around the well-built altar. After that they washed their hands, and held up the pounded barley.[1] But for them, Chryses, uplifting his hands, prayed with loud voice:
"Hear me, O thou of the silver bow, who art wont to protect Chrysa and divine Cilla, and who mightily rulest over Tenedos! already indeed at a former time didst thou hear me praying, and didst honor me, and didst very much afflict the people of the Greeks, now also accomplish for me this further request: even now avert from the Greeks this unseemly pestilence."
Thus he spoke praying, and him Phœbus Apollo heard. But after they had prayed, and sprinkled the pounded barley, they first bent back [the neck of the victims], killed them, and flayed them, and cut out the thighs, and wrapped them round with the fat, having arranged it in double folds; then laid the raw flesh upon them. Then the old man burned them on billets, and poured sparkling wine upon them; and near him the youths held five-pronged spits in their hands. But after the thighs were roasted, and they had tasted the entrials, they then cut the rest of them into small pieces, and fixed them on spits, and roasted them skillfully, and drew all the viands [off the spits].
But when they had ceased from their labor, and had prepared the banquet, they feasted; nor did their soul in anywise lack a due allowance of the feast; but when they had dismissed the desire of drink and food, the youths on the one hand filled the goblets with wine to the brim,[2] and handed round the wine to all, having poured the first of the wine into the cups.[3] But the Grecian youths throughout the day were appeasing the god by song, chanting the joyous Pæan,[4] hymning the Far-darter, and he was delighted in his mind as
- ↑ "Salted barley meal,"—Anthon; "whole barley,"—Voss; but Buttmann, Lexil. p. 454, in a highly amusing note, observes, "no supposition of a regular and constant distinction between the Greeks and Romans, the one using barley whole and the other coarsely ground, possible as the thing may be in itself, is to be entertained without the express testimony of the ancients."
- ↑ See Buttm. Lexil. p. 291, sqq. The custom of crowning the goblets with flowers was of later origin.
- ↑ See Buttm. p. 168. The customary libation is meant.
- ↑ On the Pæan, see Müller, Gk. Lit. iii. § 4, and Dorians, vol. i. p. 370.
