The word ἐναγίζειν can only mean the making of or dealing with something that is of the nature of an ἄγος, or, as the word sometimes appears, a ἅγος. It did not escape that acute observer of man and his language, Archbishop Eustathius[133], that this word and its cognate ἅγιος, holy, had in ancient days a double significance, that holy was not only pure but also polluted; this, he says, ‘is on account of the double meaning of ἅγος.’ To put the matter into modern phraseology, ἅγος is the thing that is _taboo_, the thing consecrated to the gods, and hence forbidden to man, the thing ‘devoted.’ The word lies deep down in the ritual of ancient sacrifice and of ancient religious thought; it is the very antithesis of communion; it is tinged with, though not quite the equivalent of, expiation. Fortunately we are not left to conjecture as to what was the precise nature of the ceremonies covered by the word ἐναγίζειν. We know what was done, though we have no English word fully to express that doing. This fact may well remind us that we have lost not only the word but the thought, and must be at some pains to recover it. In the discussion that follows no translation of ἐναγίζειν will be attempted: I shall frankly use the Greek word and thereby avoid all danger from misleading modern connotations[134]. Quite accidentally, in the middle of a discourse on the various sorts of soap and washing basins, Athenaeus[135] has preserved for us a record of the exact ritual of ἐναγισμοί. After stating that the word ἀπόνιπτρον, washing off, is applied alike to the water in which either feet or hands are washed, he goes on to note that the word ἀπόνιμμα, ‘offscouring,’ slightly different in form but substantially the same in meaning, has among the Athenians a technical ritual usage. ‘The term ἀπόνιμμα is specially applied _to the ceremonies in honour of the dead_ and to _those that take place in the purification of the polluted_.’ The word translated ‘polluted’ is ἐναγεῖς, i.e. under or in a state of ἄγος. He then proceeds to quote from a lost treatise on ceremonies of ἐναγισμός, the exact details of the ritual. ‘Kleidemos, in his treatise called _Exegeticus_, writes on the subject of ἐναγισμοί as follows: “Dig a trench to the west of the tomb. Then, look along the trench towards the west, pour down water, saying these words: A purification for you to whom it is meet and right. Next pour down a second time myrrh.” Dorotheos adds these particulars, alleging that the following prescription is written also in the ancestral rites of the Eupatridae concerning the purification of suppliants: “Next having washed himself, and the others who had disembowelled the victim having done the same, let him take water and make purification and wash off the blood from the suppliant who is being purified, and afterwards, having stirred up the washing, pour it into the same place.”’