66 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
already hinted at in 1. 41 and 1. 43 ; apparently the magicians practised their
purifications outside the official holy places. The use of the word ‘sprinkle’
(
! ), which means ritual cleansing with water,^50 is opposed
to the ‘impious’ use of blood in the purificatory rituals of the magicians
( 1. 40 );^51 and the obscure clause ‘not as polluting ourselves thereby, but in
order to be cleansed from an earlier pollution we might have contracted’
(( P
!
0 " 5 > > > "
-
) probably contains a reaction
against the strange idea held by the magicians that the use of water may
entail pollution, which underlies their prohibition of the taking of baths
( 1. 12 , 6. 354 L.).^52
Thus interpreted, this sentence shows that the writer believes in the re-
ality of divine purification. Does this mean that he believes, after all, in
the divine healing of diseases as taking place in temple medicine? One
cannot be sure here, for the divine purification is explicitly defined by the
author as applying to moral trangressions (* M # )), indeed to
the greatest of these. This restriction is significant in that it may indicate
that in the author’s opinion an appeal to divine cleansing is only (or pri-
marily) appropriate in cases of moral transgressions. I would suggest, as a
hypothesis, that the author ofOn the Sacred Diseasehere aims at marking
off the vague boundaries between medicine and religion: in his opinion it
(^50) See Parker ( 1983 ) 19 ; Ginouves ( 1962 ) 299 – 310. (^51) On the use of blood in cathartic ritual, and on the criticism it generally provoked, see Parker ( 1983 ) 371 – 3 and Temkin ( 1971 ), 12 – 13 ; cf. Theophrastus,On Piety, frs. 13 – 14 Potscher ( ̈ =fr.584a Fortenbaugh, Sharples and Sollenberger). The emphasis in 1. 40 is onE ., but perhaps also on? . (^52) I am by no means sure that this is a correct interpretation of this difficult sentence (which is omitted, from" 5 A onwards by MS, which is perhaps, as Jones suggests, due to haplography of9 but which may also indicate that the text is not completely reliable). At any rate, the phrase( P ! obviously expresses a reaction against the admittedly strange idea that the sprinkling of water entails pollution (on the prohibition to take baths see Ginouves ( 1962 ) 395
n. 8 ; Lanata ( 1967 ) 51 f.; Parker ( 1983 ) 215 ; Moulinier ( 1952 ) 136 ; Ducatillon ( 1977 ) 169 ). However, as
Ginouv`es points out, there is a difference between a !and a
. Perhaps it is
preferable, as H. S. Versnel has suggested to me, to interpret the sentence as an extreme statement
of the author’s belief (expressed in 1. 44 – 5 ) that a god does not pollute a man but rather purifies
him from a pollution: ‘while crossing the border between the sacred and the profane we sprinkle
ourselves; this is, as I have said just now, not symbolic of a pollution which comes from the sacred
[which is obvious to everyone, because:] it is a purification performed by God of the defilement
that originates from something else [i.e. the secular]’. There is still another possible interpretation
which might be considered, which makes the sentence apply to the practice of temple medicine:
‘while entering the temple [for the healing of a disease], we sprinkle ourselves, not as if we were
polluted [by the disease, i.e. as if the disease were a pollution –quod non:cf. 1. 40 ] but in order to
cleanse ourselves from an earlier pollution we may have contracted’. This would suit the author’s
aim of distinguishing between moral transgressions (which are, in his opinion, forms of pollution,
) and physical diseases (which are not) and would make sense of the wordsN
!
in 1. 44. However, on this interpretation! is difficult, and it would presumably require a
perfect participle (
) instead of the present
!
.