BARING GOULD gives another picture of baptism and lustration among the Greeks:
“Among the Greeks, the mysteries of Cotys commenced with a purification, a sort of baptism, and the priests of the Thracian Goddess derived from this their title of βάπται. But Apollo, from a supposed derivation of his name from ἀπολούω to purify, was the special god of expiation by baptismal acts. In Thessaly was yearly celebrated a great festival of cleansing. A work bearing the name of _Musæus_ was a complete ritual of purifications. It distinguished the ceremonies into two orders, τελεταί and καθαρμοί. The latter were purifications and expiations accomplished by special sacrifices. The former resembled the purifications performed in the Mysteries. The usual mode of purification was dipping in water, or it was performed by aspersion. The baptism of immersion was called λοῦτρον, the other περίῤῥανσις. These sacraments were held to have virtue independent of the disposition of the candidate, an opinion which called forth the sneer of Diogenes when he saw some one undergoing baptism by aspersion: ‘Poor wretch! do you not see that, since these sprinklings cannot repair your grammatical errors, they cannot repair either the faults of your life?’
“Lustral water was placed at the temple doors, with which the profane were purified by the priests. Usually, before entering a temple, the hands and feet were washed. At Athens, when the prœdrai had opened the assembly, the peristiarch offered a sacrifice, and then with the blood of the victim sprinkled the seats. The herald then took the place of the peristiarch, and continued the lustration by burning incense; for fumigations (περιθειώσεις), constituted another means of purification. In default of water, sand was used, and salt, which, as a symbol of incorruption, was regarded as possessed of purificatory virtue. Every impure act, murder, the touch of a corpse, illegitimate commerce, even the conjugal act, demanded purification. In like manner, baptism was practised by the Romans, and Juvenal satirizes those who washed away their sins by dipping the head thrice in the morning into the waters of the Tiber.[104]
“On the feast of Pales, the goddess of flocks, the shepherds purified themselves by washing their hands thrice in new fallen dew; or a lustration was effected by aspersion with consecrated water shaken from a branch of laurel or olive; in reference to which rite Propertius prays, much as once did David: ‘_Spargite me lymphis._’”[105]