Washing blood with blood; praying to statues
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καθαίρονται δ᾽ ἄλλως αἵματι μιαινόμενοι οἷον εἴ τις εἰς πηλὸν ἐμβὰς πηλῷ ἀπονίζοντο. μαίνεσθαι δ᾽ ἂν δοκοίη, εἴ τίς μιν ἀνθρώπων ἐπιφράσαιτο οὕτω ποιέοντα. καὶ τοῖς ἀγάλμασι δὲ τουτέοισιν εὔχονται, ὁκοῖον εἴ τις δόμοισι λεσχηνεύοιτο, οὔ τι γινώσκων θεοὺς οὔδ᾽ ἥρωας οἵτινές εἰσιν
They cleanse themselves in vain by defiling themselves with blood, as if a man who had stepped into mud should wash himself off with mud. He would be thought mad, if any man noticed him acting so. And they pray to these statues, as though someone were chattering to houses, knowing nothing of what gods and heroes are.
Preserved by later writers who quote it to mock pagan cult — the version here follows Aristocritus's Theosophia and the citation in Origen's Against Celsus. Heraclitus attacks two familiar rites: purification from bloodguilt by blood, and prayer before cult-statues.
This is Heraclitus at his most scornful, turned against the ritual machinery of his own city. Men stained with blood — from sacrifice, or from a killing that needs purging — try to wash the stain away with more blood, and he catches the absurdity in a single image: it is like a man stepping out of mud and scrubbing himself clean with mud. The rite meant to remove pollution (<em>miasma</em>) only deepens it. Anyone would call such a man mad if he did it with mud; do it with blood and it passes for piety.
The second half turns on prayer to statues. To pray to a carved image, Heraclitus says, is like striking up conversation with the walls of a house — addressing something that cannot answer because it is not the kind of thing that hears. The verb <em>leschēneuoito</em> comes from the <em>leschē</em>, the lounge where Greeks gossiped away the day; the cult act is demoted to idle chatter with the furniture. Under the mockery is the real charge, the one that runs through all the fragments: the worshippers do not know — οὔ τι γινώσκων — what gods and heroes actually are. The rites are performed correctly and understood not at all, the ἀξύνετοι of B1 now standing at the altar.
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