Psyche, by Erwin Rohde—A Project Gutenberg eBook

114 What falls to the ground belongs to the ἥρωες (= souls of the dead): Ar. Ἥρωες fr. 305 H. and G. τοῖς τετελευτηκόσι τῶν φίλων ἀπένεμον τὰ πίπτοντα τῆς τροφῆς ἀπὸ τῶν τραπεζῶν (alluded to by Eur. in the Belleroph. [Stheneb. fr. 667 Din.]), ap. Ath. 427 E. This is the origin of the Pythagorean σύμβολον—as usual founded on ancient belief about the soul—τὰ πεσόντα ἀπὸ τραπεζῆς μὴ ἀναιρεῖσθαι, D.L. viii, 34. Suid. Πυθαγόρα τὰ σύμβολα. This superstition is also the reason for the νόμος said to have been current in Kroton, τὸ πεσὸν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν κωλύων ἀναιρεῖσθαι, 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 Solonian law: D. 20, 104; 40, 49. Plu., Sol. 21, Σόλωνος ὁ κωλύων νόμος τὸν τεθνηκότα κακῶς ἀγορεύειν. καὶ γὰρ ὅσιον τοὺς μεθεστηκότας ἱεροὺς νομίζειν. This reminds us of the words of Arist., Eudem. fr. 37 [44] given in Plu., C. Apoll. 27, p. 115 B, τὸ ψεύσασθαί τι κατὰ τῶν τετελευκηκότων καὶ τὸ βλασφημεῖν οὐχ ὅσιον ὡς κατὰ βελτιόνων καὶ κρειττόνων ἤδη γεγονότων (Chilon ap. Stob., Fl. 125, 15 M.: τὸν τετελευκηκότα μὴ κακολόγει ἀλλὰ μακάριζε). A very extreme form of outrage is ψεύσασθαι κατὰ τοῦ τελευτήσαντος: Is. 9, 6; 23; 26. (The κακολόγος is particularly liable to κακὰ εἰπεῖν περὶ τῶν τετελευτηκότων, 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. Process², p. 630.

116 Ar., Tagenist. fr. 485, 12, says of the dead, καὶ θύομέν γ’ αὐτοῖσι τοῖς ἐναγίσμασιν, ὥσπερ θεοῖσιν κτλ.

117 κρείττονες Hesych. Phot. s.v. Arist. ap. Plu., C. Apoll. 27, p. 115 C.

118 ἵλεως ἔχειν (τοὺς τελευτήσαντας): Pl., Rp. 427 B.

119 That the ἥρωες δυσόργητοι καὶ χαλεποὶ τοῖς ἐμπελάζουσι γίγνονται (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—χαλεποὺς καὶ πλήκτας τοὺς ἥρωας νομίζουσι, καὶ μᾶλλον νύκτωρ ἢ μεθ’ ἡμέραν: Chamaileon ap. Ath. 461 C (and hence the precautions taken against nocturnal 203 apparitions: Ath. 149 C). Cf. Zenob. v, 60. Hesych. Phot. s. κρείττονες.—That the ἥρωες 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 κρείττονες 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 Ar., Tagenist. fr. 485, 13: καὶ χοάς γε χεόμενοι (to the dead) αἰτούμεθ’ αὐτοὺς τὰ καλὰ δεῦρ’ ἀνιέναι (intended as a παροιμία or at any rate imitated from a tragedian—apostrophe to a dead woman ἐκεῖ βλέπουσα, δεῦρ’ ἀνίει τἀγαθά, 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 ἀνιέναι τἀγαθά of Demeter ἀνησιδώρα (Paus. 1, 31, 4; Plu., Smp. 9, 14, 4, p. 745 A), and of Γῆ ἀνησιδώρα. διὰ τὸ καρποὺς ἀνιέναι (Hesych.); S., OT. 269, εὔχομαι θεοὺς μήτ’ ἄροτον αὐτοῖς γῆς ἀνιέναι τινά.—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 περὶ ἐνυπνίων (ii, p. 14 Kühn; vi, p. 658 Littré [π. διαίτης iv, 92]). If a person in his dream sees ἀποθανόντας dressed in white, offering something, that is a good omen: ἀπὸ γὰρ τῶν ἀποθανόντων αἱ τροφαὶ καὶ αὐξησιες καὶ σπέρματα γίνονται. 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 Electra in A., Ch. 486 ff., makes a vow to the soul of her father: κἀγὼ χοάς σοι τῆς ἐμῆς παγκληρίας οἴσω πατρῴων ἐκ δόμων γαμηλίους· πάντων δὲ πρῶτον τόνδε πρεσβεύσω τάφον.—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 Γῆ by those who desired to have children.

