← Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks

V. THE CULT OF SOULS

Part 4 of 11 · Rohde, Erwin · Public domain text

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Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #66555, public domain in the United States · text not rewritten or summarized · How RedLectern is built

 

Contents (22)
  1. Opening about 1 min
  2. Part I about 1 min
  3. Part II about 15 min
  4. Part I under 1 min
  5. Chapter I about 1 h 45 min
  6. II. ISLANDS OF THE BLEST about 1 h 6 min
  7. III. CAVE DEITIES: SUBTERRANEAN TRANSLATION about 59 min
  8. IV. HEROES about 1 h 30 min
  9. V. THE CULT OF SOULS about 2 h 18 min
  10. VI. THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES about 37 min
  11. VII. IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE about 34 min
  12. Part II under 1 min
  13. VIII. ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY about 1 h 5 min
  14. IX. DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE about 2 h
  15. X. THE ORPHICS about 1 h
  16. XI. THE PHILOSOPHERS about 1 h 46 min
  17. XII. THE LAY AUTHORS about 1 h 57 min
  18. XIII. PLATO about 58 min
  19. I. PHILOSOPHY about 32 min
  20. Part I about 40 min
  21. II. POPULAR BELIEF about 46 min
  22. Part II about 3 h 2 min

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V. THE CULT OF SOULS

Greek civilization as we see it reflected in the Homeric poems strikes us as so variously developed, and yet so complete in itself, that if we had no further sources of information, we should naturally suppose that the characteristic culture of the Greeks there reached the highest point attainable under the conditions set by national character and external circumstance. In reality the Homeric poems stand on the border line between an older development that has come to complete maturity and a new, and in many ways differently constituted, order of things. The poems themselves offer an idealized picture of a past that was on the point of disappearing entirely. The profound upheavals of the following centuries can be measured by their final results; we can guess the underlying forces from a study of the individual symptoms. But the fact remains that in the very imperfect state of our information about this period of transformation, we can do little more than recognize the existence of all the conditions necessary for a complete reorganization of Greek life. We can see how the once less-important races in Greece now come into the foreground of history; how they set up new kingdoms by the right of conquest on the ruins of the old, and bring into prominence their own special ways of thinking. Colonization over a wide area meant the expansion of Greek life; while the colonies themselves, as is so often the case, traversed all the stages of development at a much faster rate. Commerce and industry developed, calling forth and satisfying new demands. New elements of the population came to the fore, governments began to fall and the old rule of the kings gave way to Aristocracy, Tyranny, Democracy. In friendly and (in the West especially) hostile relationship the Greeks came into contact more than formerly with foreign peoples in every stage of civilization who influenced them in many directions.

All these great movements must have produced many fresh currents in intellectual life too. And in fact the attempt to get free from tradition, from the long-standing culture that seemed, when reflected in the Homeric poems, so permanent and {157} complete in itself, is seen most clearly in the sphere of poetry. The poets threw off the tyranny of the epic convention. They ceased to obey its formal verse-rhythm. And with the freedom thus gained from its vocabulary of stock words, phrases, and images, it was inevitable that the point of view also should change and gain in width. The poet no longer turns his gaze away from his own time and his own person. He himself becomes the central figure of his poetry, and to express the ferment of his own emotions he invents for himself the most natural rhythm, in close alliance with music which now becomes an important and independent element in Greek life. It is as though the Greeks had just discovered the full extent of their own capacities and dared to make free use of them. In every branch of the plastic arts the hand of the artist wins in the course of the centuries an ever greater capacity to give visible shape to the imagined world of beauty. Even the ruins of that world reveal to us more plainly and impressively (because less mixed with conscious reflexion) than any literary achievement, the thing that is of permanent value in Greek art.

It was impossible that religion, alone unaffected by the general atmosphere of change, should remain unaltered in the old paths. But here, even more than in other directions, we must admit that the inward reality of the change remains hidden from us. We can see indeed many external alterations, but of the directing spirit which called them forth we hardly catch more than a glimpse. It is easy, by comparing the later condition of religion with the Homeric, to see how enormously the objects of religious worship have multiplied. We can see how much more sumptuous and elaborate ceremonial has become and observe the development in beauty and variety, in conjunction with the fine arts, of the great religious festivals of the different cities and peoples of Greece. Temples and sculpture bear unmistakable witness to the increased power and importance of religion. That an inward and far-reaching change had come over religious thought and belief might have been already guessed from the fame and importance which belonged to the oracle at Delphi, now coming into real power; and from the many new developments in Greek religious life taking their origin from this spiritual centre. At this time there grew up, under the influence of a deepening moral sense, that new interpretation of religion that we meet with in its completed form in Aeschylus and Pindar. The age was decidedly more "religious-minded" than that in which Homer lived. It is as though the Greeks then went through a period such as {158} most civilized nations go through at some time or other, and such as the Greeks themselves were to repeat more than once in after centuries--a period in which the mind after it has at least half succeeded in winning its freedom from disquieting and oppressive beliefs in invisible powers shrinks back once more. Under the influence of adversity it feels the need of some comforting illusions behind which it may take shelter and be relieved in part of the burden of responsibility.

The obscurity of this period of growth hides also from our sight the origin and development of beliefs about the soul very different from the Homeric. The results of the process are however visible enough and we can still discern how a regular cult of the disembodied soul and eventually a belief in immortality fully worthy of the name were being built up at this time. These things are the result of phenomena which partly represent the re-emergence of elements in religious life which had been submerged in the previous period, and partly the entry of fresh forces which in conjunction with the resuscitated old give rise between them to a third and new creation.

I

CULT OF THE CHTHONIC DEITIES

The chief new feature revealing itself to comparative study in the development of religion in the post-Homeric period is the worship of chthonic deities, that is, of deities dwelling in the interior of the earth. And yet it is an undoubted fact that these divinities are among the oldest possessions of Greek religious faith. Indeed, bound as they are to the soil of the country, they are the true local deities, the real gods of home and country. They are also not unknown to Homer; but epic poetry had transferred them, divested of all local limitation, to a distant subterranean region, inaccessible to living men, beyond the limits of Okeanos. There Aïdes and the terrible Persephoneia rule as guardians of the dead. From that distant and unapproachable place they can have no influence upon the life and doings of men on earth. Religious cult, too, only knows these deities in connexion with particular localities and particular groups of worshippers. Each of these worships the deities of the underworld as denizens of their soil and their countryside alone. They are untroubled by any considerations of a general and uniform kingdom of the gods such as the epic had set up; nor are they disturbed by similar and conflicting claims made by neighbouring {159} communities. And only in these local cults are the gods of the lower world seen in their true nature as they were conceived by the faith of their worshippers. They are the gods of a settled, agricultural, inland population. Dwelling beneath the soil they guarantee two things to their worshippers: they bless the cultivation of the ground and ensure the increase of the fruits of the soil to the living; they receive the souls of the dead into their underworld.[1\5] In certain places they also send up from the spirit-world revelations of future events.

The most exalted name we met with among these dwellers below the earth is that of Zeus Chthonios. This is at once the most general and the most exclusive designation of the god of the lower world; for the name "Zeus" had in many local cults thus preserved the generalized meaning of "god" in combination with a particularizing adjective. The Iliad also once speaks of "Zeus of the lower world"; though by this is meant none other than the ruler of the distant realm of the dead, Hades. Hades too, in the Hesiodic Theogony is once called "Zeus the Chthonian".[2\5] But the agricultural poem of Hesiod bids the Boeotian countryman, when preparing his fields for sowing, pray for a blessing to the Chthonic Zeus. Zeus Chthonios was also sacrificed to in Mykonos for the "fruits of the earth".[3\5]

But, more frequently than under this most general and exalted title,[4\5] we meet with the god of the living and the dead under various disguises. The gods of the underworld were generally referred to by affectionate or cajoling nicknames that laid stress on the lofty or beneficent character of their rule and threw a veil over the darkest side of their nature with conciliatory euphemism.[5\5] Thus Hades had many flattering titles and special names.[6\5] So, too, in many places Zeus of the underworld was worshipped as Zeus Eubouleus or Bouleus,[7\5] at other places, especially Hermione, as Klymenos.[8\5] Zeus Amphiaraos, Zeus Trophonios we have dealt with already in their capacity of Heroes, but they are really nothing else but such earth deities with honourable titles, who have been deprived to some extent of their full status as gods[9\5] and have on that account developed all the more strongly the oracular side of their powers. Hades, the ruler of that distant kingdom of darkness, is one of this class of manifestations of Zeus Chthonios that vary in name according to the different localities of their worship. The king of the shadows in Erebos as he appears in Homer has no altars or sacrifices made to him[10\5]; but these things belong to him as the local god of particular places. In the Peloponnese there were local centres {160} of his worship in Elis and Triphylia,[11\5] sites of a very ancient civilization; and it is probable enough that tribes and clans having their origin there contributed by their wanderings to the spread of their native cult of the chthonic deity in other Greek countries as well.[12\5] Hades, too, was for his Peloponnesian worshippers a god of the fertility of the earth just as much as a god of the dead.[13\5] And in the same way he was the lord of the Souls as well, in those places where "in fear of the name of Hades"[14\5] he was called, in honour of his beneficent powers, Plouton, Plouteus, or Zeus Plouteus.

The welfare of the living and the dead was also the concern of the female deity of the underworld called by the name of the earth itself Ge or Gaia. At the places where she was worshipped she was regarded as one who brought fruitfulness to the fields, but she held sway over the souls of the dead as well, in conjunction with whom prayers and sacrifice were offered to her.[15\5] Her temples remained in honour, especially at Athens and at the primeval centre of ancient worship of the gods, Olympia.[16\5] But her personality had never been quite reduced to definite and intelligible outline from the enormous vagueness natural to primitive deities. Earth-goddesses of more recent and intelligible form had supplanted her. She retained longest her mantic powers which she exercised from beneath the earth, the abode of spirits and souls, at ancient oracular sites--though even here she often had to give way to oracular gods of another description, such as Zeus and Apollo. A poet indeed mentions her once side by side with the great ruler of the lower world,[17\5] but in actual worship she was seldom found among the groups of male and female deities of chthonic nature such as were worshipped together at many places. Above all, at Hermione there flourished from primitive times a solemn cult of the lower-world Demeter in conjunction with the lower-world Zeus, under the name of Klymenos, and with Kore.[18\5] At other places Plouton and these two goddesses were worshipped together, or Zeus Eubouleus and the same two, etc.[19\5] The names of the underworld god vary indefinitely, but the names of Demeter and her divine daughter appear every time unchanged. Either alone or together, and worshipped in connexion with other related deities, these two goddesses have by far the most important place in the cult of the underworld. The fame and widespread popularity of their cult in all Greek cities of the mother-country and in the colonies proves more than anything else that since Homeric times a change must have taken place in the sphere of religious emotion and service of the gods. {161}

Homer gives no hint of the character or importance of the later cult of Demeter and Persephone. For him Persephone is simply the grim unapproachable Queen of the dead, Demeter invariably (and solely) a goddess of the fertility of crops[20\5]; she stands apart indeed from the rest of the Olympians, but no reference to a close association with her daughter is ever made.[21\5] Now, however, both goddesses appear in various and changing activity, but always closely associated, and it seems as if they had come to share some of their previously distinct characteristics. Both are now chthonic deities who together have in their protection the growth of the crops and the care of the souls of the dead. How in detail the change came about we can no longer discover. It may be that, in the times of the great migrations, from various centres of the worship of the two goddesses, such as had existed from great antiquity in the Peloponnese especially,[22\5] there issued forth this faith that differed so essentially from the Homeric-Ionic view of things. It must have spread just as in later times the special variety of the cult of the closely associated goddesses that was practised in Eleusis was widely propagated by regular missions. It also seems that Demeter, in whose name there was early a tendency to recognize a second "Mother Earth," in many places took the place of Gaia in religious cult, and thereby entered into closer connexion with the realm of the souls below the earth.

§ 2

As the numbers of the underworld beings increased, and their cult grew and expanded, these divinities began to have a very different meaning for the living from what they once had for the Greeks of the Homeric age. The upper and the lower worlds are drawn closer to each other; the world of the living borders upon that world after death over which the chthonic gods hold sway. The ancient belief that the earth-caverns of their own land, on which men dwelt and worked, were the near and accessible abode of divinity, now reappeared here and there, and was no longer completely awed into silence by the poetic lustre of the all-embracing divine world of Olympos. We have spoken in a previous chapter of Amphiaraos at Thebes, Trophonios in the Lebadean cave, and Zeus in the cave on Mt. Ida; and again of that Zeus who was seen enthroned by those who descended into a cave in Epirus. These are all vestiges of the same belief which originally underlay all local cults of underworld deities. The realm of {162} chthonic gods, of spirits and departed souls, seemed to be close at hand. Ploutonia, i.e. direct inlets to the underworld, existed at many places,[23\5] as also did Psychopompeia, clefts in the rock through which the souls can pass out into the upper world. In the middle of the city of Athens, in a natural chasm on the Areiopagos, underworld beings were reputed to have their home.[24\5] The most striking denial of the separation between the living and the underworld, such as was demanded by Homeric theology, was at Hermione. Here, behind the temple of Chthonia lay a sacred precinct of Plouton or Klymenos with a chasm in the ground through which Herakles had once brought up Kerberos to the earth--and an "Acherusian Lake".[25\5] So near did the spirit world seem here, that the people of Hermione did not give their dead the usual coin to pay the fare of Charon, the ferryman of the dead:[26\5] for them, in whose own country lay the river Acheron, no tract of water lay between the land of the living and the dead.

More important than these cases of contact between the dark underworld and the world of the living--for the localization of the underworld still remained for the most part matter of fancy--is the fact that the creatures of that world are again drawing closer to the senses of men. The thoughts of men turn more frequently to the other world at so many festivals and anniversaries; the gods who rule below desire and repay the veneration of mankind, both of the individual and the city. And in the train of the chthonic gods the souls of the dead, always closely bound to them, receive a cult which in many particulars goes beyond anything customary in the Homeric Age.

II

FUNERAL CEREMONIES AND WORSHIP OF THE DEAD

The first duty that the survivors owe to their dead is to bury the body in the customary manner. This age takes the matter more seriously than the Homeric people had done. Whereas in Homer denial of burial to enemies fallen in war is often mentioned, it is now regarded as a religious duty that is seldom neglected to give back the bodies of the fallen foe for burial. To deny the honour of burial to members of one's own city is an outrage of the most extreme kind; everyone knows what terrible vengeance for such a neglect of duty was taken, by the excited populace at Athens, on the generals after Arginousai. Nothing can release a son from the duty of burying his father and offering him the regular gifts at his {163} grave.[27\5] And if the relations, in spite of everything, neglect their task the law at Athens requires the Demarch to see to the burial of his fellow demesman.[28\5] Religious requirements, however, go beyond the law. At the solemn agricultural festival of Demeter the Bouzyges at Athens invoked a curse on all who should leave a corpse unburied.[29\5] This matter, which the chthonic deities take under their protection, is no mere sanitary police regulation. It is not any such consideration, but solely the "unwritten laws" of religion which are obeyed by Antigone when she covers the dead body of her brother with a little dust: even such symbolical burial is enough to avert the "abomination" (~a/gos~). Motives of pure piety may have played their part, but the really fundamental idea underlying all such practices was the one already met with in the Iliad:[30\5] that the soul of the unburied person can find no rest in the hereafter. The ghost haunts the neighbourhood, its rage afflicts the land in which it is detained against its will; and the withholding of burial "is worse for the **withholder than for him to whom burial is refused".[31\5] Condemned criminals, indeed, are thrown by the state, unburied, into a pit;[32\5] the sacrilegious and traitors to their country are denied burial in the ground of that country.[33\5] This is a formidable punishment, for even though the outlaw is buried in a foreign country,[34\5] his soul cannot be permanently tended there. Only the family of the dead in their own home can give their departed kinsman the honour due to him in the cult of the souls, and only they at the spot where his remains lie buried.[35\5]

What we know of the details of the funeral ceremonies, differs very little in essence from what had survived into the Homeric age as customs no longer fully explained by contemporary belief. The new features that we meet with may also, for the most part, be very primitive usage restored to currency. Some of the particular details make the solemnity of the act more apparent.

After the eyes and mouth have been closed by the next of kin the body is washed and anointed by women of the family, and clothed in clean garments. It is then laid out upon a bier in the interior of the house for the ceremonial lying-in-state. In Athens marjoram was strewn under the body, for superstitious reasons,[36\5] and also four broken-off vine branches; in the grave, also, the corpse lay on vine branches.[37\5] Underneath the bier were placed ointment vessels of the peculiar slim shape that the graves have restored to us again in such numbers. At the door of the room, for the benefit of those leaving the house who had incurred religious defilement by coming in contact {164} with the corpse, was placed a bowl full of pure water brought in from another house.[38\5] Cypress branches fixed upon the house door outside warned the scrupulous that a corpse was in the house.[39\5] The head of the dead person was generally decked with garlands and fillets, in a manner unknown to the Homeric age, as a sign, it appears, of respect for the higher sanctity of the departed.[40\5]

The lying-in-state of the dead, lasting the whole of one day, was certainly not intended originally to serve the purpose of a public "notification of death", such as later writers attribute to it.[41\5] The funeral dirge was sung at the bier of the dead man, and to give opportunity for this ceremony was its real purpose. The habit of the old Attic government of the Eupatridai had increased the pomp of funeral ceremonies in every direction, and had encouraged an extravagant cult of the souls of the departed. Solon's legislation had to restrain and limit such exaggeration in many ways, and in particular, the tendency to increase unduly the lamentation sung over the dead body required to be kept within bounds. Only the women of the immediate family of the dead might take part in it, for to them alone the cult of the departed belonged as a duty.[42\5] The violent expression of grief, the tearing of the cheeks, beating the breast and head, was forbidden,[43\5] as also was the singing of "poems",[44\5] i.e. in all probability regular funeral dirges specially written for the purpose such as Homer made the women sing round Hektor's bier. To extend the subject of the funeral dirge to apply to others beside the person then being buried had to be made absolutely illegal.[45\5] This prohibition must also have been applied already to the gathering at the graveside. But to sacrifice animals before the procession to the grave was a very ancient custom, and it seems as if Solon **forbade this too.[46\5] In other states, also, legislation was necessary to put a curb on the tendency to overdo the violence of the expressions of grief for the dead[47\5] which were common in the antiquity of the Greeks as among many of the "uncivilized" tribes who carry them to the point of exhaustion. It was not simple piety or natural human grief (never particularly given to violent or excessive demonstration) that caused these things. It was rather the ancient belief that the soul of the dead was still invisibly present, and would be pleased at the most violent expressions of grief for its loss.[48\5] The dirge, carried to this extreme, belongs in fact to the cult of the departed spirit. The restraints placed upon the traditional lamentation may in their turn--in so far as they were effective-- have been derived not from considerations of good {165} sense (which rarely have much influence in such matters) but from religious or superstitious reasons.[49\5]

The lying-in-state of the body seems invariably to have lasted for one day only.[50\5] In the early morning of the third day[51\5] after death the corpse, together with the bier on which it lay, was borne out of the house. Legislation was in some places necessary to check excessive ostentation at the funeral procession.[52\5] What pomp and ceremony was customary in the time of the old aristocratic rule at this part of the cult of the dead, we may gather (if it corresponded at all to reality) from the picture of a funeral procession represented on a very archaic "Dipylon vase".[53\5] There the body is carried on high on a wagon drawn by two horses: men carrying swords surround it, and a whole company of women, making lamentation and beating their heads, follow the procession. At Athens the attendance in the procession was confined, in the case of women at least, to those of the immediate kinsfolk (for three generations). The men, who had their place in front of the women seem to have been admitted without such restriction.[54\5] The admission of hired companies of Karian women and men, singing the national dirges, seems at Athens not to have been forbidden.[55\5] At Keos and elsewhere, the laws ordered processions to the grave to be conducted in silence.[56\5] On the whole, the discipline of respectable city life reduced the "excessive and barbaric",[57\5] which must once have been the rule in the display of mourning, to a discreet symbolism.

On the details of the burial procedure our information is incomplete. Occasional expressions used by Greek authors allow us to conclude--and this is confirmed by the excavation of graves in Greek countries--that besides the custom, exclusively prevailing in Homeric times, of cremation, the more ancient practice of burying the body unburnt was still kept up.[58\5] The body was not intended to be completely destroyed. Out of the ashes of the funeral pyre the son carefully gathers the remains of his father's bones[59\5] in order to bury them, enclosed in an urn or a box. If on the other hand the body remains unburnt, it is either enclosed in a coffin made of baked clay, or wood[60\5]--a custom clearly betraying its foreign origin, or else--and this must have been certainly the older and more purely native Greek usage--it is let down into the earth without a coffin, and laid upon a bed of leaves;[61\5] at other times, if the nature of the ground allows, it may rest unburied in a rock-chamber, upon a bed of stonework.[62\5]

The soul, though now set free, keeps up some connexion with the body it once inhabited. It is for its use and pleasure {166} that an ample provision of household implements and vessels is laid beside the corpse (though no longer the whole of the dead man's possessions as once was usual); and graves since opened have restored such things in large numbers to our gaze.[63\5] But the Greeks never seriously believed that such a phantasmal existence could be prolonged to eternity. Elaborate expedients for the perpetual preservation of the corpse (by embalmment and other means, such as were employed in the case of bodies buried in the Mycenæan shaft-graves)[64\5] were unknown in these later times--except as a peculiar archaism in the burial of Spartan kings.

§ 2

Once the body is buried, the soul of the dead enters the invisible company of the "Better and Superior".[65\5] This belief, which Aristotle regarded as of primeval antiquity in Greece, emerges very clearly in the cult-observance of these post-Homeric centuries from the obscurity which the Homeric age had imposed upon it. The soul of the dead has its special cult-group composed naturally enough of the descendants and family of the dead, and of them only. There even survived a dim memory of the time when the body of the dead was buried inside the house, which thus became the immediate centre of his cult.[66\5] That must quite certainly have been during an age which knew little or nothing of the almost painful sensitiveness to the idea of ritual "purification" such as prevailed in later times. At least, we have no reason for supposing that the Greeks (like many so-called "savage" peoples among whom the custom prevails of burying the corpse within the dead man's own hut) deserted the house that had now become haunted, and left it to the undisturbed possession of the ghost of the dead man buried there.[67\5] To bury the dead within the walls of the city, at least, was **considered unobjectionable in later times by certain Dorian states.[68\5] Even where religious scruples and the practical convenience of city life combined to fix the place for burials outside the city walls, families kept their graves together often in a single extensive plot with a wall built round it.[69\5] Where a country estate belonged to a family, this generally also included the graves of its ancestors.[70\5]

Wherever it was situated, the grave was holy, as being the place where later generations tended and worshipped the souls of departed members of their family. Grave columns indicated the holiness of the spot;[71\5] trees and sometimes a complete {167} grove surrounded the grave, as they did so often the altars and temples of the gods.[72\5] These were intended to serve as pleasant retreats for the souls of the beloved dead.[73\5]

Sacrificial offerings began for the most part at the actual time of the funeral. The custom of pouring libations of wine, oil, and honey at the grave was probably in general use.[74\5] Even the sacrifice of animals, such as was made at the funeral pyre of Patroklos and even of Achilles, cannot have been unusual at an earlier period. Solon expressly forbade the sacrifice of an ox at the grave.[75\5] At Keos, permission is just as expressly given for a "preliminary sacrifice to be offered at the funeral in accordance with ancestral custom".[76\5] When the funeral ceremony is over, the members of the family, after a solemn rite of religious purification,[77\5] put on garlands (they had previously avoided this[78\5]) and begin the funeral feast.[79\5] This also was a part of the cult of the dead. The soul of the dead man was regarded as being present--even as playing the part of host.[80\5] It was awe felt for the invisible presence that originally inspired the custom of speaking only praise of the dead at the funeral feast.[81\5] This feast was an entertainment given in the house of the dead man to the surviving members of his family. The dead man had a meal to himself alone, which was offered at the grave[82\5] on the third and on the ninth day after the funeral.[83\5] On the ninth day it appears that ancient usage brought the period of mourning to an end.[84\5] Where it was extended to a longer period the earlier series of offerings to the dead was prolonged proportionally. Sparta had a period of mourning lasting eleven days.[85\5] At Athens, in addition to the sacrifice on the third and ninth days, another funeral feast which might be repeated several times,[86\5] was held on the thirteenth day.[87\5]

Even after the ceremonies attached to the funeral itself were at last over, the relations of the dead were by no means released from the duty of tending not merely the grave, but the soul of the deceased member of their family. In particular the son and heir had no more sacred duty to perform than the offering of "the customary things" (~ta\ no/mima~) to the soul of his father. These consisted above all of libations to be made to the dead on certain fixed and recurrent festivals. On the 30th of the month there was a traditional feast of the dead.[88\5] Besides this, every year at the "Genesia", when the birthday of the dead came round, the occasion was regularly celebrated with sacrifice.[89\5] The day on which he first entered this life is still of importance to the psyche of the dead man. It is plain that no impassable gulf was fixed between life and {168} death: it almost seems as though life went on quite uninterrupted by death.

