Fire, it has been seen, was used in the Homeric burnt sacrifice _for sublimation_. By fire, Eustathius[243] says in speaking of the burning of the dead among the northern nations, ‘the divine element was borne on high as though in a chariot and mingled with the heavenly beings.’ In like fashion we may suppose the burnt victim was freed from the grosser elements and in purified vaporous form ascended to the gods of the upper air. This is what Porphyry[244] means when he says that in burnt sacrifice we ‘immortalize the dues of the heavenly gods by means of fire.’ Fire again in the service of the underworld gods was used, it has further been seen, for utter destruction, for the holocaust. But in certain rituals established, it may be, before the discovery of fire, it was definitely prescribed that the sacrifice should be fireless. Diogenes Laertius[245] relates that according to tradition there was but one altar in Delos at which Pythagoras could worship, the ‘Altar of Apollo the Sire,’ which stood behind the great Altar of the Horns, because on this altar wheat and barley and cakes are the only offering laid and the sacrifice is without fire and there is no sacrificial victim—so Aristotle stated in his _Constitution of the Delians_. This altar was also known as the Altar of the Pious. The foundation of the great blood-stained Altar of the Horns may still be seen in Delos; the primitive Altar of the Sire has left no trace, but in some bygone time a voice, it would seem, had been heard on Mount Cynthus saying, ‘Thou shalt not hurt nor destroy in all my Holy Mountain.’ What ancient worship of a ‘Sire’ Apollo had taken to himself in Delos we do not know, but in remote Arcadia a fireless sacrifice of a specially simple kind went on right down to the time of Pausanias[246] in honour of a home-grown goddess, Demeter. At Phigalia Pausanias visited the cave-sanctuary of the Black Demeter; indeed he says in his pious way it was chiefly for her sake that he went to Phigalia, and he adds ‘I sacrificed no victim to the goddess, such being the custom of the people of the country. They bring instead as offerings the fruit of the vine and of other trees they cultivate, and honey-combs and wool which is still unwrought and full of the natural grease; these they lay on the altar which is set up in front of the cave, and having laid them there they pour on them olive oil. Such is the rite of sacrifice observed by private persons and once a year by the Phigalian people collectively.’ Everything here prescribed is in its most natural form, grapes rather than wine, honey-comb rather than honey, unwrought wool not artificial fillets, and the service is fireless. It was a service to content even Pythagoras. That there was between the early fireless sacrifice and the burnt sacrifice of the Olympian in some prehistoric time a rivalry and clashing of interests, is clear from the Rhodian tradition of the Heliadae. Pindar[247] tells how: