28 Rafael Karsten. [N:o 1 



sea before he embarked with his army for the Tirynthiaa land 

 and Nauplia ^). Similarly we read of Alexander that when 

 he had reached the mouth of the Indus and was about to 

 sail out into the open sea, he sacrificed bulls to Poseidon at 

 the same time pouring a libation from his golden goblet and 

 praying to the sea that his army might have a safe voyage ^). 

 Mithridates, before he began his war against Rome and crossed 

 the Hellespont, drove a couple of white horses into the sea 

 in order to propitiate it ^). Still låter Paasanias found the 

 Argives keeping up the old custom of throwing horses, bitted 

 and bridled, into the Dine, a peculiar spring of sweet water 

 risiug out of the sea at Genethlium in Argolis *). 



Similar ideas, of course, underlay the worship of lakes, 

 although, as we may expect, these deities were considered less 

 powerful and hence were propitiated with less valuable sacri- 

 fices. Pausanias during his travel in Greece found several 

 lakes which for one reason or other were looked upon as super- 

 natural. Thus of Pharai there was a sacred piece of wa- 

 ter, called the „Stream of Hermes" ^), '^Eq^iov våfia, the fish of 

 which the inhabitants did not catch because they esteemed 

 them sacred to the god. At Aegiai in Laconia he found a 

 lake called the „Lake of Poseidon" near which was a temple 

 with an image of the god. Even in this lake the fish were 

 sacred and inviolate^). More interestiug was the water of Ino 

 near Epidaurus, „big as a small lake but much deeper", into 

 which the surrounding people used to throw barley loaves at 

 the festival of Ino. If the water, that is, the water-deity, took 

 and kept the loaves, it was a good augury for the person who 

 threw them in, but if it sent them up to the surface this was 

 considered as a bad omen '). 



') Herod. VII, 54. 



*j Arrian Anab. VI, 19, 5. 



*) Appian. Mithrid. c. 70. 



*) Paus. VIII, 7, 2. — Compare also, on the worship of the sea, Athen. 

 VI, 79: &VOVXES T<p Iloatiöcjvi ravnov ayi^^aorl rovrov én^åXa>atv ds t^v 

 MlaTtav etc. Eurlp. Hel. 1580 sqq. 



«) Paus. VII, 22, 4. 



«) Ibid III, 21, 5. 



' Ibid. III, 23, 8. 