Besides these variable feasts of the Genesia, celebrated as they occurred by the individual families, there was at Athens a festival, also called the Genesia, at which the whole citizen body did honour to the souls of their dead relatives on the 5th Boëdromion.[90\5] We hear also of the Nemesia as a feast of the dead in Athens[91\5] (probably intended for the averting of the anger of the dead--always a subject of apprehension), and of various festivals of the dead in other Greek States.[92\5] At Athens the chief festival of all the dead occurred at the close of the Dionysiac feast of the Anthesteria, in the spring, of which it formed the concluding day. This was the time when the dead swarmed up into the world of the living, as they did in Rome on the days when the "mundus patet", and so still in the belief of our own (German) country people at "Twelfth-tide". The days belonged to the souls (and their master Dionysos): they were days of "uncleanness"[93\5] unsuited to the business of city life. The temples of the gods were closed during that period.[94\5] As protection against the ghosts invisibly present, the citizens employed various old and tried precautionary measures; they chewed hawthorn leaves on their morning walk, and smeared their doorposts with pitch. In this way the ghosts were kept at arms length.[95\5] Each family made offering to its own dead, and the offerings they made have remained for the most part the appropriate gifts of the dead on their feast-days in many lands down to modern times. A special offering was made to the dead[96\5] on the last day of the feast, the Chytrai, which was sacred to none of the Olympians, but to Hermes the leader of the dead. To this god--but "for the dead"--were offered cooked vegetables and seeds in pots (which gave their name to this day of the festival).[97\5] It seems probable that as a sacrifice to the dead honey-cakes were thrown into a cleft of the earth in the Temne of Ge Olympia.[98\5] Indoors, too, the swarming ghosts entered and were entertained. They were not, however, permanently welcome guests, and finally they were driven out of the house in a manner parallelled at the close of festivals of the dead among many nations of old and modern times.[99\5] "Begone ye Keres, Anthesteria is over" were the words used in sending away the souls, and it is remarkable that in this formula they were given their primeval name--a name whose original sense had been forgotten by Homer, but not by the language of the common people of Attica.[100\5]

Individuals may have found still further opportunities of {169} bringing gifts to their own dead and showing their reverence for them. The cult paid by the family to the spirits of their ancestors is hardly distinguished, except by the greater limitation of the circle of worshippers, from the worship of underworld deities and Heroes. In the case of the souls, however, nature itself united the sacrificers and worshippers (and no one else) with the object of their devotion. If we wish to form some idea of the way in which (under the influence of a civilization that tended to reduce all primitive grandeur to mere idyll) the worship of the dead altered its character in the direction of piety and intimacy--we need only look at the pictures representing such worship (though rarely before the fourth century) on the oilflasks which were used at funerals in Attica and then laid by the side of the dead in the grave. These slight sketches breathe a spirit of simple kindliness; we see the mourners decking the grave monument with wreaths and ribbons; worshippers approaching with gestures of adoration, bringing with them many objects of daily use--mirrors, fans, swords, etc., for the entertainment of the dead.[101\5] Sometimes the living seek to give pleasure to the spirit of the dead by the performance of music.[102\5] Gifts, too, of cakes, fruit, and wine are being made--but the blood of the sacrificial animals is never spilt.[103\5] There was a time when more solemn--and less comfortable--thoughts prevailed;[104\5] and of these we learn something from the much older sculptured reliefs, found on sepulchral monuments in Sparta, which give the dead a more awe-inspiring attitude. The ancestral pair sit in state and are approached by members of the family (represented as much smaller figures) offering their worship. These bring with them flowers, pomegranates, and sometimes even animals for sacrifice, a cock, a pig, or a ram. Other and later types of such "banquets of the dead" show the dead person standing up (not infrequently by the side of a horse or lying upon a couch and accepting the drink-offering made to him by the survivors.[105\5] These reliefs allow us to see at what a distance the departed spirits are supposed to stand from the living: the dead do, indeed, seem now to be "better and stronger" beings; they are well on the road to becoming "Heroes". Drink offerings such as those we see offered on these reliefs--a mixture of honey-water, milk, and wine, and other liquids, offered in accordance with precise ritual--always formed a regular part of sacrifices made to the dead.[106\5] Besides these, animals, too, were slain, especially sheep (less often oxen) of black colour. These must be completely burnt, as being intended for the sole enjoyment of the dead--a custom {170} observed at all sacrifices made to the spirits of the underworld.[107\5]

The whole of this very material cult depended upon the assumption--which was sometimes distinctly expressed--that the soul of the dead is capable of receiving, and is in need of, a physical satisfaction from the gifts made to it.[108\5] It is consequently, not thought of as deprived of the power of sense-perception. Even in the grave it can feel what is going on in its neighbourhood.[109\5] It is not a good thing to attract its attention; it is best to pass by the graves of the dead in silence.[110\5] The common people thought of the dead, according to a famous phrase of Plato's, as "hovering" suspended over their graves, the site of their cult.[111\5] The pictures on the Attic oilflasks illustrate this belief, for they represent the souls of the dead flying above the grave-monument, and the diminutive size of these winged figures is evidently intended to represent their somewhat contradictory immaterial materiality, and to express their invisibility for mortal eyes.[112\5] Sometimes, indeed, the souls become visible, and then, like the underworld gods and the Heroes, they prefer the shape of a snake.[113\5] Nor are they absolutely bound to the immediate neighbourhood of the grave; they sometimes revisit their old habitations among the living, and not only on those days of the dead in the month Anthesterion. The Greeks, like other people, were acquainted with the custom of allowing what fell to the ground to lie there undisturbed for the spirits that hovered about the house to carry away if they liked.[114\5] The dead man's spirit, being thus invisibly present, can overhear if anyone speaks ill of it: either with the idea of defending the helpless, or, on the contrary, to avoid incurring the wrath of invisible but potent spirits, a Solonian law forbade abusive language to be addressed to a dead man. That is the real meaning of the old warning de mortuis nil nisi bene, as popular belief understood it. The descendants of a dead man were bound to prosecute anyone who slandered their ancestor:[115\5] this also is among the religious duties owed by the living to the soul of the dead.

§ 3

Like all other cults, the cult of the dead had more to do with the relations of the daimon to the living than with his nature and essence considered abstractly, and in itself: a dogmatic account of this nature was neither offered nor required by his worship. Still, the cult was founded upon a general {171} conception, merely evading more exact definition, of the nature of the departed spirit. Men sacrificed to the souls of the dead, as to the gods[116\5] and Heroes, because they regarded them as invisible Powers,[117\5] a special class of "Blessed Ones", as the dead were beginning to be called even in the fifth century. They attempted to propitiate them,[118\5] or at least to avert their easily awakened displeasure.[119\5] Their help was also sought in all times of need; but most especially, like the chthonic gods into whose realm they have entered, they can prosper the fruits of the earth[120\5] and lend assistance at the entry of a new soul into life. For this reason libation is made to the souls of ancestors at a marriage.[121\5] The Tritopatores also, who were invoked at wedding celebrations in Attica that the marriage might prove fruitful,[122\5] were nothing else than the souls of the ancestors.[123\5] We know them also to have been referred to as wind-spirits,[124\5] and in this there appears, plainly or obscurely, an isolated fragment of the most ancient belief of the people: the departed spirits of the dead become spirits of the air; the ghosts that travel on the winds are the liberated souls of the dead.

§ 4

Though it is good and profitable in one's own interest to enlist the sympathy and retain the goodwill of these invisible spirit powers by sacrifice, yet their worship is to a much greater degree conditioned by a sentiment of piety which no longer seeks its own advantage, but the greater honour and welfare of the dead. Such piety certainly takes on a curious form, but it is this which gives its special character to the cult of the souls, and the ideas which lie behind that cult. The souls of the dead are dependent upon the cult paid to them by the members of their family who still live on in this world; their fate is determined by the nature of this cult.[125\5] The beliefs which nourished the cult of the dead are totally distinct from the mode of thought prevailing in the Homeric poems according to which the souls are banished into the distant realm of Hades and cut off eternally from all attention or care that the living might pay them. It differs again from the beliefs which the mysteries implanted in the minds of their worshippers; for in this case it was not their merit--whether religious or moral--which secured to the disembodied souls their position in the future life. These two streams of religious belief flowed side by side, but never met. The nearest analogue to the cult of the souls and its appropriate beliefs was undoubtedly the cult {172} of Heroes, but even here the difference is profound. It is no longer a special privilege miraculously bestowed upon a few favoured individuals; every soul has a right to the attentive care of its own family, and in each case its fate is settled, not by the character displayed or deeds done during its lifetime, but by the relation to itself of those who survive. As a consequence everybody on the approach of death thinks of the "future state" of his soul, and that means the cult which he would like to make sure will be offered to his departed spirit. Sometimes for this purpose he makes a special foundation, or bequest, which is provided for in his will.[126\5] Of course, if he leaves a son behind him, the care of his spirit will be amply provided for; until that son comes of age, a guardian will offer the appropriate gifts.[127\5] Even slaves to whom he has given their freedom will be sure to take part in the permanent and regular cult of their former master.[128\5] One who has no son to leave behind him will make haste to take a son from another family into his own house, who, together with his property will inherit also the duty of offering a regular and enduring cult to his adopted father, and his new ancestors, and of caring for the needs of their souls. This is the real and original meaning of all adoption; and how seriously such provision for the proper care of the souls of the departed was taken, can best and most clearly be seen from the testamentary speeches of Isaeus, in which with a completeness of art that almost conceals itself expression is given to the genuine and simple feelings of the homely Athenian bourgeoisie whom no enlightenment had ever disturbed in the beliefs of their fathers.[129\5]

All cult, all prospect of a full life and future well-being--for so we may express the naive conception--of the soul on its separation from the body, depends upon the holding together of the family. To the family itself the souls of its former ancestors are, in a limited sense, of course, gods--its gods.[130\5] It can hardly be doubted that here we have the root of all belief in the future life of the soul, and we shall be tempted to subscribe to the belief--as a guess tending in the right direction--of those who see in such family worship of the dead one of the most primitive roots of all religious belief--older than the worship of the higher gods of the state and the community as a whole; older even than the worship of Heroes, and of the ancestors of large national groups. The family is older than the state,[131\5] and among all peoples that have not passed beyond family-organization and formed states, we find this type of belief about the soul invariably present. Among {173} the Greeks, who in the course of their history learnt so much that was new without ever quite discarding the old, this belief lived on in the shadow of the great gods and their cults, even in the midst of the tremendous increase in the power and organized influence of the state. But these larger and wider organizations cramped and hindered its development. Left to itself, and given more freedom to grow, such belief might possibly have elevated the souls of the family ancestors to the position of all-powerful spirits of the house under whose hearth they had once been laid to rest. The Greeks, however, never had anything to correspond exactly with the Italian Lar familiaris.[132\5] The nearest equivalent to it would be the Good Daimon which the Greek household honoured. Careful examination shows this Daimon to have been originally the soul of an ancestor who has become the good spirit of his house--but the Greeks themselves had forgotten this.[133\5]

§ 5

We cannot at this late date trace the reawakening of the cult of souls in post-Homeric times or the varying stages it may have gone through in its development. Still, some of the facts are plain. Indications have already been noticed that point to the view that the cult of the dead was carried on in the days when the aristocratic regime still held sway in Greece with greater pomp and seriousness than in the centuries--the fifth and sixth--beyond which our knowledge hardly extends. In these earlier times, we are forced to conclude, there must also have been a livelier belief in the power and importance of the souls corresponding with the greater vigour of religious cult. It seems as if at this time ancient usage and belief broke violently through the suppression and neglect under which they lay in the times that speak to us in the Homeric poems. There is no reason to suppose that any one member of the Greek peoples was specially responsible for the change. At the same time, different districts in accordance with their varying natural proclivities and civilization differed in the cult they paid their dead. In Attica, with the spread of democracy, the ideas at the bottom of such practice tended more and more in the direction of mere affectionate piety. In Laconia and Boeotia[134\5] and in other places where primitive life and customs maintained themselves for a long time, more serious notions of the nature and reality of the disembodied spirits remained in force and a more serious cult was paid to them. Elsewhere, as in Locris and on the island of Keos,[135\5] the {174} cult of the dead seems to have maintained itself only in a very much weakened form. When advancing culture made individuals less dependent on the traditional beliefs of their own country many temperamental variations and gradations in belief and conception made their appearance. Homeric ideas on the subject, universally familiar from poetry, may have entered into the question and added to the confusion; even where the cult of the dead was practised with the greatest fervour, ideas radically incompatible with that cult--as that the souls of the worshipped dead are "in Hades"[136\5]--are sometimes revealed unintentionally. At quite an early period we find expressions of the view, which goes beyond anything said in Homer, that nothing at all survives after death. Attic orators, for example, are allowed to speak to their audience in a tone of hesitation and doubt about hopes commonly cherished of continued consciousness and sensation after death. Such doubts, however, only affect the theoretic consideration of the soul's future life; the cult of the souls was still carried on inside the family. Even an unbeliever, if he were in other respects a true son of his city and deeply rooted in its ancient customs, might in his last will and testament provide seriously for the perpetual cult of his own soul and those of his near relatives--as Epicurus did in his will, to the astonishment of after ages.[137\5] Thus, even unbelief still clung to cult as to other old established customs, and in many an individual the cult still tended to awaken the beliefs which alone could justify it.

III

TRACES OF THE CULT OF SOULS IN THE BLOOD-FEUD AND SATISFACTION FOR MURDER

§ 1

In the renewal and development of the cult offered to the dead, an important part was again played by that priestly association which exercised such a decisive influence on the public worship of invisible powers in the Greek states--the priesthood of the Delphic oracle. On the occurrence of disturbing portents in the sky recourse was had to the god, who gave orders that in addition to the gods and Heroes "sacrifice should be made to the dead also on the appointed days, in accordance with custom and tradition, by their relatives."[138\5] Individuals in doubt as to what the sacred law {175} required in the observance due to a departed soul applied at Athens to one of the "Exegetai"--probably one of that college of Exegetai that had been founded under the influence of Delphi.[139\5] The god protected the rights of the dead, too; the fact that his decisions confirmed the sanctity of the cult of the dead must have contributed a good deal to the consideration and awe in which that cult was held by the living.[140\5]

The decrees of Delphi were even more influential where they concerned a cult to be offered not to one who had died in peace, but to a person who had been robbed of his life through an act of violence. The treatment of such cases shows with striking distinctness the change which had come over the beliefs about the dead since the Homeric period.

In Homer, when a free man has been killed, the State takes no share whatever in the pursuit and punishment of the murderer. It is the duty of the nearest relatives or the friends of the murdered man[141\5] to carry on the blood-feud against the assailant. As a rule the latter puts himself out of reach of reprisals by flight. He withdraws to a foreign country which is unconcerned in his action. We hear nothing of any distinction between premeditated murder and unintentional or even justifiable homicide;[142\5] and it seems probable that at that time, when no regular inquiry was made into the nature of the individual case, the relatives of the murdered man took no account of the different varieties of killing. If the guilty man can escape by flight from those whose duty it is to avenge his deed, they on their part may forgo the full toll of vengeance, which would have required the death of the murderer, and may be satisfied with the payment of compensation, after which the doer of the deed is allowed to remain in his own country undisturbed.[143\5] The requirements of vengeance are thus in essence fulfilled, but the retaliatory murder of the murderer can be bought off. This decided relaxing of the ancient notion of vengeance can only be accounted for by an equally decided weakening of the belief in the continued consciousness, power, and rights of the murdered man, upon which the requirement of vengeance was founded. The soul of the dead is powerless; its claims can be easily satisfied by the payment of "weregild" to the living. In such a satisfaction as this, the departed soul is in reality not concerned at all; it remains a simple business transaction between living people.[144\5] In the midst of the general declension of the beliefs about the dead--amounting almost to complete extinction--which is found throughout the Homeric poems, this weakening of belief in one particular point is not very surprising. But {176} in this case, as in the general study of Homeric beliefs about the dead, it is clear that the conception of the soul as powerless, shadowlike, and feeble is not the primitive or original one; it has foisted itself gradually in the course of years upon a more ancient mode of conception in which the dead had undiminished sensibility and could influence the condition of the living. Of this older conception we have emphatic witness in the duty--not forgotten even in Homeric Greece--of prosecuting the blood-feud.

In later times the pursuit and punishment of homicide was organized in accordance with quite different principles. The State recognized its interest in the reprisals made for such a breach of the peace: we may take it as certain that in Greek cities generally the state took a share in the regular investigation and punishment of murder in its courts of justice,[145\5] though here, too, it is only in the case of Athenian law that we have precise information. At Athens, in accordance with the ancient code dealing with the legal prosecution of murder (which never fell into disuse after Drakon had established it by his penal legislation), the exclusive right--and the unavoidable duty--of prosecuting the murderer belonged to the next of kin of the murdered man. (In special cases only it was extended to include the more distant relatives, and even the members of the phratria to which he had belonged.) It is clear that this duty of making an accusation which fell upon the next of kin, preserves a relic of the ancient duty of the blood-feud which has been transformed by the requirements of the public welfare. It is the same narrow circle of relationship, extending to the third generation, united by a strict religious bond, to which alone belonged the right to inherit property and the duty of performing the cult of the dead. This circle of relatives is here again called upon to "succour" the unfortunate who has been violently done to death.[146\5] The reason for this duty--a duty evidently derived from the ancient blood-feud--is easy to understand: it, too, is a department of the cult of the dead which was binding as a duty upon exactly that circle of relatives. It was no mere abstract "right", but a quite definite personal claim, made by the dead man himself, that the surviving relatives were required to satisfy. At Athens even in the fourth and fifth centuries the belief still survived in undiminished vigour that the soul of one violently done to death, until the wrong done to him was avenged upon the doer of it, would wander about finding no rest,[147\5] full of rage at the violent act, and wrathful, too, against the relatives {177} who should have avenged him, if they did not fulfil their duty. He himself would become an "avenging spirit"; and the force of his anger might be felt throughout whole generations.[148\5] Implacable revenge is the sacred duty of those--his representatives and executors--who are specially called upon to fulfil the needs of the dead soul. The state forbids them to take the law into their own hands; but it commands them to seek redress at the tribunals of justice. It will take over the duties of judge and executioner itself; but a decided consideration will be shown to the relatives of the murdered man at the hearing of the case. In duly conducted criminal procedure the courts specially appointed for this purpose will decide whether the deed is to be considered one of wilful murder, unintentional manslaughter, or justifiable homicide. In making these distinctions the state has struck a blow at that older code of the blood-feud in which the right of vengeance belonged entirely to the family of the murdered man. According to that code, as we cannot but conclude from Homer, nothing but the fact of the violent death of a relative was considered, not the character or motive of the deed itself. Now, however, the murderer is liable to a death penalty which he can avoid before the verdict is given by going into voluntary and perpetual exile. He disappears and leaves the country--at the boundaries of the country the state's authority ceases, and so does the power of the indignant spirit of the dead, which is bound to its native soil--like that of all local deities, whose influence is confined to the place where they are worshipped. If, by such flight over the frontier, "the doer of the deed withdraws himself from the person injured by him--i.e. the angry soul of the dead man"[149\5]--his life is thereby saved, even if he himself is not justified. This alone is meant by the permission of such voluntary exile. Involuntary homicide[150\5] is punished by banishment for a limited period, after the expiration of which the relations of the dead man are to grant a pardon to the murderer on his return to his native land.[151\5] If they voted for it unanimously[152\5] they could even do this before he went into banishment, in which case this would not take place at all. There can be no doubt that this pardon had to be granted by them in the name of the dead man as well, of whose rights they were the representatives; indeed, the man himself lying mortally wounded could before his death, even in the case of wilful murder, pardon his assailant and thereby excuse his relatives the duty of prosecution;[153\5] to such an extent was the injured soul's wish for vengeance the only point at issue, {178} even in the legal procedure of a constitutionally governed state, and not in the least the lawless act of the murderer as such. When there is no desire for vengeance on the part of the victim requiring to be satisfied, the murderer goes unpunished. When he suffers punishment, he suffers it for the satisfaction of the soul of the murdered man. He is no longer slain as a sacrifice to his victim; but when the relations of the dead exact vengeance from him by legally constituted processes, that, too, is a part of the cult offered to the soul of the dead.

§ 2

It is true that the state directs the blood-feud required of the relatives of the dead man along constitutional channels that shall not contravene the laws of the community; but it does not in the least intend to abolish the fundamental idea of the ancient family vendetta. It reasserts the original claim to vengeance of the victim violently done to death--a claim closely bound up with the cult of the dead--by forbidding the old custom, common in Homeric times, of buying off the blood-guiltiness of the murderer by a compensatory payment made to the relatives of the dead man.[154\5] It does not destroy the religious character of the whole transaction; it uses its own processes to secure the fulfilment of the requirements of religion. That is why the head of all criminal jurisdiction is the King Archon, the constitutional Administrator of all the religious functions of the ancient royal government. The religious basis of the oldest Athenian criminal jurisdiction is particularly evident. It has its seat on the Areiopagos, the hill of the Curse-Goddesses, over the sacred chasm in which they themselves, the "Venerable Ones", have their dwelling. The judicial office is closely bound up with the service of the goddesses.[155\5] At the commencement of the proceedings both parties take an oath in the name of the Erinyes.[156\5] Each of the three days at the end of the month, upon which legal proceedings in these courts took place,[157\5] was sacred to one of the three goddesses.[158\5] To them sacrifice was made by those who were acquitted in those courts;[159\5] for it is the goddesses who have given them absolution just as it is the goddesses who demand the punishment of the guilty. They still do it, as once they had done in the typical case of Orestes, in which they themselves had been the accusers.[160\5] In this Athenian worship the Erinyes had not vet entirely lost their true and original character. They had not become the mere guardians of law in general, as which they were sometimes {179} represented by poets and philosophers who thus extended and weakened immeasurably their once much narrower significance. They are formidable daimones, dwelling in the depths of the earth from which they are conjured up by the curses and maledictions of those who have no earthly avenger left. Hence they are more particularly the avengers of murder committed within the family itself; they punish the man who has slain the very person whom he would have been called upon to avenge, if that person had fallen at the hand of another murderer than himself. When the son has slain his father or mother, who shall then carry out the blood-feud incumbent upon the nearest relation of the dead? This nearest relation is the murderer himself. It is the Erinys of the father or the mother who sees to it that the dead shall still receive due satisfaction. She breaks out from the kingdom of the dead to seize the murderer. She is ever at his heels in pursuit, leaving him no rest night or day. Vampire-like she sucks his blood:[161\5] he is her destined victim.[162\5] Even in the judicial procedure of the fully organized state it is the Erinyes who demand revenge for murder at the courts of law. Their absolute power extends in widening circle to all murder, even when it is committed outside the limits of the family; though it was only the imagination of the poetically or philosophically minded that ever transformed them completely to champions of justice of all kinds, in heaven and upon earth. In the cult and beliefs proper to individual cities they remained the auxiliaries attached to the souls of murdered men. These gruesome daimones had their origin in the worship of the dead, and they lived on in connexion with the undying worship of which they were a part. Indeed, if we examine closely the sources of information at our disposal, we can see even through their inadequacy and obscurity that the Erinys was nothing else but the soul itself of the murdered man, indignant at its fate and seizing its revenge for itself--till later ages substituted for this the conception of the ghost from hell taking over to itself the rage of the dead man's soul.[163\5]

§ 3

Thus, the whole procedure at murder trials was directed rather to the satisfaction of invisible powers--the injured souls of the dead and the daimones that represent them--than of the state and its living members. In essence it was a religious act. As a result all was not at an end when the human verdict on the case had been given. On his return from exile the man guilty of involuntary homicide, besides receiving the {180} pardon of the relatives of the dead man, had still a double duty to perform; he had to be purified and to offer propitiatory sacrifice.[164\5] Purification from the blood of the slain was necessary even in the case of the unpunished agent of what the state regarded as justifiable homicide;[165\5] it restored the man, hitherto regarded as "unclean", to participation in the religious gatherings of state and family which could not have been approached by an unpurified person without suffering defilement. The Homeric poems know nothing of any such religious purification of those who have incurred the stain of blood.[166\5] Analogous occurrences in the religious usage of allied peoples make it, however, almost impossible to doubt that the notion of religious uncleanness belonging to a man who has had any dealings with uncanny powers was of primeval antiquity among the Greeks, too. It can only have been suppressed in the Homeric view of the matter; just as that view also suppressed the usages of expiation. These were intended to propitiate the indignant soul of the dead and the gods who protected it, by means of solemn sacrifice; but in the Homeric picture of the world they never appear, for the ideas on which they were based had themselves been swept away.

