The conjoint testimony of the two writers is abundantly clear: either alone would have left us in doubt as to the real gist of the ceremony. Kleidemos tells us that it was addressed to the dead; the trench near the tomb, the western aspect of the setting sun, the cautious formulary, ‘To you to whom it is meet and right,’ all tell the same tale. It is safest not even to name the dead, lest you stir their swift wrath. But Kleidemos leaves us in the dark as to why they want an ἀπόνιμμα, ‘an offscouring,’ water defiled: why will not pure water or water and myrrh suffice? Dorotheos supplies the clue—those who have slain the victim wash the blood from their hands and _wash it off him who has been purified_, and then stirring it all up pour it into the trench. The ghost below demands the _blood of the victim washed off from the polluted suppliant_: when the ghost has drunk of this, then, and not till then, there is placation and purification. That the ghost should demand the blood of the victim is natural enough; the ghosts in the Nekuia of the _Odyssey_ ‘drink the black blood’ and thereby renew their life; but in ceremonies of purification they demand polluted water, the ‘offscourings,’ and why? The reason is clear. The victim is a surrogate for the polluted suppliant, the blood is put upon him that he may be identified with the victim, the ghost is deceived and placated. The ghost demands blood, not to satisfy a physical but so to speak a spiritual thirst, the thirst for vengeance. This thirst can only be quenched by the water polluted, the ‘offscourings’[136] of the suppliant. The suppliant for purification in the ritual just described was identified with the victim, or rather perhaps we should say the victim with the suppliant, by pouring over the suppliant the victim’s blood. There were other means of identification. It has already been seen (p. 27) that the suppliant sometimes put on the whole skin of the victim, sometimes merely stood with his foot on the fleece. Another and more attenuated form of identification was the wearing of fillets, i.e. strands of wool confined at intervals by knots to make them stronger. Such fillets were normally worn by suppliants and by seers: the symbolism for suppliants is obvious, for seers evident on a closer inspection. The seer himself was powerless, but he could by the offering of a sacrifice to ghosts or heroes invoke the mantic dead; he wears the symbols of this sacrifice, the wreath and the fillets. Later their significance was forgotten, and they became mere symbols of office. The omphalos at Delphi, itself a mantic tomb, was covered with a net-work of wool-fillets, renewed no doubt at first with the offering of each new victim, later copied in stone[137], but always the symbol of recurring sacrifice. [Illustration: FIG. 8.] [Illustration: FIG. 9.]