531 As to Isis see Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 16. As to Demeter see Homer, _Hymn to Demeter_, 231-262; Apollodorus, _Bibliotheca_, i. 5. 1; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 547-560. As to Thetis see Apollonius Rhodius, _Argon_, iv. 865-879; Apollodorus, _Bibl._ iii. 13. 6. Most of these writers express clearly the thought that the fire consumed the mortal element, leaving the immortal. Thus Plutarch says, περικαίειν τὰ θνητὰ τοῦ σώματος. Apollodorus says (i. 5. 1), εἰς πῦρ κατετίθει τὸ βρέφος καὶ περιῄρει τὰς θνητὰς σάρκας αὐτοῦ, and again (iii. 13. 6), εἰς τὸ πῦρ ἐγκρυβοῦσα τῆς νυκτὸς ἔφθειρεν ὂ ἦν αὐτῷ θνητὸν πατρῷον. Apollonius Rhodius says,
ἡ μὲν γὰρ βροτέας αἰεὶ περὶ σάρκας ἔδαιεν νύκτα διὰ μέσσην φλογμῷ πυρός.
“_Inque foco pueri corpus vivente favilla Obruit, humanum purget ut ignis onus._”
On the custom of passing children over a fire as a purification, see my note, “The Youth of Achilles,” _Classical Review_, vii. (1893) pp. 293 sq. On the purificatory virtue which the Greeks ascribed to fire see also Erwin Rohde, _Psyche_3 (Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), ii. 101, note 2. The Warramunga of Central Australia have a tradition of a great man who “used to burn children in the fire so as to make them grow strong” (B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, _The Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, London, 1904, p. 429).
532 She is said to have thus restored the youth of her husband Jason, her father-in-law Aeson, the nurses of Dionysus, and all their husbands (Euripides, _Medea_, Argum.; Scholiast on Aristophanes, _Knights_, 1321; compare Plautus, _Pseudolus_, 879 _sqq._); and she applied the same process with success to an old ram (Apollodorus, _Bibl._ i. 9. 27; Pausanias, viii. 11. 2; Hyginus, _Fab._ 24).
533 Pindar, _Olymp._ i. 40 _sqq._, with the Scholiast; J. Tzetzes, _Schol. on Lycophron_, 152.
535 Lucian, _De morte Peregrini_, 27 _sq._
537 Lucian, _De morte Peregrini_, 25; Strabo, xv. 1. 64 and 68, pp. 715, 717; Arrian, _Anabasis_, vii. 3.
M135 The Lydian kings seem to have claimed divinity on the ground of their descent from Hercules, the god of the double-axe and of the lion; and this Lydian Hercules or Sandon appears to have been the same with the Cilician Sandan. Lydian kings held responsible for the weather and the crops.