water, so that the different elements all had part in the purgation.[278] All these cathartic ceremonies had the effect of regenerating him who submitted to them, delivering him from the domination of the body, making him a pure spirit, and rendering him fit to live an immaculate and incorruptible life. A similar belief in a transference to the soul of bodily effects partially explains why unctions were still employed in the liturgy of the mysteries. By rubbing himself with perfumed oil the wrestler in the palaestra and the bather after the perspiration of the sweating-room strengthened their limbs and rendered them supple. Ancient medical science deals at great length with the propitious action of numerous ointments, and by their means magic worked not only sudden cures but also prodigious metamorphoses. The aromatic unguents, which had marvellous antiseptic qualities, served to ensure the conservation of an embalmed corpse. Similarly, in the cult of the mysteries, unctions gave the soul an increase of spiritual force and made it capable of prolonging its existence for ever. As rubbing with unctuous substances was a practice of the thermae, so it was of the temples after the liturgical bath. In the anointing of kings and the ordination of priests they communicated to man a divine character and higher faculties, and this idea has been preserved down to modern times. But, above all, as ointments preserved mortal remains from putrefaction, so the consecrated oil and honey became a means by which the soul was rendered incorruptible and immortality was bestowed upon it. The most efficacious means of communicating with the godhead which the mysteries offered was, however, that of participation in the ritual banquets. These banquets are found in various forms in all these religious communities. We have seen that among the votaries of Dionysos his feasts, in which the consecrated wine was drunk, gave a foretaste of the joys reserved for the initiate in the Elysian Fields.[279] Drunkenness, which frees from care, which awakens unsuspected forces in man, was looked upon as divine possession, as the indwelling of a god in the heart of the Bacchantes. Wine thus became _par excellence_ the drink of immortality, which flowed for the sacred guests in the meals of the secret conventicles. The heady liquid not only gave vigour of body and wisdom of mind, but also strength to fight the evil spirits and to triumph over death. Sometimes honey, which was according to the ancients the food of the blessed, was offered to the neophyte and made him the equal of the Olympians. Elsewhere bread consecrated by appropriate formulae was held to produce the same effects.