[24] The development of the "ritual of purification" has been broadly expounded in its entirety, by Farnell in The Evolution of Religion, 1905, pp. 88 ff.
[25] We shall mention this subject again when speaking of the taurobolium in ch. III, pp. [67] ff.
[26] We cannot dwell here upon the various forms assumed by that purifying rite of the Oriental mysteries. Often these forms remained quite primitive, and the idea that inspired them is still clear, as where Juvenal (VI, 521 f.) pictures the
worshiper of the Magna Mater divesting himself of his beautiful garments and giving them to the archigallus to wipe out all the misdeeds of the year (ut totum semel expiet annum). The idea of a mechanical transfer of the pollution by relinquishing the clothes is frequent among savages; see Farnell, op. cit., p. 117; also Frazer, Golden Bough, I2, p. 60.
[27] Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 157 ff.; Hepding, Attis, pp. 194 ff.—Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, III2 pp. 424 ff.
[28] Cf. Augustine Civit. Dei, X, 28: "Confiteris tamen (sc. Porphyrius) etiam spiritalem animam sine theurgicis artibus et sine teletis quibus frustra discendis elaborasti, posse continentiae virtute purgari," cf. ibid., X, 23 and infra, ch. VIII, n. [24].
[29] Here we can only touch upon a subject of very great interest. Porphyry's treatise De abstinentia offers a fuller treatment than is often possible in this kind of studies.—See Farnell, op. cit., pp. 154 ff.
[30] On ἐξομολόγησις in the religions of Asia Minor, cf. Ramsay, Cities, I, p. 134, p. 152, and Chapot, La province romaine d'Asie, 1904, pp. 509 ff. See also Crusius, "Paroemiographica," Sitzungsb. Bayr. Akad., 1910, p. 111.
[31] Menander in Porphyry De abstin., II, 15; cf. Plutarch, De Superstit., 7, p. 168 D.; Tertullian, De Paenit., c. 9.—Regarding the sacred fishes of Atargatis, see infra, ch. V.—In Apuleius (Met. VIII, 28) the gallus of the goddess loudly accuses himself of his crime and punishes himself by flagellation. See Gruppe, Griech. Myth., p. 1545; Farnell, Evol. of Religion, p. 55.—As a matter of fact, the confession of sin is an old religious tradition dating back to the Babylonians; cf. Lagrange, Religions sémit., p. 225 ff. Schrank, Babylonische Sühnriten, 1909, p. 46.
[32] Juvenal, VI, 523 ff., 537 ff.; cf. Seneca, Vit. beat., XXVI, 8.