It is certain that among the Ionians of the seventh century B.C. a mystic purification from blood-guilt was the usual practice. Herodotus tells us that it was, in the sixth century, the practice of the Phrygians, Lydians, and, in his own day, of the Hellenes. "The manner of cleansing among the Lydians is the same, almost, as that which the Hellenes use."[24] 3 Aeschylus informs us that the blood of swine was employed in purification.[25] The purifier, in historic Greece, "washed off the blood from the suppliant who is being purified, and, having stirred up the washing, poured it into a trench to the west of the tomb."[26] Possibly the Ionians had adopted, in Asia, the Oriental idea of pollution and the Oriental mode of cleansing. Homer not only ignores, but knows not these things. Nor, I think, do we find purification in early Celtic and Teutonic and Scandinavian "saga." We have more light on the method of purification from works of art. On an Apulian vase, Apollo holds a little pig above the head of the polluted matricide, Orestes, with one hand, in the other he grasps a long bough of laurel, which in Roman lustrations had a purifying effect. Melampus, on a Greek cameo, purifies the daughter of Proetus in the same fashion.[27] NOTE There is a singular case in which later tradition introduced purification where Homer says nothing about it. In _Odyssey_, xxi. 1-41, the poet explains how Odysseus came to possess the Bow of Eurytus. When he was but a lad he was sent to recover certain sheep stolen by men of Messenia. He met Iphitus, son of Eurytus, of Oechalia, looking for his lost mares and mules, and Iphitus presented him with the Bow. Thence Iphitus went to the house of Heracles in Tiryns, and there was murdered by his host. Now we know at first hand, from Nestor himself _(Iliad_, xi. 685-692), that Heracles, before Nestor's first feat of arms, had attacked his family in Pylos, and that out of Nestor's twelve brothers he alone had escaped. "For the mighty Heracles had come and oppressed us, in former years, and all our best men were slain. For twelve sons were we of noble Neleus, whereof I alone was left, and all the others perished," but Neleus survived.