The details of purification and expiation--the former serving the interests of the state and its religious needs, the latter intended as a final appeasement of the injured powers of the unseen world--were closely united in practice and are often confused in the accounts which have come down to us. A hard and fast distinction between them cannot be drawn. So much at all events is clear; the expiatory rites indispensable when murder had been committed had the closest possible similarity with the ritual of sacrifice to the gods of the underworld.[167\5] And, in fact, the deities invoked at such rites of expiation--Zeus Meilichios, Zeus Apotropaios, and the rest--belong to the underworld circle of gods.[168\5] To them, instead of the murderer himself, a victim was offered to appease the anger felt by them as the patrons of the departed soul. The Erinyes, too, have sacrifice made to them at expiations[169\5]--everything in these matters is connected with the kingdom of the dead and its inhabitants.

But it was the Delphic Oracle that saw to the details of purification and expiation after murder. The necessity of such rights was impressed on men by the example set in the story of Apollo's own flight and purification after the slaying of the earth-spirit at Pytho. These events were symbolically enacted over again regularly every eight years.[170\5] At Delphi, {181} too, according to Aeschylus, Apollo himself purified Orestes the matricide from the pollution of his crime.[171\5] At Athens one of the oldest propitiatory sites was called after one of Apollo's titles, the Delphinion.[172\5] The Oracle must often have directed its inquirers to placate not merely the Heroes, but also the angry souls of murdered (and not heroized) men by means of expiatory sacrifices: as it bade the murderers of Archilochos and the Spartan king Pausanias.[173\5] Propitiatory sacrifice in this sense does not belong to the Apolline cult as an exclusive possession; it belongs, also, to other, mostly lower-world, deities; but it was the Oracle of Apollo that set the seal on its sanctity. At Athens the Exegetai founded under the influence of the Delphic Oracle were the official administrators of this expiatory ritual.[174\5] Plato was certainly following the customs of Greek cities when in the "Laws" he declares that his state shall take its regulations for purification and propitiation from Delphi.[175\5]

§ 4

The Oracle, then, of the omniscient God sanctified and recommended these rites of expiation; the state regulated its judicial procedure in murder cases on the lines of the old family blood-feud. It was natural, then, that the ideas on which these religious and political institutions were based--the conviction of a continued existence enjoyed by the murdered man's soul and of his consciousness and knowledge of what occurred among the living who survived, his anger and his powers--that these ideas should attain to something like the position of an article of faith. The confidence with which these beliefs were held still manifests itself to us in the speeches at murder trials in which Antiphon, suiting his language to his real or imagined public, tries to arouse terror and awe, as at the presence of indubitable realities, by calling upon the angry soul of the dead man and the spirits that avenge the dead.[176\5] About the souls of murdered men indeed, regarded as more than other spirits unable to find rest, a strange and ghostly mythology grew up, of which we shall have some specimens later on. How primitive such beliefs could be we may gather with startling clearness from occasional records of purely savage customs[177\5] which are derived from them--customs which cannot possibly have been freshly invented in the Greece of this enlightened period, and must be either primitive Greek savagery come to light again, or else barbarisms only too easily welcomed from less civilized neighbours. In any case they imply the most materialistic view of the survival {182} of the murdered man, and of the revenge that might be taken by his soul.

It is evident that what men believed about the souls of murdered men must have had an important influence upon the general belief in a future life as it took shape in the mind of the people. But the extent of such an influence can be more exactly measured in the story which Xenophon tells about the dying Kyros; as the strongest grounds for the hope that an after-life will be the portion of all souls after their separation from the body, the dying king points to the unquestioned facts which, as all admit, prove a special after-life for the souls "of those who have suffered injustice". In addition to this he lays stress on the argument that the worship of the dead would not have been preserved intact to his own time if their souls had been entirely deprived of all active power.[178\5] Thus we see how the cult of the souls of the dead was the chief source of the belief in a continued life after death.

NOTES TO CHAPTER V

I

[1\5: This dual efficacy of the ~chtho/nioi~ is explained naturally enough by their nature as underground spirits. There is no reason for supposing that their influence on the fertility of the fields was a later addition (as Preller does, Dem. u. Perseph. 188 ff., followed by many). Still less have we any grounds for regarding the protection of souls and the care for the fertility of crops as a sort of allegorizing parallel (soul = grain of seed) as has been usual since the time of K. O. Müller.]

[2\5: ~Zeu\s katachtho/nios~, ~I~ 457. ~theou= chthoni/ou . . . iphthi/mou Aï/deô~, Hes. Th. 767 f. Evidently there is no distinction here between ~katachtho/nios~ and ~chtho/nios~, as Preller, Dem. u. Pers. 187, wishes to make out.]

[3\5: Hes. Op. 465, ~eu/chesthai de\ Dii\ chthoni/ô| Dêmê/teri/ th' hagnê=| ktl.~ It is impossible even by far-fetched methods of interpretation (such as Lehrs makes use of, Popul. Aufs.^2 298 f.) to make this ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~ into anything else than a Zeus of the underworld. The god of the lower world, totally distinct from the Olympian Zeus (~Zeu\s a/llos~, Aesch., Supp. 231), is here a dispenser of blessings to the farmer. In the sacrificial regulation from Mykonos (SIG. 615) it is prescribed to offer: ~hupe\r karpô=n (kampô=n~ on the stone) ~Dii\ Chtho/ni/ô| Gê=| Chthoni/ê| DERTA me/lana etê/sia? xe/nô| ou the/mis~ (where ~derta\~ = hostias pelle spoliatas, see Prott, Leg. Sacr. i, p. 17; though the addition of the colour of the no longer visible skin seems remarkable)--~hupe\r karpô=n~ here belongs to ~Dii/~, etc., as the division-mark on the stone before ~hupe\r~ shows: see BCH. 1888, p. 460 f. Evidence of this sort makes it clear how unjustifiable it would be to rule out all fructifying influence from the "idea of the chthonic" and to regard the chthonic deities as simply the power of death and destruction in the world of nature and men, as is done by H. D. Müller (who is met by serious difficulty in this passage from the Op.: Mythol. d. griech. St. ii, 40). It is, indeed, scarcely necessary to seek for an abstractly formulated "idea of the chthonic"; but if this fructifying and life-giving force does belong to the nature of the ~chtho/nioi~ as such, what becomes of H. D. Müller's ingeniously thought-out and violently defended view according to which the chthonic only constitutes one side of the nature of certain deities who have in addition a different, Olympian, side in which they are positively creative and beneficent?]

[4\5: ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~ at Corinth, Paus. 2, 2, 8; at Olympia, 5, 14, 8.]

[5\5: Thus Persephone is called ~Hagnê/, De/spoina~, etc. (Lehrs, Pop. Aufs.^2 288), also ~Melitô/dês, Meli/boia~; ~Melindi/a~, consort of Hades, Malalas, p. 62, 10, Di. [8th ed., Bonn.] (? ~Meli/noia~, as Hekate is ~Meilino/ê~, Orph., H. 71). ~Ari/stê chthoni/a~, P. Mag. Par. 1450.--Hekate is ~Kalli/stê, Eukoli/nê (kat' anti/phrasin hê mê\ ou=sa eu=kolos~, EM.), the Erinyes ~Semnai/, Eumeni/des~; their mother ~Euônu/mê (= Gê=~): Ister ap. Sch. Soph., OC. 42 (from a similar source, Sch. Aeschin. i, 188), etc. Cf. Bücheler, Rh. Mus. 33, 16-17.]

[6\5: ~Polude/ktês, Polude/gmôn, Agêsi/laos~ (Epigr. Gr. 195; see Bentley ad Callim., Lav. Pall. 130; Preller, Dem. u. Pers. 192; Welcker, Götterl. ii, 482), ~Euklê=s~ (Bücheler, Rh. Mus. 36, 332 f.).--~Eu/kolos~ (corresponding to the ~Eukoli/nê~ above as a title of Hades must be rejected if Köhler's correction of CIA. ii, 3, 1529, is right: ~Hêdu/los--Euko/lou~.] {184}

[7\5: Cult of ~Zeu\s Eubouleu/s~ at Amorgos, Paros (insc. cit. by Foucart, BCH. vii, 402), of ~Zeu\s Bouleu/s~ at Mykonos, SIG. 615 (~Zeu\s Boulai=os~, Ins. Perg. i, 246, l. 49, does not belong here); of ~**Eu/boulos~ (original title of Hades: Orph., H. xviii, 12) in Eleusis (side by side ~ho theo/s, hê thea/~): SIG. 20, 39; CIA. ii, 1620 c.d. (The Athenian legend makes Eubouleus into a mortal herdsman: Clem. Al., Protr. ii, pp. 14-15 P.; Schol. Luc., De Merc., 2, p. 275, 27 Rabe.) ~Eubouleu/s~ simply = Hades: Nic., Al. 14; epitaph from Syros, Epigr. Gr. 272, 9, and frequently. So, too, the ~Zeu\s Eubouleu/s~ (Hesych. s. ~Eub.~) worshipped in Kyrene must have been a ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~. Eubouleus is also a title of Dionysos as Zagreus (Iakchos), i.e. the Dionysos of the underworld.--Incidentally, what is the origin of this designation of the god of the underworld as "good counsellor" (boni consilii praestitem as Macr. 1, 8, 17, translates ~Euboulê=a~)? It can hardly have been because he was specially able to take counsel on his own behalf (this is the sense in which D.S. 5, 72, 2, takes the title; but rather because he was an oracle god, and as such dispensed good counsel to inquirers. Thus the oracle-god Nereus is called ~eu/boulos~ in Pi., P. iii, 92; so also I. vii, 32: ~eu/boulos The/mis~.]

[8\5: Lasos fr. 1 (PLG. iii, 376), etc.--Consecration to ~Klu/menos~ from Athens: CIG. 409.--Hesych. ~Periklu/menos; ho Plou/tôn~ (it is no accident that gave the name Periklymenos to the magically gifted son of Neleus). Klymenos = Hades, Epigr. Gr. 522 a 2.]

[9\5: The name ~Trephô/nios~, ~Trophô/nios~ itself also points to the fact that assistance to the fertility of the earth was expected of this ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~. In the later cult of Trophonios not a trace of such a belief survives.]

[10\5: ~en oudemia=| po/lei Ha/idou bômo/s estin. Aischu/los phêsi/n; mo/nos theô=n ga\r Tha/natos ou dô/rôn era=| ktl.~ (fr. 161 Sidg.): Schol., AB. on ~A~ 158.]

[11\5: In Elis ~hiero\s tou= Ha/idou peri/bolo/s te kai\ nao/s~, Paus. 6, 25, 2. Cult of Demeter and Kore and of Hades in the very fertile Triphylia, Str. 344.]

[12\5: Kaukones from Pylos, the Nelidai at their head, reach Attica: connexion with the cult of the ~chtho/nioi~ in Phlya in Eleusis: see K. O. Müller, Kl. S. ii, 258. Such accounts may have an historical foundation. The elaborate accounts by H. D. Müller, Mythol. Gr. 1, c. 6, and O. Crusius, Ersch-Gruber "Kaukones"--operate with too many uncertain factors for the results to have any certainty.]

[13\5: ~Ha/idês . . . toi=s entha/de tosau=ta agatha\ ani/êsin~: Pl., Crat. 403 E. ~ho Ha/idês ou mo/non ta\s psucha\s sune/chei, alla\ kai\ toi=s karpoi=s ai/tio/s estin anapnoê=s kai\ anado/seôs kai\ auxê/seôs~: Schol. B.L., ~O~ 188.]

[14\5: ~hoi polloi\ phobou/menoi to\ o/noma Plou/tôna kalou=sin auto/n (to\n Ha/idên)~, Pl., Crat. 403 A.]

[15\5: At the Genesia (Nekysia sacrifice for Ge and the dead, Hesych. ~Gene/sia.--choai\ Gê=| te kai\ phthitoi=s~, A. Pers. 220: calling to Hermes, Ge, and Aïdoneus in "spirit-raising", Pers. 628 ff., 640 ff. cf. Ch. 124 ff.--appeal to Hermes and ~Gê= ka/tochos~ on defixiones: CIG. 538-9.]

[16\5: ~Gai=os~ in Olympia, Paus. 5, 14, 10; cf. E. Curtius, Altäre v. Olymp., p. 15. At Kos it would seem to have been stated that Ge was worshipped ~mo/nê theô=n~, Ant. Lib. 15 (acc. to Boios). Side by side with ~Zeu\s Chtho/nios~ was worshipped ~Gê= chthoni/ê~ at Mykonos, SIG. 615, 26.]

[17\5: ~po/tnia Gê= Zagreu= te, theô=n panupe/rtate pa/ntôn~, Alkmaionis fr. 3 (Kink.).]

[18\5: Cult of Klymenos and Demeter ~Chthoni/a~ (her festival ~Chtho/neia~: see also Ael. HA. xi, 4) in Hermione, Paus. 2, 35, 4 ff. Pausanias also thinks (3, 14, 5) that the cult of Dem. ~Chthoni/a~ was brought to Sparta {185} from Hermione, which may be right. Kore as ~Meli/boia~ is also mentioned in this connexion by Lasos of Herm. fr. 1, PLG. iii, 376. Dedicatory inscriptions (CIG. 1194-1200) also mention, side by side with Demeter Chthonia, Klymenos, and Kore as well. Once (BCH. 1889, p. 198, n. 24) only ~Da/matri, Klume/nô|~. Demeter was clearly the chief goddess: cf. CIG. 1193.--From the community of the worship of Damater Chthonia in both Hermione and Asine it may be justifiable to conclude that this cult belonged originally to the Dryopians who combined with the Dorians in Hermione and were driven by them out of Argolic Asine. There is no warrant whatever for the fanciful derivation of the Demeter-cult of these neighbourhoods from "Pelasgians" submerged by Dryopian invaders.]

[19\5: There was a common worship of: Zeus Eubouleus, Demeter, and Kore at Amorgos; Zeus Eub., Demeter Thesmophoros, Kore, Here, Babo at Paros; Plouton, Demeter, Kore, Epimachos, Hermes in Knidos; Plouton and Kore in Karia. See the citations given by Foucart, BCH. vii, 402 (with whose own pronouncements I cannot, however, agree at all). In Delos, Demeter, Kore, Zeus Eubouleus: BCH. 24, 505 n. 4. So, too, in Corinth Plouton, Demeter, and Kore: Paus. 2, 18, 3; Hades Demeter and Kore in Triphylia, Str. 344. Observe also the group of divinities at Lebadeia in the cult of Trophonios: Paus. 9, 39.--At Eleusis side by side with Demeter and Kore Plouton also was worshipped: CIA. ii, 834 b. But there existed even there other groups of ~chtho/nioi~ worshipped in conjunction, ~tô\ theô/~ once more joined with Triptolemos, and a second triad: ~ho theo/s, hê thea/~, and Eubouleus, CIA. Suppl. i, 27b, p. 59, ff. ii, 1620 bc; iii, 1108-9. This second triad, which is not mentioned on the inscr. CIA. i, 5 (from the beginning of the fifth century), may have only been subsequently added to the Eleusinian official cult (see Ziehen, Leg. Sacr., Dissert. pp. 9-10). It is a waste of time to try and identify the vague appellations ~theo/s~ and ~thea/~ with the names of definite chthonic deities (as e.g. Kern attempts, Ath. Mitth. 1891, pp. 5-6). Acc. to Löschcke, D. Enneakrunosepis. bei Paus., pp. 15-16, these Eleusinian divinities were imported into Athens, established in the chasm of the Eumenides, and instead of ~ho theo/s, hê thea/~ and Eubouleus, were called Hermes, Ge, and Plouton. But the correlation of these divinities worshipped there in conjunction with the ~Semnai/~ (acc. to Paus. 1, 28, 6) with the Eleusinian group depends entirely upon the identification of the ~Semnai/~ with Demeter and Kore. This, however, is based on nothing more than a guess of K. O. Müller's (Aesch. Eum., p. 176 [160 f. E.T.]), which would still be very much in the air even if the theories about "Demeter Erinys" with which it is connected did not rest on such insecure foundations. (To identify the Eleusinian-Athenian Eubouleus with Plouton is impossible, if only because of the fact that in the chthonic cult of those places ~Eubouleu/s~, originally the name of an underworld god, has developed into the name of a Hero who now has a place alongside the chthonic deities.)--With the cautious appelations ~ho theo/s, hê thea/~ we may compare the appeal on a defixio from Athens, CIG. 1034: ~dai/moni chthoni/ô| kai\ tê=| chthoni/a| kai\ toi=s chthoni/ois pa=si ktl.~]

[20\5: Cf. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch. 1884, p. 225 ff.]

[21\5: It cannot, however, be denied that already in Homer Persephone is the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. Adducing ~X~ 326 and ~l~ 217 K. O. Müller (Kl. Sch. ii, 91) has disposed conclusively of Preller's doubts: in spite of which H. D. Müller in his reconstruction of the Demeter-myth clings firmly to the view that the goddess carried {186} away by Hades was only afterwards made the daughter of Demeter.--The Homeric poems seem to know of the rape of Persephone by Aïdoneus but not the story of her periodical return to the upper world--which is the most important feature in the Eleusinian creed. What Lehrs says on this much-discussed subject is completely convincing (Pop. Aufs.^2, p. 277 f.).]

[22\5: The cult of Demeter is old in Phthiotis too (--~Pu/rason, Dê/mêtros te/menos~, ~B~ 695 f.--~e/chousai Antrô=na petrê/enta~, h. Cer. 490). Also in Paros and Crete. That it is possible to trace the extension of the worship of Demeter in detail (as many have tried to do, is one of the current illusions on this subject that I cannot share.]

[23\5: Aornon and ~nekuomantei=on~ (~psuchopompei=on~ Phot. ~Theoi\ Molottikoi/~ cf. Append. prov. iii, 18 L.-S.; Eust. ~k~ 514, p. 1667) at Ephyre on the River Acheron in Thesprotia: well known from Hdt.'s story of Periander (v, 92). Here the place of Orpheus' descent to the lower world was localised, Paus. 9, 30, 6; cf. also Hyg. 88, p. 84, 19-20 Schm.--Entrance to Hades at Tainaron, through which Herakles dragged up Kerberos (Schol. D.P. 791, etc.), with ~psuchomantei=on~: cf. Plu., Ser. Num. Vind. 17, p. 560 E (cf. Stat., Th. ii, 32 ff., 48 f., etc.).--Similar entrance to Hades at Hermione, see below; ~kataba/sion ha/|dou~ at Aigialos = Sikyon: Call. fr. 110.--At Phigaleia in Arcadia a ~psuchomantei=on~ at which King Pausanias inquired, Paus. 3, 17, 9.--More famous is the ~psuchomantei=on~ at Herakleia Pont.: see Rh. Mus. 36, 556 (this also was a place where Kerberos appeared above, Mela i, 103). Hither Pausanias came for guidance, acc. to Plu., Ser. Num. 10, p. 555 C; Cimon 6.--The ~Ploutô/nion~ and ~psuchomantei=on~ at Cumae in Italy had a long-standing reputation (mentioned as early as Soph., fr. 682 [748 P.]): cf. Rh. Mus. 36, 555 (an Italian Greek applies to ~ti psuchomantei=on~, Plu., Cons. Apoll. 14, p. 109 C).--Next the Asiatic ~Ploutô/nia~ and ~Charô/neia~: at Acharaka in Karia, Str. 649-50; at Magnesia on the Maiander, ~a/ornon spê/laion hiero/n, Charô/nion lego/menon~, Str. 636; at Myous, Str. 579. This is what ~to\ en La/tmô| o/rugma~ must have been, mentioned among other ~Charô/nia~ by Antig. Caryst. 123; the ~Ki/mbros kalou/menos ho peri\ Phrugi/an bo/thunos~ also mentioned there, may very well have been the place in Phrygia spoken of by Alkman ap. Str. 580: ~bo/thunos Kerbê/sios e/chôn olethri/ous apophora/s~ (suggested by Keller on Antig). Perhaps the latter place--named after the Korybantes (?) see Bergk on Alcm. fr. 82--is the same as the cave at Hierapolis.--Better known than any was the oracular cavern at Hierapolis in Phrygia into which only the Galli of the Great Mother, the Matris Magnae sacerdos, can go without being overcome by the vapours issuing from it: Str. 629-30, Plin. ii, 208. There existed under a temple of Apollo a direct ~kataba/sion ha/|dou~, accessible at least to the faithful ~tetelesme/noi~: see the very remarkable account of Damasc., V. Isid. ap. Phot., p. 344b, 35-345a, 27 Bk. (Cult of Echidna in Hierapolis, see Gutschmid, Rh. Mus. 19, 398 ff.; this is also a chthonic cult: ~ne/rteros E/chidna~, Eur. Ph. 1023; Echidna among the monsters of Hades: Ar., Ra. 473).--These are the mortifera in Asia Plutonia, quae vidimus, Cic., Div. i, 79 (cf. Gal. iii, 540; xvii, 1, 10).--Entrances to Hades were regularly to be found at those places where the cave was shown by which Aidoneus made his exit or his entrance in carrying off Kore. Thus at Eleusis, ~to/thi per pu/lai eis' Aï/dao~, Orph., H. 18, 15, Paus. 1, 38, 5; at Kolonos, Sch. S., OC. 1590-3; at Lerna, Paus. 2, 36, 7; at Pheneos (a ~cha/sma en Kullê/nê|~: Conon 15), and probably in Crete too (cf. Bacch. fr. 53 Jebb, ap. Sch. Hes., Th. 914); at Enna in Sicily a ~cha/sma **kata/geion~: D.S. 5, 3, 3; Cic., Verr. iv, 107; {187} at Syracuse at the spring Kyane, D.S. 5, 4, 2; at Kyzikos, Prop. 3 (4), 22, 4.]

[24\5: The ~Semnai/~ live there in a ~cha/sma chthono/s~, Eur., El. 1266 f., on the eastern slope of the hill.]

[25\5: Paus. 2, 35, 10. The precinct of the temple was an Asylon, Phot. ~Hermi/onê~; AB. 256, 15; Znb. ii, 25 (Ar. ~Babul.~).--Kerberos is brought up from below at Hermione: Eur., HF. 615. An Acheron, and even an ~Acherousia\s li/mnê~, was to be found in Thesprotia, Triphylia, Herakleia on the Pontus, Cumae, and Cosentia in Bruttium--all sites of ancient cults of Hades and reputed as in close proximity to the underworld.]

[26\5: Strabo viii, 373--the same is reported by Call. fr. 110 of the inhabitants of ~Aigialo/s~ (prob. = Sikyon, where there was a cult of Demeter, Paus. 2, 11, 2-3; cf. 2, 5, 8. Hesych. ~epôpi/s; Dêmê/têr para\ Sikuôni/ois~), where, at any rate, there was a ~kataba/sion ha/|dou~.--The name "Hermione" seems almost to have acquired a generic sense. In the Orphic Argonautica a city Hermioneia is said to be situated in the fabulous north-west of Europe in the neighbourhood of the gold-bearing river Acheron, where (as always on the margin of the ~oikoume/nê~) there dwell ~ge/nê dikaiota/tôn anthrô/pôn, hoi=sin apophthime/nois a/nesis nau/loio te/tuktai~, etc. (1135-47). Thus Hermione in this case lies immediately in the country of souls and blessedness, which the ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnesian city rather supposed to be in the neighbourhood of their own country.--Hesych. strangely: ~Hermio/nê; kai\ hê Dêmê/têr kai\ hê ko/rê en Surakou/sais~. Was there a place called Hermione there too? See Lob., Paralip. 299.]

II

[27\5: If a father makes money by his son's unchastity, the son is released from the duty of providing food or shelter for his father while the latter is alive--~apothano/nta d' auto\n thapte/tô kai\ ta=lla poiei/tô ta\ nomizo/mena~: Solonian law ap. Aeschin., Tim. 13.]

[28\5: Dem. 43, 57-8.]

[29\5: Sch. Soph., Ant. 255. Philo ap. Euseb., PE. viii, 358 D; 359 A. See Bernays, Berichte Ber. Ak. 1876, p. 604, 606 f.]

[30\5: ~Ps~ 71 ff.]

[31\5: Isoc. 14, 55.]

[32\5: The ~ba/rathron~ at Athens, the ~Kaia/das~ at Sparta. But the bodies were often given up to the relatives to bury, and in any case the refusal of burial can only have been temporary--it is incredible that they could have wished to leave the bodies to putrify in the open air.]

