Note 72 — Chapter IX · DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE ITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM

Thus at the ἀμφιδρόμια all who have had anything to do with the μαίωσις, ἀποκαθαίρονται τὰς χεῖρας (Suid. s.v.). But even the child is lustrated: it is carried in the arms of a grown-up who runs with it round the altar and the altar fire: clearly a vestige of the ἀποτροπιασμὸς καὶ κάθαρσις of the child by sacred fire of which so many relics have been observed: see Grimm, p. 625; Tylor, ii, 430 f.—Uncleanness of the pregnant woman until the fortieth day after the child is born: Welcker, Kl. Schr. iii, 197–9. At the birth of a child crowns of olive-branches or woollen fillets (ἔρια) were in Attica hung up on the house-door; just as cypress-branches were hung on the doors of houses where a corpse lay (see above, chap. v, n. 39): for kathartic purposes strings of onions (squills) were suspended on house-doors; see below): Hsch. στέφανον ἐκφέρειν. Both are lustral materials. Use of olive branches at καθαρμός: S., OC. 483 f.; Vg., A. 230. When a mother gives her child that is to be exposed a crown made of olive branches (as in Eur., Ion, 1433 ff.), this, too, has an apotropaic purpose as also has the Gorgon’s head on the embroidered stuff that also accompanies the child (l. 1420 f.): see on this O. Jahn, Bös. Blick, 60. The olive is also sacred to the χθόνιοι (hence its use as a bed for corpses: see above, chap. v, n. 61; cf. τοῖς ἀποθανοῦσιν ἐλαᾶς συνεκφέρουσιν: Artemid. iv, 57, p. 236, 20 H. κοτίνῳ καὶ ταινίᾳ the goddess crowns Chios in his dream and points the man thus dedicated to death to his μνῆμα: Chio, Epist. 17, 2). This makes the olive suitable for lustration and ἀποτροπιασμοί. The house in which the child lay was thus regarded as needing “purification”. The “uncleanness” felt to exist in this case is clearly expressed by Phot. ῥάμνος· ἀμίαντος ἡ πίττα· διὸ καὶ ἐν ταῖς γενέσεσι τῶν παιδίων (ταύτῃ) χρίουσι τὰς οἰκίας, εἰς ἀπέλασιν δαιμόνων (see above, chap. v, n. 95). It is the neighbourhood of these (chthonic) δαίμονες that cause the pollution.