XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion. 75 



Maximus says, is no more wouderful than the fact that a Del- 

 phic woman in Pytho sitting on the tripod becomes filled with 

 a divine spirit and sings oracles ^), or that a Thesprotian 

 man at Dodona, or a Libyan in the temple of Ammon, 

 and numerous other prophets and prophetesses dailj' asso- 

 ciate with a divine power ^), and not only have a knowledge of 

 their own affairs but deliver oracles to others both privately 

 and publicly. From the treatise of Jamblichiis, On the Mysteries, 

 we also gather among other things that tlie prophetesses in 

 order to make themselves susceptible to the divine spirit 

 had to fast for one or more days retiring to certain sacred 

 places, inaccessible to the multitude, after which they had to 

 inhale the vapour of the sacred water which gave them the 

 ecstatic power ^). It is trne that Jamblichns denies that 

 the prophetic spirit is received immediately through the water 

 and explains that the water only purifies the spirit of man so 

 that he may be able to receive the divinity while in the mean- 

 time there is a divine presence prior to this and „illuminating" 

 the prophet from on high. But Jamblichus here evidently 

 misiuterprets a primitive ceremony from the point of view 

 of a more advanced mind, or he gives expression to a låter 

 idea which was, perhaps, in vogue among the Greeks at his 

 time. However, the original idea of an impersonal divine 

 spirit taking possession of the prophet was probably never 

 entirely löst. 



Madness, as we have seen, was often by the Greeks con- 

 nected with divination and inspiration owing to the fact that 

 such stränge mental conditions were ascribed by them to tem- 

 porary possession by a deity or at any råte to stipernatural 

 influence of some kind. The same theory was adhered to 

 even in cases where no extraordinary knowledge of fu- 

 ture events was ascribed to insane persons. Plato, whose 

 theory of prophetic madness we have already referred to, else- 

 where in his Fhaedrus discusses the nature of madness in 



*) Max. Tyr. Dissert. XIV, 1: .... ölotl i) ulv jiquuuvtl:; -Aai^L^uvaa 

 éjtl TfJtnoöog, én:^innXau.tvq daii.iovLOv .TrjiYmros, ;(())/(T,f<(B()6t. 



-) Ibid.: . . . Tcb bainovim öoul i)uéoaL ovyyiyvouévoLi . . . 

 ä) Jambl. De myst III, 11. 



