The first act in a Homeric sacrifice was uniformly prayer and the sprinkling of grain[217], and it is important to observe that Eustathius[218] expressly notes this as a previous sacrifice (πρόθυμα); the οὐλοχύται were, he says, a mixture of grain and salt poured on the altar before the sacrificial ceremony began. By the ‘sacrificial ceremony’ Eustathius means the slaying of the animal victim. It is important to note that the grain was poured _on the altar_ and was therefore in itself a sacrifice, as it is sometimes stated that it was merely thrown on the head of the victim. The statement of Eustathius is confirmed by the account in Euripides[219] of the sacrifice made by Aegisthus to the Nymphs. Here, before the elaborate slaying of the bull, we have, just as in Homer, the sprinkling of the grain, and _it is sprinkled on the altar_. The Messenger tells Electra that when all was ready Aegisthus ‘Took the grains for sprinkling and he cast them Upon the altar and these words he spake.’ The sprinkling of _salted_ meal (_mola salsa_) was, if we may believe Athenaeus[220], a later innovation. He tells us distinctly, quoting Athenion as his authority, that the use of salt for seasoning was a comparatively late discovery and therefore excluded from certain sacrifices to the gods. ‘Whence even now, remembering days of old, The entrails of their victims for the gods They roast with fire and bring no salt thereto, Because at first they knew no use for salt. And even when they knew and loved its savour They kept their fathers’ sacred written precepts.’ The sacrifice of the animal victim never in Homer takes place without the ‘previous sacrifice’ of grain-sprinkling and prayer, but prayer and grain-sprinkling can take place, as in the prayer of Penelope[221], without the animal sacrifice. This looks as though the animal sacrifice were rather a supplementary later-added act than a necessary climax. Later, when animal sacrifice became common and even as a rule imperative, the real sacrificial intent of the preliminary grain-sprinkling would naturally become obscured and it would be brought into connection with animal sacrifice by the practice of sprinkling grain on the heads of the victims.