“On the feast of Pales, the goddess of flocks, the shepherds purified themselves by washing their hands thrice in new fallen dew; or a lustration was effected by aspersion with consecrated water shaken from a branch of laurel or olive; in reference to which rite Propertius prays, much as once did David: ‘Spargite me lymphis.’”[105]
The Grecian idea of baptism is well set forth by Ovid, in the following lines:
“From Greece the custom came, for Greece esteems
Those free from guilt who bathe in sacred streams.
Thus did old Pelius once Patroclus lave,
And free from stain in the Hæmonian wave:
As, in that same Hæmonian stream before,
Acastus, Pelius freed from Phocus’ gore.
The Phasian sorceress, in her fiery car,
Borne by yoked dragons through the liquid air,