[33\5: Athenian law, Xen., HG. 1, 7, 22; common Greek institution at least as against temple-robbers, D.S. 16, 25. Examples of the enforcement of this law in the fifth and fourth centuries discussed by W. Vischer, Rh. Mus. 20, 446 ff.--Suicides in some places were refused burial honours (in Thebes and Cyprus); even in Athens it was customary to cut off the hand of the suicide and bury it separately (Aeschin., Ctes. 244). This is the punishment of ~auto/cheires~. Self-starvation was considered less shocking and that is perhaps why it occurs so frequently as a method of suicide. Cf. Thalheim, Gr. Rechtsalt. p. 44 f. Perhaps also the religious objection of the Pythagoreans (and Platonists) to taking this means of escape from an existence that has become unbearable rests upon popular feeling and belief--it was not shared at all by the enlightened of later ages. (There is, however, nothing in ancient beliefs that points to the idea that the body of the suicide should be allowed only burial, not burning. Acc. {188} to the ~Ilia\s mikra/~ Aias after taking his own life was buried, not burnt, ~dia\ tê\n orgê\n tou= basile/ôs~--fr. 3: [Apollod.] Epit. v, 7. There is no ground for supposing that the fable of Philostr., H. 721, p. 188 K., acc. to which Kalchas declared the burning of the bodies of suicides to be not ~ho/sion~, is taken out of an ancient poem; as Welcker does Kl. Schr. ii, 291.)]

[34\5: Cf. the words of Teles ~peri\ phugê=s~ ap. Stob., Fl. 40, 8 (iii, p. 738, 17 ff. Hens.), and the answer of Krates Cyn. to Demetrius of Phaleron ap. Plu., Adul. 28, p. 69 CD. It is worth remarking that in the fourth and even third centuries it was still necessary to reply to the idea ~ho/môs de\ to\ epi\ xe/nês taphê=nai o/neidos~. When later on the cosmopolitanism preached by the Cynics (and after their model by Teles) becomes really common property it seems no longer necessary to introduce special grounds of consolation for having to be buried in foreign soil into pamphlets ~peri\ phugê=s~. At least this is not done by the Stoic Musonius or the Platonizing Plutarch. Cf. also Philodem. Mort., p. 33-4 Mekl.]

[35\5: This is the reason why so often the bones or ashes of those who die abroad are collected and brought home for burial by their relations. Exx. ap. Westermann on Dem., Eubul. 70; cf. also Plu., Phoc. 37.]

[36\5: Ar., Ec. 1030. Origanon (wild marjoram, white thyme possesses apotropaic power: it keeps away evil spirits. The ancients knew of the virtue possessed by these plants of scaring snakes, ants, and other vermin--Aristot., HA. 4, 8, 534b, 22; Plin. 10, 195; Thphr., CP. 6, 5, 4; Diosc., MM. iii, 29 = i, p. 375 Spr.; Gp. 12, 19, 9: cf. Niclas ad Gp. 13, 10, 5. Modern superstition employs them against goblins and water sprites, witches and ghosts, Grimm, p. 1214; p. 1820, n. 980. If marjoram and gentian are laid by women in child-bed ghosts and devils can do them no harm "for they shun such herbs": J. Ch. Männlingen ap. Alwin Schultz, Alltagsleben e. d. Frau im 18 Jahrh., p. 195 f. The two purposes are closely connected. The pungent odour of herbs and burning stuff keeps away snakes as do nocentes spiritus monstra noxia: Pall. 1, 35 = 11, 3, p. 49 Sohn. The same thing applies to monstra noxia if they try to approach the corpse in the shape of snakes or insects (just as the ghost in Apul., M. ii, 25, approaches the corpse in the shape of a weasel; where we also read that the versipelles which threaten the corpse et aves et rursum canes et mures immo vero etiam muscas induunt: ii, 22). So, too, the marjoram has a kathartic effect on the corpse, i.e. it is a means of keeping off underworld spirits.]

[37\5: Ar., Ec. 1031. The corpse lay on vine branches in several of the recently discovered Dipylon graves at Athens: Athen. Mitt. 1893, pp 165, 184. Superstitious reasons (as in the cases where olive leaves are used as a bed: see below) are to be suspected in this case, too, but can hardly be proved: cf. **Fredrich, Sarkophagstud., Nach. Gött. Ges. Wiss. Ph. Cl. 1895, pp. 18, 69; Anrich, Gr. Mysterienw. 102, 3. Apart from this the ~a/mpelos~ does not seem to have lustral effect.]

[38\5: ~lê/kuthoi, tou/strakon~: Ar., Ec. 1032 f.; ~che/rnips epi\ phthitô=n pu/lais~: Eur., Al. 98 ff. The bowl was called ~arda/nion~: Sch. Ar., Ec. 1033; Poll. viii, 65 (cf. Phot. 346, 1 ~orda/nion~). It contained water fetched from another house: Hesych, ~o/strakon~--obviously because the water in the house where the corpse lay was regarded as polluted. (Thus when the fire, for example, is "polluted", fresh fire is brought in from outside: Plu., Q. Gr. 24, p. 297 A; Arist. 20.) Those who left the house purified themselves with it: Hesych. ~arda/nia~, cf. {189} ~pêgai=on, pêgai=on hu/dôr~. A laurel branch (as holy-water sprinkler, as commonly in lustrations) was placed in it: Sch. Eur., Al. 98.]

[39\5: Serv., A. iii, 680: apud Atticos funestae domus huius (cupressi) frondo velantur. The object may have been to warn the superstitious against approaching the "unclean" house: it is a characteristic of the ~deisidai/môn, ou/te epibê=nai mnê/mati, ou/te epi\ nekro\n ou/t' epi\ lechô\ elthei=n ethelê=sai~, Thphr., Ch. 16. This at least was the reason given at Rome for a similar custom: Serv., A. 3, 64; 4, 507.]

[40\5: Crowning of the dead with garlands, afterwards a general custom, is first mentioned in the ~Alkmaiôni/s~ (epical, but hard to date precisely: fr. ii, p. 76 Kink.). On the "Archemoros" vase a woman is about to place a myrtle-wreath on the head of Archemoros. The myrtle is sacred to the ~chtho/nioi~, and hence the myrtle-crown belongs to the Mystai of Demeter as well as to the dead: see Apollod. ap. Sch. Ar., Ran. 330; Ister ap. Sch. Soph., OC. 681. Grave-monuments too were crowned and planted especially with myrtles; Eur., El. 324, 512; cf. Thphr., HP. 5, 8, 3; Vg., A. iii, 23. Not only the dead but graves too were frequently crowned with ~se/linon~, parsley: Plu., Timol. 26; Smp. 5, 3, 2, p. 676 D; Diogen. viii, 57, and others; cf. above, chap. iv, n. 21. The crowning invariably implies some form of consecration to a god. Acc. to Tertul., Cor. Mil. 10, the dead were crowned quoniam et ipsi idola statim fiunt habitu et cultu consecrationis; which at least gets nearer the real sense of the practice than the view of Sch. Ar., Lys. 601: ~ste/phanos edi/doto toi=s nekroi=s hôs to\n bi/on diêgônisme/nois~.]

[41\5: Pl., Lg. 959 A. Poll. iii, 65. A still stranger reason added ap. Phot. ~pro/thesis~.]

[42\5: Permission to attend either the ~pro/thesis~ of the corpse (and the funeral lamentation) or the funeral procession (the ~ekphora/~) given only to women of kinship ~mechri\ anepsio/têtos~: Law ap. Dem. 43, 62-3: i.e. within the ~agchistei/a~, to which alone the duty of the cult of the dead belonged in principle. Only these women of the immediate kin are ~miaino/menai~ in the case of death: cf. Hdt. vi, 58; this is the reason for the restrictions laid down by the funeral regulation from Keos (SIG. 877, 25 ff.), which makes an even narrower selection within the ranks of the ~agchistei/a~. (From l. 22 ~mê\ hupotithe/nai~, etc., the law speaks of the ~pro/thesis~, even though at the beginning only the ~ekphora/~ is in question.)]

[43\5: ~amucha\s koptome/nôn aphei=len~. Plu., Sol. 21. The democratizing of life in Attica after Solon's time may have contributed to the carrying out there of provisions restricting the elaborate funeral rites of the old aristocratic period. The practice of ~ko/ptesthai epi\ tethnêko/ti~ appears, however, to have remained in use: beating of the head at funeral lamentations is a favourite motif in Attic vase-paintings (the so-called "Prothesis" vases); cf. Monum. dell' Instit. viii, 4, 5; iii, 60, etc. See Benndorf, Griech. Sicil. Vasenb. 1.]

[44\5: ~to\ thrênei=n pepoiême/na~, Plu., Sol. 21: by which is meant funeral hymns carefully prepared beforehand and perhaps ordered from professional ~thrê/nôn sophistai/~, not spontaneous expressions of grief breaking out as though involuntarily.]

[45\5: Plu., Sol. 21: ~kai\ to\ kôku/ein a/llon en taphai=s hete/rôn aphei=len~. This must surely mean: Solon forbade dirges to be sung at a funeral of one person in honour of another, different from the person actually being buried. (~hete/rôn~ is only used for variety after ~a/llon~ and simply = ~a/llôn~: as frequently by Attic writers: ~mê\ proïe/menon a/llon hete/rô| tê\n allagê\n~, Pl., Lg. viii, 849 E: ~he/teron--a/llon~ Isoc. 10, 36, etc.). {190} The tendency to extend the funeral hymns to include others besides the dead man is implied by a prohibition in a funeral ordinance of the ~patri/a~ of the ~Labua/dai~ at Delphi (fifth-fourth century B.C.), BCH. '95, p. 11, l. 39 ff. ~tô=n de\ pro/sta tethnako/tôn en toi=s sama/tessi mê\ thrênei=n mêd' ototu/zen~ (at the funeral of another person). Was Homer thinking of something of the kind in ~T~ 302: ~Pa/troklon pro/phasin~--?]

[46\5: In Athens it had once been the custom ~hierei=a prospha/ttein pro\ tê=s ekphora=s~, i.e. while still in the house of the dead person: [Pl.] Min. 315 C. Such a sacrifice before the ~ekphora/~ (which is not described till l. 1261 ff.) is implied by Euripides, Hel. 1255, at the burial of the dead body found in the sea: ~prospha/zetai me\n hai=ma prô=ta nerte/rois~--where ~prospha/gion~ is used inaccurately of sacrifice at the grave, in which case the ~pro/~ is meaningless; as also in the insc. from Keos (SIG. 877, 21). ~pro/sphagma~ is also thus used, Eur., Hec. 41. Plu. (Sol. 21) says of Solon: ~enagi/zein de\ bou=n ouk ei/asen~. Possibly Solon **forbade the sacrifice of animals before the ~ekphora/~, since the author of the Ps.-Platonic Minos seems also to refer to such a prohibition.]

[47\5: The Solonian restrictions says Plu. (Sol. 21) have been for the most part adopted in our (i.e. the Boeotian) ~no/moi~--as acc. to the indubitable witness of Cicero, Solon's funeral regulations had been reproduced **eisdem prope verbis in the tenth of the Twelve Tables by the Decemviri. Limits set to ceremonial mourning in Sparta: Plu., Lyc. 27 (whence Inst. Lac., 18, p. 238 D), in Syracuse by Gelon: D.S. 11, 38, 2; cf. "Charondas", Stob., Fl. 44, 40 M. = iv, 2, 24, p. 153, 10 H. Some degree of restriction was imposed on their members (about the beginning of the fourth century B.C.) by the ~patri/a~ of the ~Labua/dai~ in Delphi in the ~tethmo/s~ published in the BCH. '95, p. 9 ff.]

[48\5: We have a very naive expression of the ideas lying behind such violent lamentations, self-inflicted injuries, and other excessive demonstrations of grief in the presence of the dead body, when e.g. in Tahiti people wound themselves and then "call out to the soul of the dead man to witness their attachment to him" (Ratzel, Hist. of Mankind, i, 330); cf. Waitz-Gerland, Anthrop. vi, 402.]

[49\5: It is a very ancient idea common to many different nations that too violent expressions of grief for the dead man may disturb his rest and make him return: see Mannhardt, Götter der deutschen Völker, 1860, p. 290 (for Germany in partic. see Wuttke, Deut. Volksabergl.^2, § 728, p. 431; Rochholz, D. Glaube u. Brauch, i, 207). Similar superstition in Greece is referred to in Lucian, Luct. 24 (in which the lateness of the witness does not prevent the belief from being ancient). The survivors who prolong beyond reason their laments are asked: ~me/chri ti/nos oduro/metha? e/ason anapau/sasthai tou\s tou= makari/ou dai/monas~.--In Pl., Mx. 248 B, the dead say ~deo/metha pate/rôn kai\ mête/rôn eide/nai ho/ti ou thrênou=tes oude\ olophuro/menoi hêma=s hêmi=n ma/lista chariou=ntai~--thus violent grief is intended in Greece, too, to please the dead: see last note--~alla\ . . . hou/tôs acha/ristoi ei=en a\n ma/lista~: while acc. to "Charondas", Stob., Fl. iv, 2, 24, p. 153 H.: ~acharisti/a esti\ pro\s dai/monas chthoni/ous lu/pê hupe\r to\ me/tron gignome/nê~.]

[50\5: ~ekphe/rein to\n apothano/nta tê=| husterai/a| hê=| a\n prothô=ntai, pri\n hê/lion exe/chein~, Solonian law in D. 43, 62; cf. Antipho, Chor. 34. Klearch. ap. Proclus _in Pl. _Rp.__ ii, 114 Kroll: Kleonymos in Athens, ~tethna/nai do/xas tri/tês hême/ras ou/sês kata\ to\n no/mon proute/thê~, i.e. it was the morning of the third day, immediately before the ~ekphora/~, the ~pro/thesis~ having occupied the whole of the second day (quite differently taken by Maass, Orpheus, 1895, p. 232, 46; but hardly correctly. It is scarcely probable that a man ~tethna/nai do/xas~, i.e. seeming to those {191} around him to be dead, should be recognized by these same people and treated as merely in a trance--as in fact, was the case). So, too, in the analogous story of Thespesios of Soli in Plutarch, S. Num. Vind. 22, p. 563 D, ~tritai=os, ê/dê peri\ ta\s tapha\s auta/s, anê/negke~ (Philostr., VA. 3, 38, p. 114, 28 K.: the wife of the man who has just died ~peri\ tê\n eunê\n hu/brise, tritai/ou keime/nou~ [sc. ~tou= andro/s~] ~gamêthei=sa hete/rô|~: i.e. immediately before the ~ekphora/~, while the dead man still was in the house). Similar customs are implied for the Greeks in Cyprus ap. Ant. Lib. 39, 5, p. 235, 21 West. [= p. 122, 7 f. Mart.]: ~hême/ra| de\ tritê| to\ sô=ma proê/negkan eis emphane/s (eis toumphane/s~?) ~hoi prosê/kontes~. Further, acc. to Plato's view as given in Lg. 959 A, there should be ~tritai/a pro\s to\ mnê=ma ekphora/~.]

[51\5: Before sunrise: D. 43, 62 (more distinctly commanded by a law of Dem. Phal.: Cic., Lg. ii, 66). On the other hand, it was considered a disgrace to be buried during the night: ~ê= kako\s kakô=s taphê/sê|, nukto\s ouk en hême/ra|~, Eur., Tro. 448.]

[52\5: So in particular the funeral-law from Keos, SIG. 877; cf. Plu., Sol. 21; Bergk, Rh. Mus. 15, 468. Funeral-law of the Labyadai at Delphi, l. 29 f.: ~strô=ma de\ he\n hupobale/tô kai\ poikepha/laion he\n potithe/tô~ (for the dead).]

[53\5: Reproduced Monum. dell' Instituto, ix, 391 [and in Rayet-Collignon, Céramique grecque, Pl. i].]

[54\5: The law in D. 43, 62 (cf. 64), makes restrictions in the attendance at a funeral which are to apply to women only (and only then for those under 60): men seem therefore to be granted permission indiscriminately. We are told too in Plu., Sol. 21, that at the ~ekkomidê/~ Solon had not forbidden ~ep' allo/tria mnê/mata badi/zein~--for men that is, we must suppose. The men went in front in procession; the women followed: D. 43, 62. Evidently the same applied in Keos: SIG. 877, 20.--Pittakos as aesymnetes in Mitylene forbade absolutely accedere quemquam in funus aliorum, Cic., Lg. ii, 65.--Funeral-law of the Labyadai (Delphi, l. 42 ff.: from the burial ~api=men woi/kade he/kaston, e/chthô homesti/ôn kai\ patradelpheô=n kai\ pentherô=n kêkgo/nôn kai\ gambrô=n~, i.e. the next-of-kin of the dead in ascending and descending order.]

[55\5: This is referred to as still-existing custom by Plato, Lg. 800 E; cf. Sch. ad loc.; Hesych. ~Kari=nai~. Menand. ~Kari/nê~, Mein., Com. iv, p. 144 (Karo-phrygian funeral-flutes: Ath. 174 F: Poll. iv, 75-9).]

[56\5: ~to\n thano/nta de\ phe/ren katakekalumme/non siôpê=| me/chri epi\ to\ sê=ma~, SIG. 877, 11. Funeral-law of Labyad., l. 40 ff. ~to\n de\ nekro\n kekalumme/non phere/tô siga=|, kê\n tai=s strophai=s~ ("at the street-corners") ~mê\ kattithe/ntôn mêdamei=, mêd' ototuzo/ntôn e/chthos ta=s woiki/as pri/g k' epi\ to\ sa=ma hi/kônti; tênei= d' e/nagos e/stô ktl.~ (the last not yet satisfactorily explained).

[57\5: Solon diminished (under the alleged influence of Epimenides) at funerals ~to\ sklêro\n kai\ to\ barbariko\n hô=| sunei/chonto pro/teron hai plei=stai gunai=kes~, Plu., Sol. 12.]

[58\5: In the list of quotations from individual authors from the fifth century on, given in Becker **Char.^2 iii, 98 ff. [= E.T.^3 pp. 390-1], only the foll. speak for burial as the prevailing custom: Plu., Sol. 21. ~ouk ei/asen~ (Solon) ~suntithe/nai ple/on himati/ôn triô=n~, and Plu., Lyc. 27, ~suntha/ptein ou/den eiasen~ (Lycurg.) ~alla\ en phoiniki/di kai\ phu/llois elai/as the/ntes to\ sô=ma perie/stellon~: cf. Th. i, 134, 4. Cremation, on the other hand, is implied as the more common in Athens (fourth century) by Is. 4, 19: ~ou/t' e/kausen out' ôstolo/gêsen~; so, too, the will (third century) of the Peripatetic Lykon (D.L. v, 70): ~peri\ de\ tê=s ekphora=s kai\ {192} kau/seôs epimelêthê/tôsan ktl.~ Cf. Also Teles ap. Stob. 40, 8, i, p. 747, 5 H.; ~ti/ diaphe/rei hupo\ puro\s katakauthê=nai~--which is here regarded as Greek funeral usage.--In the graves recently discovered before the Dipylon gate in Athens those belonging to the earliest period almost without exertion have their dead buried (without coffin); the following period (into the sixth century) generally burnt their dead; later, burial seems to have been more usual--see the account by Brückner and Pernice of the excavations before the Dipylon gate, Ath. Mitt. 1893, pp. 73-191. Thus it appears that in the later period burial was the prevailing practice in Attica (L. Ross, Archaeol. Aufs. i, 23), as also, being essentially cheaper than cremation, in other parts of Greece as well (a few references given in BCH. '95, p. 144, 2).]

[59\5: ~ôstolo/gêsen~, Is. 4, 19.]

[60\5: The custom of ~ekphora/~ on an open ~kli/nê~ is not in harmony with the intention of laying the body of the dead in a coffin, but evidently presupposes that the body is to be placed either unenveloped in the ground or else to be burnt. The practice of coffin-burial (probably introduced from the East) later became common, but was never completely harmonized with the ancient ceremonies of the ~ekphora/~.]

[61\5: Coffinless burial was usual in the graves of the "Mycenaean" period, and also in the oldest times in Attica. The Spartans were merely keeping up this ancient custom when they ~en phoiniki/di kai\ phu/llois elai/as the/ntes to\ sô=ma perie/stellon~ (buried), Plu., Lyc. 27. Here everything points to the retention of primitive usage. The bodies were buried in the ancient fashion, not burnt; they were wrapped in a crimson robe. Crimson is otherwise the special colour for war and festival dress (cf. Müller, Dorians, ii, 264); here it is used in connexion with chthonic cult: ~e/chei ga/r tina to\ porphurou=n chrô=ma sumpa/theian pro\s to\n tha/naton~ says rightly Artemid. 1, 77, p. 70, 11 H. This can hardly be because of the red colour of blood; any more than that is why ~tha/natos~ is called ~porphu/reos~. But even Homer ~Ô~ 796 makes Hektor's bones wrapped ~purphure/ois pe/ploisi~--the bones only in this case instead of the whole body: clearly a vestige of an older custom which survived unchanged in Sparta. Similarly ~Ps~ 254. So, too, e.g. in the Dipylon graves at Athens burnt bones were found wrapped in a cloth, Ath. Mitt. 18, 160-1, 185. The head of the murdered brother ~phoiniki/di ekalupsa/tên kai\ ethapsa/tên~ the two other Kabeiroi in the religious myth related by Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 16 P. Crimson frequently occurs as a colour used in chthonic cult: e.g. at the ceremonial ~a/rai~ implying consecration to the infernal deities in [Lys.] 6, 51; at sacrifices to the Plataean Heroes: Plu., Arist. 21; at the transfer of the bones of Rhesos: see above, chap. iv, n. 36; Polyaen. vi, 53; at sacrifices to the Eumenides, Aesch., Eum. 1028.--The custom of burial upon leaves was also retained by the Pythagoreans: they buried their dead (without burning them, Iamb., VP. 154) in myrti et oleae et populi nigrae foliis (in fact, the trees regularly sacred to the ~chtho/nioi~), Plin. 35, 160. Fauvel (ap. Ross, Arch. Aufs. i, 31) found in graves by the Melitean gate at Athens le squelette couché sur un lit épais de feuilles d'olivier encore en état de brûler. (Olive stones in Mycenaean Graves, Tsundas, ~Eph. Arch.~, '88, p. 136; '89, p. 152.)]

[62\5: Thus in the letter of Hipparchos, in Phlegon, 1; similarly Xen. Eph. 3, 7, 4 (see my Griech. Roman, p. 391 n. 2). Plato wished his Euthynoi to be buried like this on stone ~kli=nai~ (Lg. xii, 947 D); and this is probably how the bodies were placed in the rock burial-chambers provided with separate couches, such as occur at e.g. Rhodos and Kos {193} (see Ross, Arch. Aufs. ii, 384 ff., 392): cf. esp. the description given by Heusey, Mission arch. de Macédoine (Texte), p. 257 ff., '76. It is the regular mode of burial in Etruria (following Greek models?): several skeletons have been found there lying on couches of masonry in the grave-chambers.]

[63\5: As though the dead had not entirely departed ~kai\ ho/pla kai\ skeu/ê kai\ hima/tia sunê/thê toi=s tethnêko/sin suntha/ptontes hê/dion e/chousin~ Plu., Ne Suav. Ep. 26, p. 1104 D. Restrictions in Law of the Labyad. (l. 19 ff.) ~ho/d' ho tethmo/s per tô=n entothêkô=n; mê\ ple/on pe/nte kai\ tria/konta drachma=n enthe/men, mê/te pria/menon mê/te woi/kô~.]

[64\5: Helbig, Hom. Epos. 41.]

[65\5: ~belti/ones kai\ krei/ttones~. Arist., Eudem. 37 [44] ap. Plu., Cons. Apoll. 27, p. 115 BC.]

[66\6: [Pl.] Min. 315 D. To raise doubts on this point is mere perversity. It is of no avail to advance the argument (which is commonly used also against the similar statements about Rome in Serv., A. v, 64; vi, 152) that this story only intends to explain the origin of the worship of the household Lares. The Greeks did not have this particular worship, or else it was so completely forgotten that no explanatory account of its origin was ever offered.--Beside the hearth and the altar of Hestia the most ancient resting place of the head of the house must have been placed too. When the wife of Phokion had had the body of her husband burnt abroad ~entheme/nê tô=| ko/lpô| ta\ osta= kai\ komi/sasa nu/ktôr eis tê\n oiki/an katô/ruxe para\ tê\n hesti/an~, Plu., Phoc. 37.--It was wrongly believed that in the remarkable rock-graves in the neighbourhood of the Pnyx at Athens examples of such graves situated inside the house had been discovered. See Milchhöfer in Baumeister's Denkm. 153b.]

