Note 13 — PART I CHAPTER I ΒELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

It cannot be denied that the libation of wine poured out by Achilles during the night (to which he expressly summons the psyche of Patroklos, Ψ 218–22) is sacrificial in character, like all similar χοαί. The wine with which the embers of the funeral pyre are extinguished may have been intended to serve that purpose alone and not as a sacrifice. But the jars of honey and oil which Achilles has placed upon the pyre (Ψ 170; cf. ω 67–8) can hardly be regarded as anything but sacrificial (cf. Bergk, Opusc. ii, 675; acc. to Stengel, Jahrb. Philol., p. 649, 1887, they only serve to kindle the flames, but the honey, at any rate, seems a strange material for the purpose. For libations at the rogus or at the grave honey and oil are regularly used—see Stengel himself, loc. cit., and Philol. xxxix, 378 ff.). Acc. to v. Fritze, de libat., 72, the jars of honey and oil were intended not as libations but for the “bath of the dead”—in the next world, in the Homeric Hades!—Honey can only have been used for bathing purposes, in Greece as elsewhere, by those who unintentionally fell into it like Glaukos.