From these facts alone, apart from general considerations, it will be evident how easy and natural it was that the Greeks should also have received religious inspirations from their Asiatic neighbours. It is very significant that the first mention, in Greek literature, of the religious purgation of homicide occurs in an epic poem, the _Aethiopis_, by Arctinus of Miletus,[73] who lived in the last half of the eighth century (750-700 B.C.). In this poem we are told that Achilles, having slain Thersites because he had ridiculed his tears for the death of an Amazonian queen, went to Lesbos to be purified. Glotz points out that the presence of Achilles at a sacrifice before his purgation implies that the doctrine was not, at that time, fully developed or understood. Again, it is very significant that Herodotus[74] attributes to the Lydians rites of homicide-purgation which, he says, are almost the same as those which the Hellenes used. According to the historian, there came to Croesus, King of Lydia, about the year 550 B.C., ‘a man, in wretched plight, whose hands were not clean, a Phrygian by race, of royal blood.’ ‘Having reached,’ he says, ‘the house of Croesus, this man asked to have himself purified according to the customs of the place, and Croesus purified him.’ After the ceremony Croesus asked his visitor who it was that he had slain: the stranger replied that he had involuntarily slain his brother and that, in consequence, he had been expelled by his father and deprived of all his privileges. We shall see presently[75] that involuntary kin-slaying could be purged abroad, in the Greek purgation-system. We cannot conclude, because Croesus made no inquiries prior to the ceremony as to the details of the deed of blood, that therefore all kinds of homicide could be purged amongst the Lydians. The very fact that the slayer requested purgation would, in the religious atmosphere of the time, have been taken as sufficient evidence that his deed was at least capable of being purged.