[67\5: This occurs among the New Zealanders, Eskimos, etc.; cf. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. **465, 511, etc.]

[68\5: In Sparta and Tarentum: see Becker, Char.^2 iii, 105 (E.T.^3 p. 393). Acc. to Klearch. ap. Ath. 522 F certain men of Tarentum were struck by lightning and killed; they were then buried ~pro\ tô=n thurô=n~ of their houses and ~stê=lai~ were put up in their honour. If they had really been the criminals that legend made them it would have been impossible, even in Tarentum, for them to have been buried within the walls of the city, still less before the doors of their houses--an honour given only to Heroes; cf. above, chap. iv, n. 136. The violent alteration of ~pro\ tô=n thurô=n~ into ~pro\ tô=n pulô=n~ in order to avoid this difficulty, is obviously rendered untenable by the previous ~heka/stê tô=n oikiô=n ho/sous ktl.~ The legend is evidently a fiction and these ~dio/blêtoi~ (to whom it appears, as Heroes, neither the funeral dirge nor the usual ~choai/~ were offered) must have belonged to the class of those whom death by the flash of lightning raised to a higher and honoured rank (see Append. 1). Thus, too, the graves in the market at Megara mentioned by Becker must have been Hero-graves: see above, chap. iv, n. 83. These cases where the graves of Heroes are found in the middle of the city, in the market place, etc., show very plainly the essential difference that was held to exist between the Heroes and the ordinary dead.]

[69\5: The ~mnê=ma koino\n pa=si toi=s apo\ Bouse/lou genome/nois~ was a ~polu\s to/pos peribeblême/nos, hô/sper hoi archai=oi eno/mizon~: D. 43, 79. The Bouselidai composed not a ~ge/nos~, but a group of five ~oi=koi~ bound together by definitely traceable ties of kinship. The members of a ~ge/nos~ in its political sense no longer held graves in common possession: see Meier, de gentil. Att. 33; Dittenb., Hermes, 20, 4. The ~Kimô/neia {194} mnê/mata~ were also family-graves: Plu., Cim. 4, Marcellin. V. Th. 17, Plu., X Or., p. 838 B. It was always insisted on, for obvious reasons, that no stranger to the family should be laid in the family grave. But just as the penal clauses so often inscribed on graves of a later period were necessary to prevent the burial of strangers in those graves, so too Solon had to make a law in respect of graves ne quis alienum inferat: Cic., Lg. ii, 64.]

[70\5: The speaker in Dem. 55, 13 ff., mentions the ~palaia\ mnê/mata~ of the ~pro/gonoi~ of the earlier possessors of his ~chôri/on~ (country-estate). This custom of burying the family dead in the private ground of the family ~kai\ toi=s a/llois chôri/ois sumbe/bêke~. Timarchos is asked by his mother ~to\ Alôpe/kê|si chôri/on~ (which lay 11 or 12 stades away from the city walls) ~entaphê=nai hupolipei=n autê=|~ (in spite of which he sold it): Aeschin., Tim. 99. Examples in East Attica of walled-in family cemeteries with room for many graves: Belger, Localsage von den Gräbern Agamem., etc. (Progr. Berl. 1893), pp. 40-2. It was thus the very general custom to keep the family graves on their own ground and soil; and this corresponds closely enough with the oldest custom of all, that of burying the master of the house in his own home.--In Plu., Arist. 1, Demetr. Phal. mentions an ~Aristei/dou chôri/on en hô=| te/thaptai~ in Phaleron.]

[71\5: Restriction of the growing magnificence of grave columns in Athens made by Demetr. Phal., Cic., Lg. ii, 66. (Penal clauses ~ei/ ti/s ka tha/[ptê| ê\ epi/]stama ephista=| ktl.~ in a law from Nisyros [Berl. Phil. Woch. 1896, pp. 190, 420]: they probably do not refer to a general prohibition of tombstones altogether.)]

[72\5: Cf. Curtius, Z. Ges. Wegebaus Gr., p. 262.]

[73\5: Nemora aptabant sepulcris ut in amoenitate animae forent post vitam: Serv., A. v, 760. In lucis habitabant manes piorum: iii, 302; cf. ad i, 441; vi, 673. "My grave is in a grove, the pleasant haunt of birds," says a dead man ~o/phra kai\ ein A/ïdi terpno\n e/choimi to/pon~, Epigr. Gr. 546, 5-14.]

[74\5: Cf. the ins. from Keos, SIG. 877, 8-9. Eur. IT. 633 ff.: ~xanthô=| t' elai/ô| sô=ma so\n katasbe/sô, kai\ **. . . ga/nos xouthê=s meli/ssês es pura\n balô=~.]

[75\5: ~enagi/zein de\ bou=n ouk ei/asen~, Plu., Sol. 21.]

[76\5: ~prosphagi/ô|~ (at the funeral) ~chrê=sthai kata\ ta\ pa/tria~, SIG. 877, 13. In general, however, the sacrifice of animals at the graves of private individuals gradually became rarer and rarer: see Stengel, Chthon. u. Todt. 430 f.]

[77\5: Cf. esp. the ins. from Keos, l. 15 ff., 30. The ~egchutri/striai~ employed in old Athenian usage, [Pl.] Min. 315 C, seem to have been women who caught the blood of the sacrificed animals in bowls and purified the ~miaino/menoi~ with it. The name itself suggests it; to this effect is one among several other, clearly mistaken, explanations given by the Schol. to Min., loc. cit. (differently Sch. Ar., Vesp. 289).]

[78\5: ~peri\ ta\ pe/nthê . . . homopathei/a| tou= kekmêko/tos kolobou=men hêma=s autou\s tê=| te koura=| tô=n trichô=n kai\ tê=| tô=n stepha/nôn aphaire/sei~, Arist. fr. 108 (101) Rose.]

[79\5: ~peri/deipnon~. This is implied as universally occurring by Aen. Tact. 10, 5. This meal shared by the relatives (who alone are invited: Dem. 43, 62) must be meant by Heraklid., Pol. 30, 2, ~para\ toi=s Lo/krois odu/resthai ouk e/stin epi\ toi=s teleutê/sasin, all' epeida\n ekkomi/sôsin euôchou=ntai~.]

[80\5: ~hê hupodochê\ gi/gnetai hupo\ tou= apothano/ntos~, Artemid. 5, 82, p. 271, 10 H.]

[81\5: Cic., Lg. ii, 63 (cf. **~le/gein epide/xia epi\ tethnêko/ti~, Anaxandr. ap. Ath. 464 A.). On the other {195} hand, mentiri nefas erat. And yet ~eiô/thesan hoi palaioi\ en toi=s peridei/pnois to\n teleutêko/ta epainei=n, kai\ ei phau=los ê=n~, Zenob. v, 28, and other Paroemiogr.--Besides this the lamentation for the dead may have been renewed at the various commemorations of the dead; the funeral regulation of the Labyadai at Delphi forbids expressly (not the festival but) the funeral dirge on such occasions: l. 46 ff. ~mêde\ ta=| husterai/a|~ (after the burial, on which day the ~peri/deipnon~ was held) ~mêde\ en tai=s deka/tais mêd' en toi=s eniautoi=[s]~ (we should expect rather ~en t. eniauti/ois~, cf. nn. 88-92 of this chap.) ~mê/t' oimô/zen mê/t' ototu/zen~.]

[82\5: These meals given to the dead took place at the grave itself. Ar., Lys. 612 f. ~hê/xei soi . . .~; Is. 8, 39, ~ta\ e/nata epê/negka~.]

[83\5: The ~tri/ta~ and ~e/nata~, at any rate, were held on the third and ninth days after the funeral, and not after the day of death. It is true the references to these sacrifices in Ar., Lys. 612 ff., Is., etc., do not make this very clear. But if the ~tri/ta~ had taken place on the third day after death it would have coincided with the ~ekphora/~ itself, which is against all the evidence. Further, the Roman novemdiale, which was clearly modelled on Greek custom, also occurred on the ninth day after the burial, acc. to the unequivocal testimony of Porph. on Hor., Epod. xvii, 48 (nona die quam sepultus est). This is also deducible from Vg., A. v, 46 ff., and 105; cf. also Ap., M. ix, 31.]

[84\5: That this was the object of the Novemdialia festival at Rome is shown clearly enough by the evidence; that the same was true of Greece is at least highly probable; cf. K. O. Müller, Aesch. Eum., p. 143 [120 E.T.]. Leist, Graecoitalische Rechts., p. 34.--Nine is evidently a round number, esp. in Homer; i.e. the division of periods of time into groups of nine was in antiquity a very common and familiar practice. Cf. now, Kaegi, Die Neunzahl bei den Ostariern, Phil. Abh. f. Schweitzer-Sidler, 50 ff. Mourning customs were really intended to ward off maleficent action on the part of the dead. They lasted as a rule as long as the return of the soul of the dead was to be feared (esp. so in India: see Oldenberg, Rel. d. Veda, p. 589), and acc. to ancient belief the soul can return once more on the ninth day after death. See below, chap. xiv, ii, n. 154.]

[85\5: A ~chro/nos pe/nthous~ of eleven days, the mourning concluded with a sacrifice to Demeter: Plu., Lyc. 27; cf. Hdt. vi, 58 fin. The Labyadai at Delphi celebrate the tenth day after the funeral as a feast of the dead; see above, n. 81 of this chapter. This mourning period is not otherwise demonstrable for Greece (SIG. 633, 5, is different), but it is met with again among the Indians and Persians (cf. Kaegi, p. 5, 11), and may be primitive.]

[86\5: Lex. Rh., in AB. 268, 19 ff.; Phot. a little differently: ~kathe/dra; tê=| triakostê=| (prô/tê|~ Phot.: ~A~ instead of ~L~) ~hême/ra| tou= apothano/ntos hoi prosê/kontes suneltho/ntes koinê=| edeipnou=n epi\ tô=| apothano/nti--kai\ tou=to kathe/dra ekalei=to~ (Phot. adds: ~ho/ti kathezo/menoi edei/pnoun kai\ ta\ nomizo/mena eplê/roun;) ê=san de\ kathe/drai te/ssares~ (the last clause is absent from Phot.) It was a meal shared by the relatives of the dead in honour of the dead and held "on the thirtieth day"; possibly nothing more nor less than the oft-mentioned ~triaka/des~. The guests eat their food sitting after the old custom prevailing in Homeric times and always observed by women; as applied to men it survived in Crete only, see Müller, Dorians, ii, 284. Perhaps this primitive attitude preserved in cultus is what we see in the Spartan sculptured reliefs representing "feasts of the dead" where the figures are seated. There were four such ~kathe/drai~, i.e. the period of mourning extended over four months: thus it was the law in Gambreion (SIG. 879, 11 ff.) that {196} mourning might last at the most three months, or in the case of women four. We often hear of monthly repetitions of the feasts of the dead: monthly celebration of the ~eika/des~ for Epicurus in acc. with his will, D.L. x, 18; cf. Cic., Fin. ii, 101; Plin. 35, 5; ~kata\ mê=na~ sacrifice to the deified Ptolemies, CIG. 4697, 48. (In India, too, the sacrifices to the dead on the thirtieth of the month were several times repeated: Kaegi, 7; 11.)]

[87\5: The Lexicographers, Harp., Phot., etc. (AB. 308, 5, is ambiguous, too), speak of the ~triaka/s~ in a way that makes it hard to see whether they mean the traditional sacrifice of the dead taking place regularly on the thirtieth day of the month, or a special offering on the thirtieth day after burial or after the day of death (~hê triakostê\ hême/ra dia\ tou= thana/tou~ Harp., Phot. ~meta\ tha/naton~ is the correction of Schömann on Is., p. 219, but ~dia\ thana/tou~ is formed, not quite correctly, on the analogy of ~dia\ chro/nou, dia\ me/sou~ [even ~dia\ progo/nôn~ "since the time of our forefathers", Polyb. 21, 21, 4], and must mean the same thing, viz. "after death"). But in Lys. 1, 14, we have the idea clearly expressed that the period of mourning should last till the thirtieth day (see Becker, Char.^2 3, 117 E.T.^3, p. 398), and in this case it is natural to suppose that the ~triaka/des~ corresponding with the ~tri/ta~ and ~e/nata~, took place on the thirtieth day after burial. So, too, the ins. from Keos, SIG. 877, 21, ~epi\ tô=| thano/nti triêko/stia mê\ poiei=n~. For Argos see Plu., Q. Gr. 24, p. 296 F. It is evident that the ~triaka/des~ were not so firmly established in Athens (at least in the fourth century) as the ~tri/ta~ and ~e/nata~: e.g. Isaeus generally only refers to these last as the indispensable ~nomizo/mena~: 2, 36-7; 8, 39. It appears also that it is wrong to regard the ~triaka/des~ as otherwise exactly on a footing with the ~tr.~ and ~e/nata~, as is generally done. The last-mentioned pair were sacrifices to the dead, the ~triaka/des~ seems to have been a commemorative banquet of the living.--These fixed periods of mourning like so much else in the cult of the dead may have been handed down by tradition from a very early time. The third, ninth (or tenth), and thirtieth days after the funeral marked stages in the gradually diminishing "uncleanness" of the relatives of the dead, and this existed, it appears, already in "Indo-Germanic" times. Until the ninth day the relatives were still in contact with the departed and were consequently "unclean"; the thirtieth day puts an end to this, and is a memorial festival (though often repeated); cf. Kaegi, pp. 5, 10, 12 (of the separate edition); Oldenberg, 578. In Christian usage, sanctioned by the church, the third, ninth, and fortieth days after death or after burial were very early observed as memorial days (sometimes third, seventh, thirtieth; cf. Rochholz, D. Gl. u. Brauch, i, 203), and survive in some cases to the present day: see Ac. Soc. ph. Lips. v, 304 f.]

[88\5: ~ta\ neku/sia tê=| triaka/di a/getai~: Plu., Prov. Alex. viii, p. 6, 10 Crus. (App. prov. Vat. in Schneidewin's Crit. App. to Diogen. viii, 39). There was a festival kept by servants in honour of their dead masters (~allathea/des~, GDI. 1731, 10; 1775, 29; 1796, 6) twice monthly, at the ~noumêni/a~ and on the seventh: GDI. 1801, 6-7 Delphi. The last three days of the month are at Athens sacred to the inhabitants of the lower world and therefore ~apophra/des~: EM. 131, 13 f.; E. Gud. 70, 3 ff.; cf. Lys., fr. 53. On these days banquets were prepared, at the crossroads, etc., for Hekate (acc. to Ath. 325 A, for Hekate ~kai\ toi=s apotropai/ois~ (Plu., Symp. 7, 6, p. 709 A). The souls of the dead were then not forgotten. Sch. Pl., Lg. vii, 800 D, ~apophra/des hême/rai en hai=s toi=s katoichome/nois choa\s epiphe/rousin~.] {197}

[89\5: The son ~enagi/zei kath' he/kaston eniauto/n~ to his dead father, Is. 2, 46. This sacrifice to the dead, celebrated once every year (~thusi/a epe/teios~ offered by a ~pai=s patri/~), is the festival of the ~Gene/sia~, in vogue acc. to Hdt. iv, 26, among the Greeks, everywhere as it appears. As the name shows this festival fell on the birthday of the honoured ancestor as it recurred (not on the day of his death as Amm. pp. 34-5 Valck. incorrectly says); cf. Schol. Pl., Alc. i, 121 C. So Epicurus in his will (D.L. x, 18) provides for a yearly celebration of his birthday. (Similar foundation, CIG. 3417.) The Koans ~enagi/zousi~ to Hippokrates every year on the 27th Agrianos as his birthday: Soran., V.Hp., p. 450, 13-14 West. Hero-festivals, too, fall on the birthday of the Hero: Plu., Arat. 53. Gods have their feast-days and their birthdays combined; thus Hermes has his on the 4th of the month, Artemis on the 6th, Apollo on the 7th, and so on. These are birthday festivals repeated every month. In the second century at Sestos, following such precedents, there was held ~ta\ gene/thlia tou= basile/ôs~ (one of the deified Attalids) ~kath' he/kaston mê=na~: SIG.^1 246, 36. Celebration of the ~e/mmênos gene/sios~ of the ruling Emperor: Ins. Perg. ii, 374 B, 14. Even in later times in imitation of heathen usage the Kephallenians still honour Epiphanes, son of Karpokrates, ~kata\ noumêni/an, gene/thlion apothe/ôsin~, Clem. Al., Str. iii, p. 511 P.]

[90\5: This is the public festival meant by Phryn., p. 103 Lob. = 83, p. 184 Ruth., when, to distinguish it from the birthday celebrations of living persons, ~gene/thlia~ (which did not become common till later), he calls the ~Gene/sia, Athê/nêsin heortê/ [pe/nthimos~ add. Meursius; cf. Hesych. ~gene/sia~; AB. 231, 19]. The Antiatticista, in his rather absurd polemic against Phryn. (p. 86, 20 ff.), adds the still clearer statement (taken from Solon's ~a/xones~ and Philochoros) that the ~heortê\ dêmotelê/s~ of the ~Gene/sia~ at Athens was held on the 5th Boedromion. There is not the slightest reason for doubting the correctness of this statement (as many have done). In Rome, too, besides the many moveable parentalia of the families there was an official and public Parentalia held every year (in Feb.). Similarly in ancient India: Oldenberg, 550, 3.]

[91\5: The ~Neme/seia~ is mentioned by Dem. 41, 11. The context suggests a rite performed by a daughter in honour of her dead father. It is a quite certainly correct conjecture (~mê/pote--~) of the Lexicog. that the Nemeseia may be a festival of the dead (see Harp. s.v. AB. 282, 32: both glosses combined in Phot. Suid. ~neme/sia~). It is clear, however, that they knew nothing further about it. Mommsen declares (Heort. 209) the Nemeseia to have been "without doubt" identical with the ~Gene/sia~. I see no reason at all for supposing so.--The name ~neme/seia~ characterizes it as a festival dedicated to the "wrath" of the dead, to the ~ne/mesis tô=n thano/ntôn~, Soph., El. 792; ~phthime/nôn ôkuta/tê ne/mesis~, Epigr. Gr. 119; cf. 195--this easily becomes a personified ~Ne/mesis~: ~e/sti ga\r en phthime/nois Ne/mesis me/ga~, Epigr. Gr. 367, 9. The cult of the dead, like the cult of the underworld in general, is always apotropaic in character (placantur sacrificiis ne noceant, Serv., A. iii, 63): the Nemeseia must then have been apotropaic in intention too.]

[92\5: At Apollonia in Chalcidice there was a yearly custom to ~ta\ no/mima suntelei=n toi=s teleutê/sasin~ in early times in Elaphebolion, later in Anthesterion: Hegesand. ap. Ath. 334 F.--~eniau/sia~, a yearly festival of the dead (but perhaps rather to be taken as sacra privata) in Keos: SIG. 878.--There is a month called ~Neku/sios~ in Knossos (and common to the whole of Crete acc. to the ~Hêmerolo/gion~ Flor. [Corsini, Fast. Att. ii, 428]). It took its name from a feast of the dead (~neku/sia~ is mentioned along with ~peri/deipna~, as a regular expression by Artemid. {193} iv, 81, p. 249, 9 H.): for this see "Treaties of Kretan cities", BCH. 1879, 294, l. 56 f.--There was a month ~Agriô/nios~ or ~Agria/nios~ in Boeotia and even in Byzantium, Kalymna, Kos, Rhodos: Hesych. ~Agria/nia; neku/sia para\ Argei/ois kai\ agô=nes en Thê/bais~ (as to the Agon at the A. see the ins. from Thebes, Ath. Mitt. vii, 349).--~etelei=to de\ kai\ thusi/a toi=s nekroi=s en Kori/nthô|, di' hê\n tê=s po/leôs en toi=s mnê/masin ou/sês epe/rchetai ho Alê/tês ktl.~ Sch. Pi. N. vii, 155.]

[93\5: Hesych. ~miarai\ hême/rai~. Phot. ~miara\ hême/ra~.]

[94\5: ~sugkleisthê=nai ta\ hiera\~ during the Choes: Phanodem. ap. Ath. 437 C.]

[95\5: Phot. ~miara\ hême/ra; en toi=s Chousi\n Anthestêriô=nos mêno/s, en hô=|~ (~en hoi=s~?) ~dokou=sin hai psuchai\ tô=n teleutêsa/ntôn anie/nai, rha/mnon he/ôthen emasô=nto, kai\ pi/ttê| ta\s thu/ras e/chrion. Rha/mnos; phuto/n, ho\ en toi=s Chousi\n hôs alexipha/rmakon emasô=nto he/ôthen; kai\ pi/ttê| echri/onto ta\ sô/mata~ (leg. ~dô/mata); ami/antos ga\r hau/tê; dio\ kai\ en **tai=s gene/sesi tô=n paidi/ôn chri/ousi ta\s oiki/as eis ape/lasin tô=n daimo/nôn~.--I do not recollect having read elsewhere of pitch as a protection against malevolent spirits or of its use in Greek superstitious practices. (The flame and smoke of burning pitch--and of ~a/sphaltos~: Diph. fr. 126 [ii, p. 577 K.] ap. Clem. Al. Str. 7, 4, 26, p. 844 P.--as of sulphur, belong to the region of magic and are ~katharmoi/~: but that is a different matter.--~ta\ katha/rsia; tau=ta de/ esti da=|des kai\ thei=on kai\ a/sphaltos~, Zos. ii, 5, p. 67, 19 Bk.). Better known is the magic protective power of the ~rha/mnos~. It is of use against ~pha/rmaka~ and ~phanta/smata~, and is therefore hung up on the doors ~en toi=s enagi/smasi~: Sch. Nic., Th. 860 (Euphorion and Sophnon had also referred to this superstition). Cf. Anon., de Vir. Herb. 9-13, 20 ff., and the Scholia (p. 486, ed. Haupt., Opusc. 2); also Dioscorides i, 119 fin. (~rha/mnos~ also frightens away poisonous beasts: Diosc. iii, 12. In the same way marjoram and scilla are equally available against daimones and ~iobo/la~.) At Rome the hawthorn (spina alba) is specially known for these purificatory properties. Ovid, F. vi, 129 (at a wedding procession a torch made of a branch of the spina alba is used [Fest. 245_a_, 3 Mü.], and this is purgationis causa: Varro ap. Charis., p. 144, 22 K.).--At the Choes the ~rha/mnos~ (i.e. twigs or leaves of it) is chewed: this is in order that its powers may be absorbed into the chewer's own body. The Superstitious man (like the Pythia) puts laurel leaves in his mouth ~kai\ hou/tô tê\n hême/ran peripatei=~: also at the Choes? Thphr., Ch. 16. The laurel in addition to its other marvellous properties can also drive off spirits: ~e/ntha a\n hê=| da/phnê, ekpodô\n dai/mones~, Gp. 11, 2, 5-7. Lyd., Mens. 4, 4, p. 68, 9 Wü.]

[96\5: Sch. Ar., Ach. 961, p. 26, 8 ff. Dübn.--At the ~nekrô=n dei=pna~ the souls of the departed members of the family are summoned by the ~prosê/kontes~ to come and take their share (with the single exception of those who have hanged themselves): Artemid. i, 4, p. 11, 10 f. H. (cf. what is said of the ~neku/sia~ in Bithynia by Arr. ap. Eust., ~i~ 65, p. 1615). The same thing must have happened at the Anthesteria.]

[97\5: Worshippers offered the ~chu/tran panspermi/as~ to Hermes ~hilasko/menoi to\n Hermê=n kai\ peri\ tô=n apothano/ntôn~, Sch. Ar., Ach. 1076 (Didymus from Theopomp.)--~tou\s to/te paragenome/nous~ (read ~periginome/nous~, viz. from the Flood) ~hupe\r tô=n apothano/ntôn hila/sasthai to\n Hermê=n~, Sch. Ar., Ran. 218 (after Theop.). The offering was merely placed ready for the recipients (not sent up to heaven in flames and smoke) as was customary at the Theoxenia (esp. those in honour of chthonic deities) and in offerings made to Heroes. The ~Heka/tês dei=pna~ were similar, and particularly the offerings to the Erinyes: ~ta\ pempo/mena autai=s hiera\ po/pana kai\ ga/la en a/ggesi keramei/ois~, Sch. Aeschin. i, 188.] {199}

[98\5: EM. 774, 56: ~Hudropho/ria; heortê\ Athê/nêsi pe/nthimos~ (so far Hesych. too, s.v.) ~epi\ toi=s en tô=| kataklusmô=| apolome/nois~. The feast of Chytrai was also supposed to have been a commemoration of Deucalion's Flood. The flood was said to have subsided finally through a cleft in the earth in the Temple of ~Gê= Olumpi/a~: Paus. 1, 18, 7. Pausanias adds, ~esba/llousin es auto\~ (the chasm) ~ana\ pa=n e/tos a/lphita purô=n me/liti ma/xantes~. It is at least natural, with Preller, Dem. u. Pers. 229, n., to see in the Hydrophoria a part of which is described by Pausanias, a festival related to the Chytrai. Connexion of the dead with ~Gê=~ in the ~Gene/sia~ too: Hesych. s.v.--~Hudropho/ria~ a feast of Apollo at Aegina: Sch. Pi., N. v, 81 (fanciful remarks thereon by K. O. Müller, in Aesch. Eum., p. 141 [116 E.T.]).]

