PURIFICATIONS
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Friends, that inhabit the great town looking down on the yellow rock of Akragas, up by the citadel, busy in goodly works, harbours of honour for the stranger, men unskilled in meanness, all hail. I go about among you an immortal god, no mortal now, honoured among all as is meet, crowned with fillets and 5 flowery garlands. Straightway, whenever I enter with these in my train, both men and women, into the flourishing towns, is reverence done me; they go after me in countless throngs, asking of me what is the way to gain; some desiring oracles, while some, who for many a weary day have been pierced 10 by the grievous pangs of all manner of sickness, beg to hear from me the word of healing. R. P. 162 f.
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But why do I harp on these things, as if it were any great matter that I should surpass mortal, perishable men?
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Friends, I know indeed that truth is in the words I shall utter, but it is hard for men, and jealous are they of the assault of belief on their souls.
There is an oracle of Necessity,[[569]] an ancient ordinance of the gods, eternal and sealed fast by broad oaths, that whenever one of the dæmons, whose portion is length of days, has sinfully polluted his hands with blood,[[570]] or followed strife and 5 forsworn himself, he must wander thrice ten thousand years from the abodes of the blessed, being born throughout the time in all manners of mortal forms, changing one toilsome path of life for another. For the mighty Air drives him into the Sea, and the Sea spews him forth on the dry Earth; Earth tosses him into the beams of the blazing Sun, and he 10 flings him back to the eddies of Air. One takes him from the other, and all reject him. One of these I now am, an exile and a wanderer from the gods, for that I put my trust in insensate strife. R. P. 181.
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