15; Sch. Theoc. ii, 36; Tz., Lyc. 77. Clash of bronze in this apotropaic sense occurs, too, in the dance of the Kouretes, etc.; see below). The ritual of expiation was affected in many ways by admixture of foreign superstitions from Phrygia and Lydia. Its chief source is to be found in the Cretan worship of the (chthonic) Zeus. Thence it seems to have spread all over Greece assisted by the Apolline oracle of Delphi. This is why the ram, the peculiar victim of Ζεὺς χθόνιος, is the principal victim in expiatory sacrifices, its fleece, the Διὸς κώδιον, receiving the various materials of expiation, etc.