[99\5: Ovid's account of the Lemuria at Rome, F. v, shows the closest resemblances to the Athen. customs. The spirits are finally driven out: Manes exite paterni! (443). The same happens in the festivals of the dead in many places: esp. in India, Oldenberg, 553; cf. also the Esthonian customs: Grimm, p. 1844, n. 42. A parallel from ancient Prussia is given (after Joh. Meletius, 1551) by Ch. Hartknoch, in Alt- u. Neues Preussen, 1684, pp. 187-8. There on the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth day after the funeral a banquet of the relatives of the dead was held. The souls of the dead were invited and (with other souls as well) entertained. "When the feasting was ended the priest rose from the table and swept out the house, driving forth the souls of the dead as though he were driving out fleas, saying the while: 'Ye have eaten and drunk, O ye Blessed Ones, depart hence! depart hence!'" At the close of the lantern-feast to the dead in Nagasaki (Japan) when the entertainment of the souls was over a great noise was made all over the house "so that no single soul should remain behind and haunt the place--they must be driven out without mercy": Preuss. Exped. nach Ostasien, ii, 22. Other examples of the expulsion of souls given in Tylor, ii, 199. The ghosts were thought of in a thoroughly materialistic fashion, and driven out by waving clubs in the air, swinging torches, etc., as in the case of the ~xenikoi\ theoi/~ of the Kaunians: Hdt. i, 172. Compare with this the prayers addressed to Herakles in the Orphic Hymns (reproducing ancient superstitions as frequently): ~elthe\ ma/kar . . . exe/lason de\ kaka\s a/tas, kla/don en cheri\ pa/llôn, ptênoi=s t' iobo/lois kê=ras chalepa\s apo/pempe~ (12, 15-16). It will be clear how near such personified ~a=tai~ and ~kê=res~ are to the angry "souls", from which in fact they have arisen; cf. besides, Orph., H. 11, 23; 14, 14; 36, 16; 71, 11.--~kê=ras apodiopompei=sthai~, Plu., Lys. 17.]

[100\5: ~thu/raze Kê=res, ouk e/t' Anthestê/ria~. This is the correct wording of the formula; ~Ka=res~ the form common later and explained with mistaken ingenuity. Photius has it right and explains, ~hôs kata\ tê\n po/lin toi=s Anthestêri/ous tô=n psuchô=n perierchome/nôn.--Kê=res~--is clearly a most primitive equivalent for ~psuchai/~ which has become almost completely obscured in Homer, though it dimly appears in ~B~ 302, ~x~ 207, where the ~Kê=res~ are spoken of as those who carry away other ~psuchai/~ to Hades. Aeschylus knew it (presumably from old Attic speech) and simply substituted ~psuchai/~ for the Keres in the fate-weighing scene in Homer, thus turning the Kerostasia into a ~Psuchostasi/a~ (to the surprise of the Schol. A, ~Th~ 70; A.B. ~Ch~ 209). See O. Crusius in Ersch-Gruber, "Keren," 2, 35, 265-7 [Aesch. fr. 279 Sidg.].]

[101\5: Cf. the collections in Pottier, Les lécythes blancs attiques à représ. funér., p. 57, 70 ff.]

[102\5: Though not all of them, some at any rate of the scenes in which {200} lyre-playing at a grave is represented on a lekythos are to be taken as implying that the living provide music for the entertainment of the dead: see Furtwängler on the Sammlung Saburoff. i, Pl. lx.]

[103\5: See **Benndorf, Sicil. u. unterital. Vasenb., p. 33.]

[104\5: How the mode of conceiving the spiritual activity of the dead and consequently the cult of the dead was at first more solemn and awestruck and completely on a par with the cult of the ~chtho/nioi~; how in the course of time the relations of the living to the departed became more familiar and the cult of the dead correspondingly less awe-inspiring, more piously protective in character than apotropaic--all this is set out in more detail by P. Stengel, Chthonisch. u. Todtencult [Festschrift für Friedländer], p. 414 ff.]

[105\5: The reliefs represent a man enthroned, sometimes alone, sometimes with a woman beside him, stretching out a kantharos to receive the offerings. As a rule he is approached by a group of worshippers represented on a smaller scale. The earliest examples of these reliefs were found in Sparta and go back to the sixth century. Since the investigations of Milchhöfer especially, they are now generally recognised as representing the family worship of the dead. They are the forerunners of the representations of similar food-offerings in which (following later custom) the Hero is lying on a kline and receiving his worshippers. (That this class of reliefs representing "banquets of the dead" was also sacrificial in character is proved clearly by the presence of the worshippers who in many cases lead sacrificial victims. H. v. Fritze in Ath. Mitt. '96, p. 347 ff., supposes that they are intended to represent not sacrifices but the ~sumpo/sion~ which the dead person is to enjoy in the after life. But he can only account for the presence of the worshippers in such a forced and unnatural way [p. 356 ff.], that this alone seems to refute his theory. ~purami/des~ and incense among the offerings made do not by any means contradict its nature as a sacrifice to the dead.) The same is the meaning of the reliefs found esp. in Boeotia in which the person worshipped is seated on a horse, or leading a horse, and accepting offerings (summary by Wolters, Archäol. Zeitung, 1882, p. 299 ff.; cf. also Gardner, JHS. 1884, pp. 107-42; Furtwängler, Samml. Sab. i, p. 23). The worshippers bring pomegranates, a cock (e.g. Ath. Mitt. ii, Pl. 20-2), a pig (cock and pig on Theban relief: A. Mitt. iii, 377; pig on Boeotian rel.: A. Mitt. iv, Pl. 17, 2), a ram (rel. from Patras: A. Mitt. iv, 125 f.; cf. the ram's head on a grave monument from the neighbourhood of Argos, A. Mitt. viii, 141). All these gifts are of the kind proper to the underworld. We know the pomegranate as food of the ~chtho/nioi~ from the Hymn to Demeter; the pig and ram are the main constituents of sacrifice made to the ~chtho/nioi~ and burnt in cathartic or hilastic (propitiatory) ceremonial. In such cases the cock, of course, does not appear because it was sacred to Helios and Selene (cf. D.L. viii, 34; Iamb., VP. 84), but because it was a sacrificial animal of the ~chtho/nioi~ (and of Asklepios) and for the same reason much used in necromancy, spirit-raising, and magic [Dieterich, Pap. mag. 185, 3]. As such it was forbidden food to the Mystai of Demeter at Eleusis: Porph., Abs. 4, 16, p. 255, 5 N. Sch. Luc., D. Me. 7, 4, p. 280, 23 Rabe--Anyone who partakes of the food of the underworld spirits is forfeit to them. On their side the reclining or enthroned spirits of the dead on these reliefs are brought into conjunction with a snake (A. Mitt. ii, Pl. 20-2; viii, Pl. 18, 1, etc.), a dog, or a horse (sometimes a horse's head only occurs). The snake is the well-known symbol of the Hero: the {201} dog and the horse certainly do not represent victims as Gardner, p. 131, thinks--their real meaning has not yet been made out. The horse occurs sometimes by the side of women and therefore can hardly symbolize a knight's status. I regard it as also a symbol of the departed as now having entered the spirit-world, like the snake too (Grimm understands it differently: p. 841 f., 844). I can form no decided opinion as to the dog: it is not likely to be mere genre--any more than anything else in these sculptures.]

[106\5: The ~choai/, ha/per nekroi=si meiliktê/ria~, of wine, honey, water, or oil, which are offered in Tragedy by children at the grave of a father--A. Pers. 609 ff.; Ch. 84 ff.; E., IT. 159 ff.--are modelled upon the food offerings to the dead in real life. Honey and water (~meli/kraton~) were always the chief ingredients: cf. Stengel, Philolog. 39, 378 ff.; Jahr. f. Phil. 1887, p. 653. The ritual at the pouring of an ~apo/nimma~--essentially a cathartic libation-sacrifice but also offered ~eis timê\n toi=s nekroi=s~ is described by Kleidemos ~en tô=| Exêgêtikô=|~ (the quotation is not complete, Ath. 409 E f. (Striking similarities in ritual and language in Indian sacrifice to the dead: Oldenberg, Rel. d. Ved. 550. Something extremely primitive may be preserved in these uses.) The same is the meaning of the ~chtho/nia loutra\ toi=s nekroi=s epiphero/mena~, Zenob. vi, 45, etc. These things have nothing to do with the ~Hudropho/ria~, as some have thought.]

[107\5: The regular animal used as victim in ~enagi/smata~ for the dead is a sheep; other animals occur less frequently. The black colour is general; the sacrifice was burnt completely: cf. the instances collected by Stengel, Ztschr. f. Gymnasi., 1880, p. 743 f., Jahrb. f. Phil. 1882, p. 322 f.; '83, p. 375.--Phot. ~kausto/n; karpôto\n ho\ enagi/zetai toi=s teteleutêko/sin~ (cf. Hesych. ~kauto/n~).--The ~se/linon~ (a plant sacred to the dead; see above, n. 40) probably served as food for the dead at the ~tri/ta~ and other banquets "of the dead", and was not used as food for the living at the ~peri/deipnon~; consequently it might never be used at the meals of the living: Plin. 20, 113, following Chrysippos and Dionysios. (In the mysteries of the Kabeiroi the ~anaktotele/stai~ had a special reason of their own for forbidding parsley ~auto/rizon epi\ trape/zês tithe/nai~, Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 16 P.)]

[108\5: The food offered is a meal for the dead: A., Ch. 483 ff. (cf. Luc., Luct. 9; Char. 22). The dead man is summoned to come and drink the offerings (~elthe\ d' hôs pi/ê|s~): E., Hec. 535 ff. It was the general opinion that ~ho nekro\s pi/etai~ of the drink offerings (AP. xi, 8; Epigr. Gr. 646, 12), ~hai ga\r choai\ parapsuchê/ tis eisephe/reto toi=s eidô/lois tô=n teteleutêko/tôn ktl.~ Lyd., Mens. 4, 31, p. 90 Wü.]

[109\5: It feels when friends or enemies approach its grave: Is. 9, 4, 19.]

[110\5: Sch. Ar., Av. 1490 (referring to the ~Titano/panes~ of Myrtilos, a poet of the Old Comedy). Phot. ~krei/ttones~ (Hesych. ~krei/ttonas~) ~hoi hê/rôes; dokou=si de\ kakôtikoi\ ei=nai; di' ho\ kai\ hoi ta\ hêrô=|a pario/ntes siôpô=sin. (hê/rôes~ and ~hêrô=|a~ here, in accordance with the usage common in later times, simply = ~teteleutêko/tes~ and ~mnê/mata~ of the usual kind.) Since a Hero in the higher sense was buried there it was customary to pass in silence the monument, e.g., of Narkissos, ~hê/rôs Sigêlo/s~: Str. 404 (so also the grove and chasm of Kolonos where the Erinyes dwell: S., OC. 130 ff.). The feeling underlying this is easy to understand, and the custom therefore is widespread: e.g. among West African negroes, Réville, Relig. des peuples non civil. i, 73. It is a German superstition (Grimm, p. 1811, n. 830). "Never call the dead by name or you may cry them up".]

[111\5: Pl., Phd. 81 CD. The ~psuchê/ . . . hô/sper le/getai peri\ ta\ mnê/mata/ te {202} kai\ tou\s ta/phous kulindome/nê; peri\ ha\ dê\ kai\ ô/phthê a/tta psuchô=n skioeidê= phanta/smata, ktl.~]

[112\5: See O. Jahn, Archäol. Beitr. 128 ff.; Benndorf, Griech. u. sicil. Vasenb., p. 33 f., p. 65 (on Pl. 14, 32); also Pottier, Lécythes blancs, p. 65, 2 (who proposes a doubtful theory of a supposed Éros funèbre, p. 76 ff.).]

[113\5: We frequently on vases see the occupant of a grave represented in the form of a snake at the foot of his tomb, etc.; e.g. on the Prothesis vase, Monum. d. Instit. viii, 4, 5, and often, see Luckenbach, Jahrb. f. Phil., Suppl. ii, 500.--We have already met with snakes as a favourite form of incarnation chosen by ~chtho/nioi~ of all kinds, deities of the underworld, Heroes, and the ordinary dead, and we shall frequently meet with the same thing again. Here we need only refer to Photius ~hê/rôs poiki/los--dia\ to\ tou\s o/pheis poiki/lous o/ntas hê/rôas kalei=sthai~.]

[114\5: What falls to the ground belongs to the ~hê/rôes~ ( = souls of the dead): Ar. ~Hê/rôes~ fr. 305 H. and G. ~toi=s teteleutêko/si tô=n phi/lôn ape/nemon ta\ pi/ptonta tê=s trophê=s apo\ tô=n trapezô=n~ (alluded to by Eur. in the Belleroph. [Stheneb. fr. 667 Din.]), ap. Ath. 427 E. This is the origin of the Pythagorean ~su/mbolon~--as usual founded on ancient belief about the soul--~ta\ peso/nta apo\ trapezê=s mê\ anairei=sthai~, D.L. viii, 34. Suid. ~Puthago/ra ta\ su/mbola~. This superstition is also the reason for the ~no/mos~ said to have been current in Kroton, ~to\ peso\n epi\ tê\n gê=n kôlu/ôn anairei=sthai~, Iamb., VP. 126. Similar belief and custom in Rome: Plin. 28, 27. Among the ancient Prussians it was the custom not to pick up the fragments of food that fell to the ground at meal times, but to leave them for the "poor" souls that have no blood-relations or friends left behind in the world to look after them; see Chr. Hartknoch, Alt u. Neues Preussen, p. 188. Similar customs elsewhere: Spencer, Princ. of Sociol. i, 281.]

[115\5: Solonian law: D. 20, 104; 40, 49. Plu., Sol. 21, ~So/lônos ho kôlu/ôn no/mos to\n tethnêko/ta kakô=s agoreu/ein. kai\ ga\r ho/sion tou\s methestêko/tas hierou\s nomi/zein~. This reminds us of the words of Arist., Eudem. fr. 37 [44] given in Plu., C. Apoll. 27, p. 115 B, ~to\ pseu/sasthai/ ti kata\ tô=n teteleukêko/tôn kai\ to\ blasphêmei=n ouch ho/sion hôs kata\ beltio/nôn kai\ kreitto/nôn ê/dê gegono/tôn~ (Chilon ap. Stob., Fl. 125, 15 M.: ~to\n teteleukêko/ta mê\ kakolo/gei alla\ maka/rize~). A very extreme form of outrage is ~pseu/sasthai kata\ tou= teleutê/santos~: Is. 9, 6; 23; 26. (The ~kakolo/gos~ is particularly liable to ~kaka\ eipei=n peri\ tô=n teteleutêko/tôn~, Thphr., Char. 28.) The heir of the dead man has the duty of carrying out the cult of the dead man's soul, and this includes the legal prosecution of slanderers of the dead: see Meier and Schömann, Att. Process^2, p. 630.]

[116\5: Ar., Tagenist. fr. **485, 12, says of the dead, ~kai\ thu/ome/n g' autoi=si toi=s enagi/smasin, hô/sper theoi=sin ktl.~]

[117\5: ~krei/ttones~ Hesych. Phot. s.v. Arist. ap. Plu., C. Apoll. 27, p. 115 C.]

[118\5: ~hi/leôs e/chein (tou\s teleutê/santas)~: Pl., Rp. 427 B.]

[119\5: That the ~hê/rôes duso/rgêtoi kai\ chalepoi\ toi=s empela/zousi gi/gnontai~ (Sch. Ar., Av. 1490) applies equally to the "Heroes" properly so called--see above, chap. iv, § 11, the legends of the Hero Anagyros, the Hero of Temesa, etc.--and to those who gradually came to be called "Heroes" in later times by an extension of the term, viz. the souls of the dead in general--~chalepou\s kai\ plê/ktas tou\s hê/rôas nomi/zousi, kai\ ma=llon nu/ktôr ê\ meth' hême/ran~: Chamaileon ap. Ath. 461 C (and hence the precautions taken against nocturnal {203} apparitions: Ath. 149 C). Cf. Zenob. v, 60. Hesych. Phot. s. ~krei/ttones~.--That the ~hê/rôes~ do, and are responsible for, evil only and never good (Sch. Ar., Av. 1490; Babr. 63) is a late belief; it does not apply either to Heroes or ordinary dead in the conceptions of earlier ages. Originally the "gods", just as much as Heroes and the dead, shared in the violent and malignant nature of the unseen. This was later confined more and more to the lower classes of the ~krei/ttones~ and came to be attached to them so exclusively that it could in the end be regarded as a sufficient ground of distinction between them and the gods (as it certainly had not been to start with) that malice is excluded from the nature of the gods and benevolence on the contrary from that of Heroes and the dead.]

[120\5: Ar., Tagenist. fr. **485, 13: ~kai\ choa/s ge cheo/menoi~ (to the dead) ~aitou/meth' autou\s ta\ kala\ deu=r' anie/nai~ (intended as a ~paroimi/a~ or at any rate imitated from a tragedian--apostrophe to a dead woman ~ekei= ble/pousa, deu=r' ani/ei tagatha/~, Sch. Ar., Ran. 1462--and reproduced in this passage by the interpolator of Aristoph.). This "sending-up blessings from below" is to be understood in the widest sense (cf. A., Pers. 222); but it is natural to be reminded by such a prayer to ~anie/nai tagatha/~ of Demeter ~anêsidô/ra~ (Paus. 1, 31, 4; Plu., Smp. 9, 14, 4, p. 745 A), and of ~Gê= anêsidô/ra. dia\ to\ karpou\s anie/nai~ (Hesych.); S., OT. 269, ~eu/chomai theou\s mê/t' a/roton autoi=s gê=s anie/nai tina/~.--That the dead who dwell beneath the ground were really expected to assist the growth of the soil we may learn especially from a very interesting statement in the Hippocratic work ~peri\ enupni/ôn~ (ii, p. 14 Kühn; vi, p. 658 Littré [~p. diai/tês~ iv, 92]). If a person in his dream sees ~apothano/ntas~ dressed in white, offering something, that is a good omen: ~apo\ ga\r tô=n apothano/ntôn hai trophai\ kai\ auxêsies kai\ spe/rmata gi/nontai~. There was a custom at Athens of strewing seeds of all kinds over the newly-made grave: Isigon., Mir. 67; Cic., Lg. ii, 63. The reason for this (evidently religious) is variously given (another, no more convincing, is suggested by K. O. Müller, Kl. Schr. ii, 302 f.). It seems most natural to suppose that the seed of the earth is put under the protection of the souls of dead who have now themselves become spirits inhabiting the earth. (Note besides the entirely similar custom in ancient India, Oldenberg, Rel. d. Veda, 582.)]

[121\5: Electra in A., Ch. 486 ff., makes a vow to the soul of her father: ~kagô\ choa/s soi tê=s emê=s pagklêri/as oi/sô patrô/|ôn ek do/môn gamêli/ous; pa/ntôn de\ prô=ton to/nde presbeu/sô ta/phon~.--As chthonic powers the Erinyes also send blessings on agriculture and the bringing-up of children. Rh. Mus. 50, 21. Prayer was also made to ~Gê=~ by those who desired to have children.]

[122\5: ~Phano/dêmo/s phêsin ho/ti mo/noi Athênai=oi thu/ousin kai\ eu/chontai autoi=s hupe\r gene/seôs pai/dôn, ho/tan gamei=n me/llôsin~, Phot. Suid. ~tritopa/tores~.]

[123\5: The form of the word itself shows that the ~tritopa/tores~ are simply ~pro/pappoi~. ~tritopa/tôr~ is the earliest ancestor, ~ho pa/ppou ê\ tê/thês patê/r~ (Arist. ap. Poll. 3, 17). Just as ~mêtropa/tôr~ is ~ho mêtro\s patê/r~ and ~patropa/tôr ho patro\s patê/r~ (Poll. 3, 16), ~propatô/r~ the forefather, ~pseudopa/tôr = pseudê\s patê/r, epipa/tôr~ the stepfather (~mêtromê/têr = mêtro\s mê/têr~)--in the same way ~tritopa/tôr~ is the third forefather, the father of the ~patropa/tôr~, i.e. the ~pro/pappos~. The ~tritopa/tores~ have an alternative form ~tritopa/trei=s~, Philoch. ap. Suidas ~tritopa/tores~: SIG. 443; Leg. Sacr. i, p. 49, l. 32, 52: in Orphic verse this form alone, and not ~tritopa/tores~, could be used: see Lobeck, Agl. 764. They were in fact the ~tri/toi pate/res~ (just as {204} the ~trite/ggonoi~ are the ~tri/toi e/ggonoi~, the ~e/ggonoi~ of the third generation). But the "third forefathers" are in fact the first ancestors (Lobeck, 763 f.), ~hoi propa/tores~ (Hesych.), ~hoi prô=toi archêge/tai~ (AB. 307, 16)--the ancestors of the individual first of all, his bodily ~gonei=s~ (the series of whom was not generally counted beyond the ~pro/pappos~--Is. 8, 32--i.e. the ~tritopa/tôr~), and then the "ancestors" of the human race in general (acc. to the explanation of Philoch. ap. Phot. Suid. ~tritop.~; cf. Welcker, Götterl. iii, 73).--We cannot do more than refer here to the completely analogous ideas of the ancient Indians about the "three-fathers": the father, grandfather, great-grandfather, as the Sapinda-fathers beyond whom the line of ancestry was not traced (Kaegi, Neunzahl, pp. 5, 6).]

[124\5: The Tritopatores are most distinctly referred to as ~a/nemoi~: Demon ap. Phot. Suid. ~tritop.~ cf. ~despo/tai ane/môn~ Phot. ~tritopa/tôr~; Tz. Lyc. 738. Orphic poetry made them ~thurôrou\s kai\ phu/lakas tô=n ane/môn~. This is already a free interpretation; the Attic belief, expressed by Demon, knows nothing about this. It can only have been learned invention that limited their number to three (as in the case of the originally unlimited number of Horai, Erinyes, etc.), and gave them definite names (Amalkeides, etc., Orph. fr. 240, Ab.) or identified them with the three Hekatoncheires (Kleidemos in the ~Exêg.~). The genuine and ancient belief about them can still be discerned through all the confusion of misinterpretation and misunderstanding, and according to this the ~tritopa/tores~ were the souls of ancestors who were also wind-spirits. People prayed for children to these spirits: and Lobeck, Agl. 755 ff., is right in connecting with this custom the Orphic doctrine that the soul of man comes into him from without with the wind. Even this, however, is only a speculative embellishment of the popular belief about the Tritopatores (which the Orphics cannot, as Welcker thinks, Götterl. iii, 71, have "invented": they only explained it after their fashion and consequently must have found it already existing). When we have stripped off all speculative accretions we find the Tritopatores to have been the souls of ancestors who have become wind-spirits and travel in the wind like other ~psuchai/~ (whose name even is derived from the breath of the wind). From these as from real ~pnoiai\ zô|ogo/noi~ their descendants hope for aid where the entry into life of a new ~psuchê/~ is concerned. It is not hard to understand the connexion between souls and wind-spirits; it is merely that such conceptions were rare among the Greeks and for that reason these isolated wind-spirits surviving in popular belief were turned into individual daimones--the Tritopatores no less than the Harpies (see Rh. Mus. 50, 3 ff.).]

[125\5: The words of Orestes in A., Ch. 483, give very naive expression to the belief. He calls to the soul of his father: ~hou/tô~ (if thou sendest me aid) ~ga\r a/n soi dai=tes e/nnomoi brotô=n ktizoi/at'; ei de\ mê/, par' eudei/pnois e/sei a/timos empu/roisi knisôtoi=s chthono/s~. Thus we see that the belief ridiculed by Luc., Luct. 9, was true of earlier times as well: ~tre/phontai de\ a/ra~ (the dead) ~tai=s par' hêmi=n choai=s kai\ toi=s kathagizome/nois epi\ tô=n ta/phôn; hôs ei/ tô| mê\ ei/ê kataleleimme/nos hupe\r gê=s phi/los ê\ suggenê/s, a/sitos hou=tos nekro\s kai\ limô/ttôn en autoi=s politeu/etai~.]

