Note 117 — Chapter IX · DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE ITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM

σοφὸς περὶ τὰ θεῖα (δεινὸς τὰ θεῖα, Max. Tyr. 38, 3) τὴν ἐνθουσιαστικὴν σοφίαν, Plu., Sol. 12. Epimen. is put among the ἔνθεοι μάντεις, Bakis and the Sibyl, by Cic., Div. 1, 34.—Prolonged solitude is a preparation for the business of the ecstatic seer (cf. Plu.’s story of a sort of counterpart to Epimenides, Def. Or. 21, p. 421 B). There is still another fragment remaining from the story of Epim. on this head in the account given by Theopompos (though he makes too rationalistic a use of it): Epim. did not sleep all that time ἀλλὰ χρόνον τινὰ ἐκπατῆσαι, ἀσχολούμενον περὶ ῥιζοτομίαν (which he needed as an ἰατρόμαντις); D.L. i, 112. We cannot help being reminded of the way in which the Angekok of Greenland, after prolonged and profound solitude, severe fasting and concentration of thought, makes himself into a magician (Cranz, Hist. of Greenland, p. 194). In the same way the North American Indian stays for weeks in a solitary wood and consciously prepares himself for his visions. At last the real world falls away from him, the imagined world of his visions becomes the real one and seems almost palpable; till finally in complete ecstasy he rushes out of his hiding place. Nor would it be hard to find analogies in the religion of civilized peoples.