If,
as I have promised,1 I must now speak of the offerings
of incense which are made each day, one should first
consider that this people always lays the very greatest
stress upon those practices which are conducive to
health. Especially in their sacred services and holy
living and strict regimen the element of health is no
less important than that of piety. For they did not
deem it proper to serve that which is pure and in all
ways unblemished and unpolluted with either bodies
or souls that were unhealthy and diseased.2 Since,
then, the air, of which we make the greatest use and
in which we exist, has not always the same consistency
and composition, but in the night-time becomes dense
and oppresses the body and brings the soul into
depression and solicitude, as if it had become befogged
and heavy, therefore, immediately upon arising, they
burn resin on their altars, revivifying and purifying
the air by its dissemination, and fanning into fresh
life the languished spirit innate in the body, inasmuch
as the odour of resin contains something forceful
and stimulating.
Again at midday, when they perceive that the sun
is forcibly attracting a copious and heavy exhalation
from the earth and is combining this with the air, they
burn myrrh on the altars ; for the heat dissolves and
scatters the murky and turgid concretions in the
surrounding atmosphere. In fact, physicians seem to
[p. 187]
bring relief to pestilential affections by making a large
blazing fire, for this rarefies the air. But the rarefication is more effective if they burn fragrant woods, such
as that of the cypress, the juniper, and the pine. At
any rate, they say that Acron, the physician in Athens
at the time of the great plague, won great repute by
prescribing the lighting of a fire beside the sick, and
thereby he helped not a few. Aristotle3 says that
fragrant exhalations from perfumes and flowers and
meadows are no less conducive to health than to
pleasure, inasmuch as by their warmth and lightness
they gently relax the brain, which is by nature cold
and frigid. If it is true that among the Egyptians
they call myrrh ‘bal,’ and that this being interpreted
has the particular meaning ‘the dissipation of
repletion,’ then this adds some testimony to our
account of the reason for its use.