[126\5: Epicurus devotes by will certain definite ~pro/sodoi~ to the yearly offering of ~enagi/smata~ to his parents, his brothers, and himself: D.L. x, 18.--To the end of the third century belongs the "Testament of Epikteta", i.e. the inscription recording the foundation by Epikteta (who came from Thera as we know now for certain: ~Eph. Arch.~ 1894, p. 142) of a three-day sacrificial feast to be performed every year for {205} the Muses and "the Heroes", i.e. for her husband, herself, and her sons; and the institution for this special purpose of a ~koino\n tou= andrei/ou tô=n suggenô=n~ (together with women of the family). The inscr. gives also the rules of this sacrificial society (Michel n. 1001; CIG. 2448).--The offerings to the dead in this case (vi, 6 ff.) consist of a ~hierei=on~ (i.e. a sheep) and ~hiera/~, especially ~ellu/tai~ of five choinikes of wheaten flour and a stater of dry cheese (~ell.~ are a kind of sacrificial cake specially offered to the deities of the lower world, as for ex. to Trophonios at Lebadeia: GDI. 413 with n., p. 393), and in addition to these garlands are mentioned. The following are to be sacrificed: the customary parts of the victim, an ~ellu/tês~, a loaf, a ~pa/rax (= ba/rax, bê/rêx~: interchange of tenuis and media as frequently) and some ~opsa/ria~ (i.e. small fishes: cf. the ~apopuri/s~ for the dead, GDI. 3634 Kos). The rest was probably consumed by the religious society: these special portions the person offering the sacrifice, we are told, ~karpôsei=~, i.e. (he shall offer them to the Heroes by burning them entire. Cf. Phot. ~kausto/n; karpôto/n, ho\ enagi/zetai toi=s teteleutêko/sin (karpô=sai, ka/rpôma, holoka/rpôsis~, etc., are frequent in the LXX) and Phot. ~holokarpou/menon~ and ~holokautismo/s. karpou=n = holokautou=n~ in the sacrificial calendar from Kos, GDI. 3636; cf. Stengel, Hermes, 27, 161 f.]

[127\5: See Is. 1, 10.]

[128\5: In manumission records it is sometimes definitely enjoined that the freed persons shall at the death of their masters ~thapsa/ntô kai\ ta\ hô/ria autô=n poiêsa/tôsan~: thus on the insc. from Phokis, SIG. 841. (Instructions of this kind as esp. frequent in the records of emancipation from Delphi: see Büchsenschütz, Bes. u. Erw., 178 Anm. 3-4.) ~ta\ hô/ria~ when applied to the dead (GDI. 1545-6; ~hôrai/ôn tuchei=n~ E., Sup. 175) means the ~kath' hô/ran suntelou/mena hiera/~ (Hesych. ~hôrai=a~; funeral ordinance of the Labyadai, l. 49 ff.: ~ta\s d' a/llas thoi/nas kat' ta\n hô/ran agage/sthai~), i.e. the sacrifices to be celebrated periodically (~tai=s hiknoume/nais hême/rais~, n. 138; cf. ~teletai\ hô/riai~, Pi., P. ix, 98 ff.). This doubtless means in particular the ~eniau/sia hiera/~ (cf. nn. 81, 89, 92 of this chap.). Garlanding of graves ~kat' eniauto\n tai=s hôri/ois~ (sc. ~hame/rais~), GDI. 1775, 21; ~kat' eniauto\n hôrai=a hiera\ apete/loun~ (to the Heroes), Pl., Cri. 116 C.]

[129\5: The foll. are the expressions occurring in the speeches of Isaeus which conclusively warrant what is said above. The childless Menekles ~esko/pei ho/pôs mê\ e/soito a/pais, all' e/soito autô=| ho/stis zô=nta gêrotrophê/soi kai\ teleutê/santa tha/psoi auto\n kai\ eis to\n e/peita chro/non ta\ nomizo/mena autô=| poiê/soi~, 2, 10. To be cared for in old age, buried after death, and to have permanent attention paid to one's soul is a single unified conception, in which ritual burial at the hands of one's own ~e/kgonoi~ (thus securing the cult of the family) does not form the least important part (cf. Pl., Hipp. ma. 291 DE: it is ~ka/lliston~ for a man--according to the popular view--~aphikome/nô| es gê=ras tou\s hautou= gone/as teleutê/santas kalô=s peristei/lanti hupo\ tô=n hautou= ekgo/nôn kalô=s kai\ megaloprepô=s taphê=nai~. Medea says to her children in E., Med. 1032 ~ei=chon elpi/das polla\s en humi=n gêroboskê/sein t' eme\ kai\ katthanou=san chersi\n eu= peristelei=n, zêlôto\n anthrô/poisin~). That he may share in this attention to the souls of the dead a man must leave behind him a son; upon a son alone this will fall as a sacred duty. Hence a man who has no son takes the chosen heir of his possessions into his own family by adoption. Inheritance and adoption invariably accompany each other in such cases (and even in the first speech, where, though nothing is actually said of adoption, it is certainly implied throughout). The {206} motive of adoption is said in the clearest possible terms to be the desire on the part of the adopter for a permanent care of his own soul at the hands of his adopted son: 2, 25, 46; 6, 51, 65; 7, 30; 9, 7, 36. There is consequently a close connexion between ~ei=nai klêrono/mon kai\ epi\ ta\ mnê/mata ie/nai, cheo/menoi kai\ enagiou=nta~ (6, 51). It is a mark of the heir ~ta\ nomizo/mena poiei=n, enagi/zein, chei=sthai~ (6, 65); cf. also D. 43, 65. Duties towards the soul of the dead consist in the son and heir's provision for a solemn funeral, the erection of a handsome grave-monument and in his offering of the ~tri/ta~ and ~e/nata kai\ ta=lla ta\ peri\ tê\n taphê/n~: 2, 36, 37; 4, 19; 9, 4. After that he is responsible for the regular continuation of the cult and of sacrifice to the dead, ~enagi/zesthai kath' he/kaston eniauto/n~ (2, 46), and generally, ~kai\ eis to\n e/peita chro/non ta\ nomizo/mena poiei=n~ (2, 10). Then, just as he has to carry on for the dead man his family worships, his ~hiera\ patrô=|a~ (2, 46: e.g. for Zeus Ktesios: 8, 16); so also he must, as the dead man once did, make regular offering to the ~pro/gonoi~ of the house: 9, 7. In this way the family cult secures its own continuity.--Everything in this reminds us in the strongest way of what is done for the continuation of the cult of the dead, esp. by adoption, in the country where ancestor-worship reaches its greatest height--China. Desire to perpetuate the family name, the strongest motive with us in the adoption of male children, could not be so strong in Greece when only individual names were usual. Even this, however, occurs as a motive for the adoption of a son, ~hi/na mê\ anô/numos ho oi=kos autou= ge/nêtai~, 2, 36, 46; cf. Isocr. 19, 35 (and Philodem., Mort., p. 28, 9 ff. Mekl.). The "house" at any rate is called after its ancestors (like those ~Bouseli/dai~ of whom Dem. speaks), and if the house has no male heir this common name will disappear. Apart from this, the adopted person will call himself the son of his adoptive father, and will ensure the preservation of the latter's name, in the well-known fashion, by giving this name to the eldest (Dem. 39, 27) of his own sons. (A similar perpetuation of a name is probably intended in E., IT. 695-8.)]

[130\5: Appealing to ~phê=mai, pollai\ kai\ spho/dra palaiai/~, Plato asserts, Lg. 927 A, ~hôs a/ra hai tô=n teleutêsa/ntôn psuchai\ du/namin e/chousi/ tina teleutê/sasai, hê=| tô=n kat' anthrô/pous pragma/tôn epimelou=ntai~. Hence the ~epi/tropoi~ of orphaned children ~prô=ton me\n tou\s a/nô theou\s phobei/sthôn . . . ei=ta ta\s tô=n kekmêko/tôn psucha/s, hai=s estin en tê=| phu/sei tô=n hautô=n ekgo/nôn kê/desthai diaphero/ntôs, kai\ timô=si/ te autou\s eumenei=s kai\ atima/zousi dusmenei=s~. It is only the circle of influence belonging to the ~psuchai/~ which is here limited (and the circle of worship in consequence, not the potency of that influence.]

[131\5: This is true at least of the Greeks, as ancient philosophy was already aware: Arist., Pol. i, 2; Dicaearchus ap. St. Byz. ~pa/tra~ (who apparently thinks of the ~pa/tra~ as held together by "endogamous" marriage). The whole development of Greek law and politics--this much at least may be conceded to the analysis of Fustel de Coulanges (La Cité antique)--points to the conclusion that the division into the smallest groups goes back to the beginning of Greek life. The Greeks were even then divided into families and groups of kinsfolk, from the combination of which the later Greek state grew up; they never (as happened elsewhere) lived the community life of the tribe or the horde. And yet, can we imagine the Greek gods without the tribal community that worshipped them?]

[132\5: The idea of the Lar familiaris can be translated into Greek not inadequately by the words ~ho kat' oiki/an hê/rôs, hê/rôs oikouro/s~, as is done by Dionys. Hal., and Plutarch in their accounts of the story {207} of Ocrisia (D.H. 4, 2, 3; Plu. Fort. Rom. 9, p. 323 C). But this was not an idea current among the Greeks. The Latin genius generis = Lar familiaris (Laber. 54 Rib.) is most nearly approached by the remarkable expression ~hê/rôs suggenei/as~, CIA. iii, 1460. Inside the house, at the family hearth (in whose ~muchoi/~, "dwells" Hekate: E., Med. 397), the Greeks worshipped--no longer the spirits of the ancestors--but the ~theoi\ patrô=|oi, ktê/sioi, mu/chioi, herkei=oi~. These were compared with the Roman Penates (D.H. 1, 67, 3; cf. Hyg. ap. Macr. 3, 4, 13), but their relationship to the spirits of the house and of the family is considerably less apparent than in the case of the Penates. (It is simply imitation of Roman custom that makes the dying Peregrinus call upon the ~dai/mones patrô=|oi kai\ mêtrô=|oi~: Luc., Peregr. 36. ~Ste/phanos toi=s tou= patro\s hautou= dai/mosin~, ins. from Lykia, CIG. 4232 = BCH. xv, 552, n. 26. ~toi=s dai/mosi tê=s apothanou/sês gunaiko/s~, Philo, Leg. ad G. 65, ii, p. 555 M. More in Lob., Agl. 769 n.)]

[133\5: The ~agatho\s dai/môn~ of which Attic writers in particular often speak has very indefinite features. Those who used the word combined ideas--no longer fully intelligible--of a divine being of fairly definite nature and shape with this name which in itself was altogether too liable to generalization. Modern writers have declared that it was originally a daimon of the fertility of crops. But there is just as little ground for believing this as there is for identifying it with Dionysos, as was done by the physician Philonides in connexion with an absurd story which he has invented on his own account (Ath. 675 B). There is much, however, that points to the connexion of the ~agatho\s dai/môn~ with chthonic powers. He appears as a snake (Gerhard, Akad. Abh. ii, 24) like all ~chtho/nioi~. (On a snake on a talisman the words are written ~to\ o/noma tou= agathou= dai/monos~: P. Mag. Par. 2427 ff.) ~agathodai/mones~ was the name given to a special kind of non-poisonous snake (described after Archigenes, in the Vatican iologus brought to light by myself: Rh. Mus. 38, 278; cf. Photius, ~parei=ai o/pheis~, and again esp. s.v. ~o/pheis parei/as~, 364, 1). Sacrifice was made to them in Alexandria on the 25th Tybi as ~toi=s agathoi=s dai/mosi toi=s pronooume/nois tô=n **oikiô=n~: [Callisth.] i, 32 (cod. A, or as "penates dei" as the words are translated by Jul. Valer., p. 38, 29 ff. (Kuebl.). In this instance the ~ag. d.~ is evidently a good spirit who protects the house. Only with this in mind can we understand how anyone could consecrate his house ~agathô=| dai/moni~, as Timoleon did at Syracuse (~agathô=| dai/moni~, Plu., Ips. Laud., 11, p. 542 E; ~tê\n oiki/an hierô=| dai/moni kathie/rôsen~, Plu., Timol. 36, where ~hierô=|~ is evidently an ancient copyist's error). Cf. also the saying of Xeniades, D.L. vi, 74. Such guardian spirits of the house are of course familiar enough in our own popular superstition, but in their case "the transition from souls of the dead to kindly house-spirits or kobolds is still demonstrable" (Grimm, p. 913). At the household meal the first few drops of unmixed wine belong by right to the ~agatho\s dai/môn~ (Hug, Plat. Symp.^2, p. 23); then follows the libation to Zeus Soter. But sometimes it was the "Heroes" and not the ~ag. d.~ who preceded Zeus Soter (Sch. Pi., I v, 10; Gerhard, p. 39): they have taken the place of the ~ag. d.~, which itself reveals the connexion between the ~ag. d.~ and these "souls". Another fact pointing in the same direction is the worship of the ~agatho\s dai/môn~ in common with many other deities of chthonic nature in the temple of Trophonios at Lebadeia (Paus. 9, 39, 5). In this case it is mentioned by the side of Tyche and these two are sometimes met with together in grave-inscriptions (e.g. CIG. 2465 f.) and Tyche herself appears with such chthonic deities as Despoina, Plouton, and Persephone (CIG. {208} 1464 Sparta). In epitaphic inscriptions ~daimo/nôn agathô=n~ sometimes occurs as completely equivalent to Dis Manibus: e.g. ~Daimo/nôn agathô=n Poti/ou~, CIG. 2700 b.c. (Mylasa); ~daimo/nôn agathô=n Arte/mônos kai\ Ti/tou~, Ath. Mitt. '90, p. 110 (Mylasa); cf. the inscr. from Mylasa in Ath. Mitt. '90, pp. 276-7 (nn. 23-5, 27). The singular is rare: ~Dai/monos agathou= Ariste/ou ktl.~ BCH. '90, p. 626 (Karia). (~dai/mosin heautou= te kai\ Laititi/as tê=s gunaiko\s autou=~ = Dis Manibus suis et Laetitiae uxoris in the bilingual ins. from Beroea, CIG. 4452: cf. 4232 and 5827.) All these have come under Roman influence, but it is worth noticing, all the same, that the ~agatho\s d.~ was identified with the Di Manes; which means that it was regarded as a daimon that had once been a disembodied human soul.--The subject might be dealt with more fully than would be in place here.]

[134\5: In Boeotia (and elsewhere, particularly in Thessaly) the designation of the dead as ~hê/rôs~--always an indication of a higher conception of its spirit nature--is especially frequent on tombstones. More will be found on this subject below. The inscriptions are for the most part of late date. But even in the fifth century (at all events at the beginning of the fourth) the custom of "heroizing" the ordinary dead was current. To this Plato Com. (i, p. 622 K.) alludes in the "Menelaos", ~ti/ ouk apê/gxô, hi/na Thê/bêsin hê/rôs ge/nê|~; (Zenob. vi, 17, etc. The Paroemiogrr. connect this with the Theban custom of refusing the honours of the dead to those who committed suicide. This is certainly wrong and contradicts Pl.'s intention. Keil shows this clearly, Syll. Insc. Boeot., p. 153).]

[135\5: Among the Epizephyrian Locrians ~odu/resthai ouk e/stin epi\ toi=s teleutê/sasin, all' epeida\n ekkomi/sôsin, euôchou=ntai~, Heraclid., Pol. 30, 2. In Keos the men never wear any sign of mourning, though women mourn for a year for a son who dies young; ib. 9, 4 (see Welcker, Kl. Schr. ii, 502). The funeral regulation of Iulis (SIG. 877) published in imitation of Athenian usage implies rather a tendency to exaggerated display of mourning, at least among the common people.]

[136\5: e.g. Is. 2, 47: ~boêthê/sate kai\ hêmi=n kai\ ekei/nô| tô=| en Ha/idou o/nti~. Strictly speaking no one can ~boêthei=n~ the departed in Hades. Few nations have entirely escaped such contradictions between a cult of the dead in the house or at a grave and the conception of the relegation of the soul to an inaccessible other world. They arise from two simultaneously existing mental attitudes (representing also different stages of culture) towards these obscure subjects. The naive theology of the common people reconciles such discrepancies by attributing two souls to men, one of which goes down to Hades while the other remains beside the still-animated body and receives the offerings of the family: e.g. North American Indians: Müller, Ges. d. Amer. Urrel. 66; cf. Tylor, i, 434. These two souls are in reality the creation of two mutually incompatible modes of thought.]

[137\5:--idne testamento cavebit is qui nobis quasi oraculum ediderit nihil post mortem ad nos pertinere? Cic., Fin. ii, 102.--Besides Epic., Theophrastos seems to have made some arrangement for the regular celebration of his memory (by the associates of the Peripatos?). Harp. 139, 4 ff.: ~mê/pote de\ hu/steron neno/mistai to\ epi\ timê=| tinas tô=n apothano/ntôn sunie/nai kai\ orgeô=nas homoi/ôs ônoma/sthai; hôs e/sti sunidei=n ek tô=n Theophra/stou diathêkô=n~. The will of Thphr. preserved by D.L. 5, 2, 14, is silent on the point.] {209}

III

[138\5: Oracle ap. D. 43, 66 (cf. 67) ~toi=s apophthime/nois en hiknoume/na| hame/ra| (en tai=s kathêkou/sais hême/rais, § 67) telei=n tou\s kathê/kontas katta\ hagême/na.--ta\ hagême/na = ta\ nomizo/mena~ "the customary things" (Buttmann, Ausf. Gramm., § 113 n. 7, 1, p. 84 Lob.).]

[139\5: Inquiry, at sacrifices to the dead, of an ~exêgêtê/s~: Is. 8, 39; of the ~exêgêtai/~ (who give detailed instructions and advice: [D.] 47, 68 ff. Harp. ~exêgêtê/s; e/sti de\ kai\ ha\~ (perh. ~ho/te ta\~) ~pro\s tou\s katoichome/nous nomizo/mena exêgou=nto toi=s deome/nois~. Tim. Lex. ~exêgêtai/; trei=s gi/nontai putho/chrêstoi~ (there is no need to understand this other than literally, i.e. that the college of the ~putho/chr. exêg.~ consisted of three members: Schöll, Hermes, 22, 564), ~hoi=s me/lei kathai/rein tou\s a/gei tini\ enischêthe/ntas~. The purification of the ~enagei=s~ is closely connected with the cult of the souls. It is true that prescriptions for such purification were to be found also ~en toi=s tô=n Eupatridô=n~ (so Müller, Aesch. Eum. 163 A. 20 [152 n. E.T.]) ~patri/ois~: Ath. 9, 410 A, and it may be that the college of the ~ex Eupatridô=n exêgêtai/~ may have also given decisions in such cases. Still, that does not prevent the statement of Timaeus in regard to the ~exêg. putho/chr.~ from being true. (Expiations belong principally if not exclusively to the Apolline cult.)]

[140\5: Plu., Ser. Num. 17, p. 650 C.D. expressly appeals for confirmation of the belief in a continued existence of the soul after the death of the body to utterances of the Delphic god: ~a/chri tou= polla\ toiau=ta prothespi/zesthai, ouch ho/sio/n esti tê=s psuchê=s katagnô=nai tha/naton~.]

[141\5: That already in Homer the circle of the ~agchistei=s~ (in the Athenian legal sense) was called upon to prosecute the blood-feud is certainly probable in itself; it cannot, however, be proved from examples occurring in Homer. Leist's statements in Graecoital. Rechtsges., p. 42, are not quite exact. The facts are: a father is called upon to avenge his son, and a son his father, and a brother to avenge his brother (~g~ 307; ~I~ 632 f.; ~ô~ 434); once the avengers are the ~kasi/gnêtoi/ te e/tai te~ of the murdered man, ~o~ 273. ~e/tai~ has a very wide sense and is not even confined to kinship; at any rate it is not simply "cousins" (~e/tai kai\ anepsioi/~ side by side. ~I~ 464).--In Attic law, too, in certain cases the duty of prosecuting the murderer extended beyond the limits of the ~anepsiadoi=~ to more distant relatives and even to the ~phra/tores~ of the murdered man (Law ap. D. 43, 57).]

[142\5: Flight, indeed ~aeiphugi/a~, on account of ~pho/nos akou/sios~: ~Ps~ 85 ff. (The fugitive becomes the ~thera/pôn~ of the person who receives him into his house in the foreign land: l. 90; cf. ~O~ 431 f.; this must have been the rule.)--Flight on account of ~pho/nos hekou/sious (lochêsa/menos~ 268) ~n~ 259 ff. And so frequently.]

[143\5: ~I~ 632 ff. ~kai\ me/n ti/s te kasignê/toio phonê=os **poinê\n ê\ hou= paido\s hede/xato tethnêô=tos; kai/ rh' ho me\n en dê/mô| me/nei autou= po/ll' apoti/sas tou= de/ t' erêtu/etai kradi/ê kai\ thumo\s agê/nôr poinê\n dexame/nou~. Here it is very plainly represented that all that is required is to appease "the heart and spirit" of the receiver of the ~poinê/~: the murdered man is not considered.]

[144\5: It is very natural to suppose that the ~poinê/~ (as K. O. Müller suggests in Aesch. Eum. 145 [122 E T.]) may have arisen out of the substitution of a vicarious sacrifice instead of that of the murderer himself, who should strictly have been offered to the dead man. In this way primitive human sacrifice has in many cases been replaced by sacrifice of animals. In that case the ~poinê/~ too must have originally been offered to the murdered man: in Homeric times {210} only the satisfaction of the living avenger was thought of.--In any case it is a mistake to look upon the permission to buy off the blood-feud as a mitigation of primitive severity in the taking of vengeance due to the intervention of the State. The State in this case mitigated nothing since it took no interest at all (in Homer) in the treatment of murder cases. Of course, legal proceedings can be taken to decide whether a stipulated ~poinê/~ has been paid or not (~S~ 497 ff.), as in the case of any other ~sumbo/laion~. But the prosecution of the murderer in all its departments is left entirely in the hands of the family of the murdered man.]

[145\5: We have very few details on this point. In Sparta ~hoi ge/rontes (dika/zousi) ta\s phonika\s (di/kas)~, Arist., Pol. 3, 1, p. 1275b 10 (and in Corinth, too, D.S. 16, 65, 6 ff.). Involuntary homicide is punished by exile and (in this being more severe than at Athens) perpetual exile as it appears. The Spartiate Drakontios serving in the army of the Ten Thousand ~e/phuge pai=s ô\n oi/kothen pai=da a/kôn **katakanô\n~ (like Patroklos in fact, ~Ps~ 87), ~xuê/lê| pata/xas~, Xen., An. 4, 8, 25. If his banishment had been only temporary the period must have expired long before.--In Kyme there are vestiges of legal prosecution of murder (with witnesses): Arist., Pol. 1269a, 1 ff.--In Chalkis ~epi\ Thra/kê|~ the laws of Androdamas of Rhegion were in force ~peri/ te ta\ phonika\ kai\ ta\s epiklê/rous~, Arist., Pol. 2, 8, p. 1274b 23 ff.--In Lokri were used the laws of Zaleukos in combination with Cretan, Spartan and Areopagite institutions; these last undoubtedly dealing with homicide, which must therefore have been regulated constitutionally. (Str. vi, 260, following Eph.)]

[146\5: The limits of those qualified to inherit extends in Athenian law ~me/chri **anepsiadô=n pai/dôn~ (Law ap. D. 43, 51; cf. § 27) as did the duty of avenging murder ~mechri\ anepsiadô=n~: D. 47, 72 (~ento\s anepsio/têtos~, which must mean the same thing, Law ap. D. 43, 57). The circle of persons thus united in the right of inheritance and the duty of taking vengeance for murder constituted the ~agchistei/a~, the body of kinsfolk tracing their descent (in the male line only) from the same man, the father, grandfather, or great-grandfather of them all. This is the limit to which the ~gonei=s~ are traced: Is. 8, 32; cf. above, note 123. Many nations of the earth are familiar with a similar limitation of the narrower body of kinsfolk composing a "house": as to the underlying reasons for the practice many conjectures are made by H. E. Seebohm, On the Structure of Greek Tribal Society (1895).]

[147\5: As to the restless wandering of the ~biaiotha/natoi~ more details will be given below [Append. vii]. In the meantime it will be enough to refer to A., Eum. 98, where the still unavenged soul of the murdered Klytaimnestra complains ~aischrô=s alô=mai~. A later authority uses words that correspond well with ancient belief: Porph., Abst. ii, 47, ~tô=n anthrô/pôn hai tô=n bi/a| apothano/ntôn (psuchai\) kate/chontai pro\s tô=| sô/mati~, like the souls of the ~a/taphoi~.]

