ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1994 I presented a lecture on the Herodotean story of the seer Evenius from Apollonia on the Ionian Gulf.1 I wish to return to that narrative, which I then called une histoire d'initiation a© la manteia, because this story and its apparent initiatory motifs continue to create ambivalence in scholars. Let me cite two examples. In 1997 Walter Burkert published as an article,2 a lecture that he had presented orally in Italian inMilan a fewmonths earlier. In his Italian talk, Burkert had described the story of Evenius as an initiation narrative, but he does not mention initiation at all in the published article. Two years later, when Alan Griffiths discussed the Evenius narrative in the volume FromMyth to Reason?, he initially remarks that `` those who see ephebic coming of age'' everywhere will surely find it in the Herodotean narrative, but then a few pages later he remarks: ``But enough of this irresponsible Frazerian comparativism.''3
