Pausanias says he received
divine honours. Those who repaired to Amphiaraus's oracle to supplicate
his aid, laid themselves down in the manner we have just related, after
several preparatory lustrations and sacrifices, on the skin of a ram
slain in honour of the god, and awaited the dreams, which were to
unfold the means of their different cures.
Lustrations and sacrifices were not, however, the only preparatives for
inducing the visionary disposition. The priests subjected the patients
to various others, which Philostratus affirms[97] to have been very
instrumental towards rendering the sleeper's mind clear and unclouded.
Part of these preparatives consisted in one day's abstinence from
eating, and three, nay, even in some cases, fifteen days' abstinence
from wine, the common beverage of the Greeks. This was the practice also
with other oracles; nor were the priests in the meantime insensible to
their own interests on these occasions; for those who were cured by
Amphiaraus's revelations were permitted to bathe in the sacred waters of
a fountain, into which they were enjoined to cast pieces of gold and
silver, which were destined, most probably, to sweeten the labours of
his officiants.
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