[148\5: In Homeric times the injured dead becomes a ~theô=n mê/nima~ to the evil-doer (~Ch~ 358, ~l~ 73). Later times believed that the soul of the dead man himself angrily pursued the murderer with its terrors till it drove him beyond its own boundaries: ~ho thanatôthei\s thumou=tai tô=| dra/santi ktl.~, Pl., Lg. 865 DE, appealing to ~palaio/n tina tô=n archai/ôn mu/thôn lego/menon~; cf. X., Cyr. 8, 7, 18: A., Cho. 39 ff., 323 ff. If the next-of-kin whose duty it is to avenge the death of his relative shirks the duty incumbent on him the anger of the dead man is turned upon the latter: Pl., Leg. 9, 866 B--~tou= patho/ntos prostrepome/nou tê\n pa/thên~. The indignant soul becomes ~prostro/paios~. ~prostro/paios~ probably {211} applies only in a derivative sense to a ~dai/môn~ who takes the part of the dead man (esp. ~Zeu\s prostro/paios~); it is strictly speaking an epithet of the soul itself in its longing for vengeance. Thus in Antiphon Tetral. 1, ~g~ 10, ~hêmi=n me\n prostro/paios ho apothanô\n ouk e/stai~. 3, ~d~ 10, ~ho apoktei/nas~ (or rather ~ho tethnêkô\s~) ~toi=s aiti/ois prostro/paios e/stai~. So, too, A., Cho. 287, ~ek prostropai/ôn en ge/nei peptôko/tôn~. EM. 42, 7, ~Êrigo/nên, anartê/sasan heautê/n, prostro/paion toi=s Athênai/ois gene/sthai~. We can, however, see particularly well from this case how easily the change came about from a soul in a special condition to a similar daimonic being which takes the place of the soul of the dead. The same Antiphon speaks also of ~hoi tô=n apothano/ntôn prostro/paioi, ho prostro/paios tou= apothano/ntos~ as something distinct from the dead man himself: Tetr. 3, ~a~ 4; 3, ~b~ 8; cf. ~ho Murti/lou prostro/paios~, Paus. 2, 18, 2, etc.; cf. Zacher, Dissert. phil. Halens., iii, p. 228. The injured dead himself becomes ~arai=os~, Soph., Tr. 1201 ff. (cf. fr. 367; E., IT. 778; Med. 608); later his place is taken by ~dai/mones arai=oi~. What terrible evils the unavenged soul can bring upon the person who is called upon to take vengeance are painted for us by Aesch. in Cho. 278 ff. (or else as some think an ancient interpolator of A.). Sickness and trouble might be sent over several generations by such ~palaia\ mêni/mata~ of the dead: Pl., Phdr. 244 D (see Lobeck's account, Agl. 636 f.). True to ancient beliefs an Orphic hymn prays to the Titanes ~mê=nin chalepê\n apope/mpein, ei/ tis apo\ chthoni/ôn progo/nôn oi/koisi pela/sthê~, H. 37, 7 f.; cf. 39, 9-10.]

[149\5: ~chreô/n estin hupexelthei=n tô=| patho/nti to\n dra/santa ta\s hô/ras pa/sas tou= eniautou=, kai\ erêmô=sai pa/ntas tou\s oikei/ous to/pous xumpa/sês tê=s patri/dos~, Pl., Lg. ix, 865 E. The law says in the case of the criminal convicted of murder ~ei/rgein me\n tê=s tou= patho/ntos patri/dos, ktei/nein de\ ouch ho/sion hapantachou=~, D. 23, 38.]

[150\5: When the victim was a citizen, and also in wilful murder of a non-citizen. See Mei. and Sch., Att. Proc.^2, p. 379, n. 520.--When the citizenship of a city rested upon conquest the lives of the subjects belonging to the older subject population were of less account. In Tralles (Karia) the murder of one of the Leleges by an (Argive) full citizen might be bought off by payment of a bushel of peas (a purely symbolical ~poinê/~) to the relations of the victim: Plu., Q.Gr. 46, p. 302 B.]

[151\5: On the expiry of the legally appointed period of banishment the relations of the dead man do not seem to have been allowed to refuse ~ai/desis~. See Philippi, Areop. u. Epheten, 115 f.]

[152\5: Law ap. D. 43, 57.]

[153\5: D. 37, 59. See Philippi, op. cit., p. 144 ff. Cf. E., Hipp. 1435 f., 1442 f., 1448 f.]

[154\5: Such prohibition against taking a ~poinê/~ for murder is made by the Law ap. D. 23, 28: ~tou\s d' andropho/nous exei=nai apoktei/nein . . . lumai/nesthai de\ mê/, mêde\ apoina=n~ (cf. § 33 ~to\ de\ mêd' apoina=n; mê\ chrê/mata pra/ttein, ta\ ga\r chrê/mata a/poina ôno/mazon hoi palaioi/~). In spite of this Meier and others unjustifiably conclude that murder could be indemnified by payment of money, from the illegal practice mentioned in [D.] 58, 29: this speaks rather for the contrary. They have more appearance of justification when they appeal to Harp. (Phot. Suid., E.M. 784, 26; AB. 313, 5 ff.), s.v. ~hupopho/nia; ta\ epi\ pho/nô| dido/mena chrê/mata toi=s oikei/ois tou= phoneuthe/ntos, hi/na mê\ epexi/ôsin~. On the strength of this Hermann, Gr. Staatsalt.^5 104, 6, says, "even intentional murder could be absolutely indemnified." Nothing is actually said of ~pho/nos hekou/sios~ here nor do we anywhere learn that the payment of ~hupopho/nia~ {212} on the occasion of a murder was ever a formally legalized proceeding. It remains possible, and even in the circumstances more probable, that Dinarch. and Thphr. in the passages on ~hupopho/nia~ quoted by Harp. referred to the practice as one forbidden by law, though it might be, on occasion, an actual fact. If we had only the gloss of Suidas--~a/poina; lu/tra, ha\ di/dôsi/ tis hupe\r pho/nou ê\ sô/matos. hou/tôs So/lôn en no/mois~--we might have concluded that payment of such blood-money was allowed in Athens and mentioned in Solon's laws as allowable. This would be quite as justifiable as to argue as above from Harp. s. ~hupopho/nia~. We know, in fact, that the law referred to the ~a/poina~ and ~apoina=n~ as forbidden things, from the passages already quoted from Dem. (23, 28-33). From these the gloss was itself probably derived.]

[155\5: We cannot, however, believe on the poor authority of Sch. Dem, p. 607, 16 ff., that the ~hieropoioi\ tai=s Semnai=s theai=s~ were selected out of the whole Athenian citizen body by the Areiopagos. ("Three" were chosen out of all the Athenians: D. 21, 115; at other times "ten": Dinarch. ap. EM. 469, 12 ff.; an indefinite number: Phot. ~hieropoioi/~.) According to all analogies we should rather expect this selection to have been made by the popular Assembly.]

[156\5: ~hai diômosi/ai kai\ ta\ to/mia~, Antiphon, Herod. 88. In more detail D. 23, 67-8. Those who had to take an oath swore by the ~Semnai\ theai/~ and other gods: Dinarch., adv. Demosth. 47. Both sides had to swear to the justice of their case in respect of the material facts in dispute (Philippi, Areop., pp. 87-95). Such a compulsory oath taken by both parties could not of course in any circumstances serve as proof: one side at least must be perjured. Nor can the Athenians themselves have failed to see this. It is surely doing them an injustice not to see the simple explanation of this strange sort of preliminary oath-taking and to dismiss the matter with a reference to the Athenians as "not a legally-minded people" (as Philippi does, p. 88). It is much more natural to suppose that this double oath, taken under circumstances of peculiar solemnity, was not regarded as a juridical matter at all, but had a purely religious sense (as it had in the quite similar cases mentioned by Meiners, Allg. Gesch. d. Relig. ii, 296 f.). The oath-taker invokes a dreadful curse upon himself if he breaks his oath and devotes ~hauto\n kai\ ge/nos kai\ oiki/an tê\n hautou=~ (Antiphon, Herod. 11) to the Curse-Goddesses, the ~Arai/~ or the ~Erinu/es hai/ th' hupo\ gai=an anthrô/pous ti/nuntai, ho/tis k' epi/orkon omo/ssê|~ (~T~ 259 f.)--and to the Gods who are to punish his children and his whole kith and kin on earth (Lycurg., Leocr. 79). If the court discovers the perjured party the punishment due to his action overtakes him (or if he is the plaintiff, he fails in his purpose) and at the same time the justice of heaven punishes him for his broken oath (cf. D. 23, 68). But the court may make a mistake and not find out the perjurer; in which case the perjurer is still punished for he becomes a victim of the gods to whom he has devoted himself--who do not err. Thus the double oath is an addition to the judicial inquiry, and heavenly punishment stands side by side with that of men. The two may coincide, but this need not be so, and in this way the guilty is punished whatever happens. (How familiar such ideas were in antiquity we see from expressions used by orators: Isoc. 18, 3; D. 19, 239-40; Lycurg., Leocr. 79.) The oath, being an appeal to a higher court, supplemented human justice, or rather the legal processes of men supplemented the oath-taking, for in this partnership the appeal to an oath must have been the older member.] {213}

[157\5: Poll. 8, 117, ~kath' he/kaston de\ mê=na triô=n hêmerô=n edi/kazon~ (the judges on the Areiopagos) ~ephexê=s, teta/rtê| phthi/nontos, tri/tê|, deute/ra|~.]

[158\5: ~hoi Areopagi=tai trei=s pou tou= mê=nos hême/ras ta\s phonika\s di/kas edi/kazon, heka/stê| tô=n theô=n mi/an hême/ran apone/montes~, Sch. Aeschin. 1, 188, p. 282 Sch. This certainly implies that the limitation of the number of the Erinyes to three (and not two for example--which first appears in Eurip., but was certainly not his own invention--was officially current in the worship of the city.--Since these three days were sacred to the Erinyes, as goddesses of Hades, they counted as ~apophra/des hême/rai~: EM. 131, 16 f.; Et. Gud. 70, 5 (the thirtieth day of the month is for that reason ~phau/lê pa=sin e/rgois~ acc. to "Orpheus" fr. 28 Ab.).]

[159\5: Paus. 1, 28, 6.]

[160\5: The Erinyes are the accusers of Orestes not only in Aeschylus (and thence in Eurip. too, IT. 940 ff.), but also in the varying accounts derived from different sources, in which the twelve gods served as judges ap. D. 23, 66 (cf. 74, and Dinarch., adv. Dem. 87).]

[161\5: The Erinyes are said ~apo\ zô=ntos rhophei=n eruthro\n ek mele/ôn pe/lanon~, A., Eum. 264 f.; cf. 183 f.; 302; 305. In this they closely resemble the "vampires" which we hear of especially in Slav popular mythology, and the Tii of the Polynesians, etc. These, however, are the souls of the dead returned from the grave and sucking men's blood.]

[162\5: The Erinyes say to Orestes: ~emoi\ traphei/s te kai\ kathierôme/nos kai\ zô=n me dai/seis oude\ pro\s bômô=| sphagei/s~, A., Eum. 304 f. The matricide is divis parentum (i.e. their Manes) sacer, their sacrificial victim (~thu=ma katachthoni/ou Dio/s~ D.H. 2, 10, 3), in the older belief of Greece, too.]

[163\5: See Rh. Mus. 50, 6 ff.]

[164\5: The fact that after receiving the ~ai/desis~ of the dead man's relatives the agent of a ~pho/nos akou/sios~ was still required to offer the expiatory sacrifice as well as undergo purification (~hilasmo/s~ and ~katharmo/s~) is alluded to by Dem. 23, 72-3, in the double expression ~thu=sai kai\ katharthê=nai, hosiou=n kai\ kathai/resthai~ (cf. Müller, Aesch. Eum., p. 144 [122, n. 2, E.T.]).]

[165\5: See Philippi, Areop. u. Eph. 62.]

[166\5: In the Iliad and the Odyssey there is a total absence not only of all reference to purification from blood-guiltiness but of the necessary conditions for it. The murderer goes freely among men without there being any fear of others suffering from a ~mi/asma~ attaching to him. Cf. the case especially of Theoklymenos, ~o~ 271-8. Lobeck rightly emphasizes this, Agl. 301. K. O. Müller's attempts to prove in spite of everything that purifications from the stain of murder were a Homeric custom, are failures. See Nägelsbach, Hom. Theol.^2, p. 293.--The oldest examples of purifications from murder in the literature are (Lobeck 309): purification of Achilles from the blood of Thersites in the ~Aithiopi/s~, p. 33 Kink.; refusal of Neleus to purify Herakles from the murder of Iphitos: Hesiod ~en katalo/gois~, Sch., Il. ~B~ 336.--Mythical exx. of such purifications in later accounts: Lob., Agl. 968-9.]

[167\5: E g. offering of cakes, sacrifice of drink-offerings without wine, burning of the materials of sacrifice; cf. the description of ~hilasmo/s~ (in this place clearly distinguished from ~katharmo/s~) in A.R. iv, 712 ff. Similar account (offerings without wine, etc.) of the ~hilasmo/s~ (which is, however, improperly called ~katharmo/s~, l. 466) of the Eumenides at Kolonos which the chorus recommends to Oedipus, S., O.C. 469 ff. No one might eat of the expiatory sacrifice: Porph., Abst. 2, 44. It is burnt completely: Stengel, Jahrb. f. Phil. 1883, p. 369 ff.--The {214} clash of bronze was used ~pro\s pa=san aphosi/ôsin kai\ apoka/tharsin~: Apollod. fr. 36 (and in offerings to Hekate, Theoc. ii, 36; as protection against ghosts, Luc., Philops. 15; Sch. Theoc. ii, 36; Tz., Lyc. 77. Clash of bronze in this apotropaic sense occurs, too, in the dance of the Kouretes, etc.; see below). The ritual of expiation was affected in many ways by admixture of foreign superstitions from Phrygia and Lydia. Its chief source is to be found in the Cretan worship of the (chthonic) Zeus. Thence it seems to have spread all over Greece assisted by the Apolline oracle of Delphi. This is why the ram, the peculiar victim of ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~, is the principal victim in expiatory sacrifices, its fleece, the ~Dio\s kô/dion~, receiving the various materials of expiation, etc.]

[168\5: On the chthonic character of the deities of expiation see in gen. K. O. Müller, Aesch. Eum., p. 139 ff. (112 ff.). Chief among them is ~Zeu\s meili/chios~ (a euphemistic title; cf. above, n. 5), who is unmistakably a ~chtho/nios~. Hence, like all ~chtho/nioi~ he is represented as a snake on the votive tablet to ~Z. meil.~ discovered in the Peiraeus (certainly the Athenian god and not a foreign deity identified with this god whom all Athenians knew well from the feast of the Diasia): BCH. 7, 507 ff.; CIA. ii, 1578 ff. On a votive insc. from Lykia we have, side by side with the chthonic Hekate, ~Dii\ Meilichi/ô| kai\ Enodi/a|~, BCH. 13, 392. Other ~theoi\ meili/chioi~ in Lokris were worshipped with nocturnal sacrifice (as regularly in the case of underworld deities): Paus. 10, 38, 8. The ~dai/mones meili/chioi~ as ~chtho/nioi~ are contrasted with the ~maka/ressin ourani/ois~ in the oracle verses ap. Phlegon, Macr. iv, p. 93, 5 Kel.: deis milicheis Acta Lud. Saecul. Tab. A l. 11 [= CIL. vi, 32, 323; see Mommsen, Ges. Schr. viii, 570].--Then come the ~apotro/paioi~: their nature can be guessed from the fact that they were worshipped together with the dead and Hekate on the thirtieth day of the month (see above, n. 88). After a bad dream offerings were made to the ~apotro/paioi~, to Ge and the Heroes: Hp., Diaet. 4, 8, vi, p. 652 L. ~Zeu\s apotro/paios~ must have been a ~chtho/nios~, but we have side by side with him an ~Athêna= apotropai/a~ (and an Apollo ~apotr.~ too): ins. from Erythrai, SIG. 600, 69; 115: the provinces of ~Olu/mpioi~ and ~chtho/nioi~ were not always kept absolutely distinct.--An ancient and hereditary service of the propitiation deities belonged to the Attic family of the Phytalids who had once purified and offered expiatory sacrifice for Theseus after the murder of Skiron and others (~hagni/santes kai\ meili/chia thu/santes~): Plu., Thes. 12. The gods to whom this family offered sacrifice were Demeter and Zeus Meilichios: Paus. 1, 37, 2-4.--Isoc. 5, 117, makes a clear distinction between the ~theoi\ Olu/mpioi~ and the gods to whom only an apotropaic cult, ~apopompa/s~, was offered; these being the gods of expiation (cf. ~apodiopompei=sthai~ in propitiatory sacrifices; ~apopompai=oi theoi/~: Apollod. ap. Harp. ~apopompa/s~. Cf. also ~apopompê/~ of evil daimones in contrast to the ~epipompê/~ of the same: Anon. Vir. Herb. xxii, 165. See Hemsterhuys, Lucian ii, p. 255 Bip.; Lob., Agl. 984, ii).]

[169\5: e.g. in the description of the ~hilasmo/s~ of Medea by Kirke in A.R. iv, 712 ff.]

[170\5: K. O. Müller, Dorians, i, 328, 336; cf. the same ancient custom of flight for nine years and penance for the slaying of a man in the legend and cult of Zeus Lykaios; cf. H. D. Müller, Myth. d. gr. St. ii, 105. See below.]

[171\5: Cho. 1055-60. Eum. 237 ff., 281 ff., 445 ff., 470.]

[172\5: The Delphinion, the court for trying ~pho/nos di/kaios~, and the ancient dwelling of Aegeus (Plu., Thes. 12), was at the same time {215} (and perhaps originally) an expiation site. Expiatory sacrifice was there made for Theseus after his fights with the Pallantidai and the highway robbers (~aphosiou/menos to\ a/gos~, Poll. viii, 119).]

[173\5: Plu., Ser. Num. 17, p. 560 EF. Note the expressions: ~hila/sasthai tê\n tou= Archilo/chou psuchê/n, hilasasthai tê\n Pausani/ou psuchê/n~. Suid. ~Archi/lochos~, from Aelian: ~meili/xasthai tê\n tou= Telesiklei/ou paido\s psuchê/n, kai\ praü=nai choai=s~.]

[174\5: The three ~exêgêtai\ putho/chrêstoi, hoi=s me/lei kathai=rein tou\s a/gei tini\ enischêthe/ntas~, Tim. **Lex. p. 109 R.]

[175\5: Pl., Lg. 865 B: the agent in a ~pho/nos akou/sios~ (of a special kind) ~katharthei\s kata\ to\n ek Delphô=n komisthe/nta peri\ tou/tôn no/mon e/stô katharo/s~.]

[176\5: I set down here the expressions occurring in the speeches and the (at any rate contemporary [see Appendix iv]) Tetralogies of Antiphon, which throw light on the religious ideas lying behind the procedure in trials for murder. In the prosecution of the murderer the following are concerned: ~ho tethneô/s, hoi no/moi~, and ~theoi\ hoi ka/tô~, Or. 1, 31. The vigorous prosecution of the case on the part of the relations of the dead is ~boêthei=n tô=| tethneô=ti~: 1, 31. Tetr. 1 ~b~, 13. The condemnation of the murderer is ~timôri/a tô=| adikêthe/nti~, his personal revenge: 5, 88 = 6, 6. The accusing relatives come before the court as representatives of the dead man, ~anti\ tou= patho/ntos episkê/ptomen humi=n~, as they say to the judges, Tetr. 3 ~g~, 7. The duty of accusing as well as the ~ase/bêma~ of the deed of bloodshed rests upon them until satisfaction is made for it: Tetr. 1 ~a~, 3. But the ~mi/asma~ of the deed attaches to the whole city in which the murderer lives. All who sit at table with him, or live under the same roof, even the temples he walks in, are polluted by his mere presence: hence come ~aphori/ai~ and ~dustuchei=s pra/xeis~ on the city. It is to the greatest interest of the judges to avert this pollution by giving a propitiatory judgment: Tetr. 1 ~a~, 10; Or. 5, 11, 82; Tetr. 1 ~a~, 3; 1 ~g~, 9, 11; 3 ~g~, 6, 7. Above all it is necessary to find the real criminal and to punish him. If the relatives of the dead prosecute some one other than the real doer of the deed, it is they, and not the judges (on account of their wrong decision), who will have to bear the wrath of the dead man and of the avenging spirits: Tetr. 1 ~a~, 3; 3 ~a~, 4; 3 ~d~, 10; for in this case the murdered man is deprived of his ~timôri/a~: 3 ~a~, 4. But perjured witnesses and unjust judges are liable to a ~mi/asma~, too, which they then introduce into their own houses: Tetr. 3 ~a~, 3; or at least, if they give a false condemnation (but not a false acquittal) of the accused, they incur the ~mê/nima tô=n alitêri/ôn~ acc. to Tetr. 3 ~b~, 8--i.e. that of the falsely condemned person (whereas the murdered man still continues angry with his own relatives). If they knowingly acquit the murderer contrary to justice, the murdered man becomes ~enthu/mios~ to the judges and no longer to his relatives: Tetr. 1 ~g~, 10.--The source of the resentment is said to be the dead man himself: ~prostro/paios ho apothanô/n~, Tetr. 1 ~g~, 10; cf. 3 ~d~, 10; where he is parallel with ~to\ mê/nima tô=n alitêri/ôn~. The murdered man leaves behind him ~tê\n tô=n alitêri/ôn dusme/neian~ (and this is what the ~mi/asma~ really is--not as some modern writers have imagined, any sort of "moral" pollution--as is clearly stated in this passage: ~tê\n tô=n alit. dusme/neian, ê\n . . . mi/asma . . . eisa/gontai~): Tetr. 3 ~a~, 3; cf. Again 3 ~b~, 8; 3 ~g~, 7. In this case the avenging spirits substitute themselves for the soul of the dead man (just as in the case where a ~prostro/paios tou= apothano/ntos~ is spoken of: cf. above, n. 148). The ~prostro/paioi tô=n apothana/ntôn~ become themselves ~deinoi\ alitê/rioi~ of the dilatory relatives: {216} Tetr. 3 ~a~, 4. There is no essential distinction between the two (cf. Poll. 5, 131). Elsewhere we hear of ~to\ prostro/paion~ as the special attribute or feeling of the murdered man himself: Tetr. 2 ~d~, 9. Thus also we have the alternatives ~enthu/mios ho apothanô/n~ (1 ~g~, 10) and ~to\ enthu/mion~ (2 ~a~, 2; 2 ~d~, 9). In this connexion it is clear that ~enthu/mion~ (as the fixed and conventional expression for these superstitions) means the indignant memory, the longing for revenge of the murdered man (--~enthu/mion e/stô Da/matros kai\ Kou/ras~, GDI. 3541, 8). The proper understanding of this word will help us to see what is meant by the expression ~oxuthu/mia~ used of the meal offered to the dead and Hekate, and the almost identical purificatory offerings, that after the religious cleansing of a house were thrown out at the cross-roads (Harp. s.v. Phot. s.v. Art. 1, 2, 3; AB. 287, 24, 288, 7; EM. 626, 44 ff.). They are intended to appease the easily awakened anger of the souls (and of their patroness Hekate), their ~oxu/thumon~, a stronger version of ~enthu/mion~, by apotropaic sacrifice.]

[177\5: See Appendix ii (~maschalismo/s~).]

[178\5: Xen., Cyr. 8, 7, 17 ff.: ~ou ga\r dê/pou tou=to/ ge saphô=s dokei=te eide/nai hôs oude/n eimi egô\ e/ti, epeida\n tou= anthrôpi/nou bi/ou teleutê/sô; oude\ ga\r nu=n toi tê/n g' emê\n psuchê\n heôra=te . . . ta\s de\ tô=n a/dika patho/ntôn psucha\s ou/pô katenoê/sate, hoi/ous me\n pho/bous toi=s miaipho/nois emba/llousin, hoi/ous de\ palamnai/ous~ (which means first the criminal and then, as here, the punishing spirit that avenges the criminal deed, exactly like ~prostro/paios, alitê/rios, ala/stôr, mia/stôr~: see Zacher, Dissert. phil. Halens. iii, 232 ff.) ~toi=s anosi/ois epipe/mpousi? toi=s de\ phthime/nois ta\s tima\s diame/nein e/ti a\n dokei=te, ei mêdeno\s autô=n hai psuchai\ ku/riai ê=san? ou/toi e/gôge, ô= pai=des, oude\ **tou=to pô/pote epei/sthên, hôs hê psuchê/, he/ôs me\n a\n en thnêtô=| sô/mati ê=|, zê=|, ho/tan de\ tou/tou apallagê=|, te/thnêken~. Then follow other popular arguments for the belief in the continued existence of the soul after its separation from the body.]

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