122 Φανόδημός φησιν ὅτι μόνοι Ἀθηναῖοι θύουσιν καὶ εὔχονται αὐτοῖς ὑπὲρ γενέσεως παίδων, ὅταν γαμεῖν μέλλωσιν, Phot. Suid. τριτοπάτορες.

123 The form of the word itself shows that the τριτοπάτορες are simply πρόπαπποι. τριτοπάτωρ is the earliest ancestor, ὁ πάππου ἢ τήθης πατήρ (Arist. ap. Poll. 3, 17). Just as μητροπάτωρ is ὁ μητρὸς πατήρ and πατροπάτωρ ὁ πατρὸς πατήρ (Poll. 3, 16), προπατώρ the forefather, ψευδοπάτωρ = ψευδὴς πατήρ, ἐπιπάτωρ the stepfather (μητρομήτηρ = μητρὸς μήτηρ)—in the same way τριτοπάτωρ is the third forefather, the father of the πατροπάτωρ, i.e. the πρόπαππος. The τριτοπάτορες have an alternative form τριτοπάτρεῖς, Philoch. ap. Suidas τριτοπάτορες: SIG. 443; Leg. Sacr. i, p. 49, l. 32, 52: in Orphic verse this form alone, and not τριτοπάτορες, could be used: see Lobeck, Agl. 764. They were in fact the τρίτοι πατέρες (just as 204 the τριτέγγονοι are the τρίτοι ἔγγονοι, the ἔγγονοι of the third generation). But the “third forefathers” are in fact the first ancestors (Lobeck, 763 f.), οἱ προπάτορες (Hesych.), οἱ πρῶτοι ἀρχηγέται (AB. 307, 16)—the ancestors of the individual first of all, his bodily γονεῖς (the series of whom was not generally counted beyond the πρόπαππος—Is. 8, 32—i.e. the τριτοπάτωρ), and then the “ancestors” of the human race in general (acc. to the explanation of Philoch. ap. Phot. Suid. τριτοπ.; 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 The Tritopatores are most distinctly referred to as ἄνεμοι: Demon ap. Phot. Suid. τριτοπ. cf. δεσπόται ἀνέμων Phot. τριτοπάτωρ; Tz. Lyc. 738. Orphic poetry made them θυρωροὺς καὶ φύλακας τῶν ἀνέμων. 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 Ἐξηγ.). The genuine and ancient belief about them can still be discerned through all the confusion of misinterpretation and misunderstanding, and according to this the τριτοπάτορες 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 ψυχαί (whose name even is derived from the breath of the wind). From these as from real πνοιαὶ ζῳογόνοι their descendants hope for aid where the entry into life of a new ψυχή 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 The words of Orestes in A., Ch. 483, give very naive expression to the belief. He calls to the soul of his father: οὕτω (if thou sendest me aid) γὰρ ἄν σοι δαῖτες ἔννομοι βροτῶν κτιζοίατ’· εἰ δὲ μή, παρ’ εὐδείπνοις ἔσει ἄτιμος ἐμπύροισι κνισωτοῖς χθονός. Thus we see that the belief ridiculed by Luc., Luct. 9, was true of earlier times as well: τρέφονται δὲ ἄρα (the dead) ταῖς παρ’ ἡμῖν χοαῖς καὶ τοῖς καθαγιζομένοις ἐπὶ τῶν τάφων· ὡς εἴ τῳ μὴ εἴη καταλελειμμένος ὑπὲρ γῆς φίλος ἢ συγγενής, ἄσιτος οὗτος νεκρὸς καὶ λιμώττων ἐν αὐτοῖς πολιτεύεται.

126 Epicurus devotes by will certain definite πρόσοδοι to the yearly offering of ἐναγίσματα 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: Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 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 κοινὸν τοῦ ἀνδρείου τῶν συγγενῶν (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 ἱερεῖον (i.e. a sheep) and ἱερά, especially ἐλλύται of five choinikes of wheaten flour and a stater of dry cheese (ἐλλ. 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 ἐλλύτης, a loaf, a πάραξ (= βάραξ, βήρηξ: interchange of tenuis and media as frequently) and some ὀψάρια (i.e. small fishes: cf. the ἀποπυρίς 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, καρπωσεῖ, i.e. (he) shall offer them to the Heroes by burning them entire. Cf. Phot. καυστόν· καρπωτόν, ὃ ἐναγίζεται τοῖς τετελευτηκόσιν (καρπῶσαι, κάρπωμα, ὁλοκάρπωσις, etc., are frequent in the LXX) and Phot. ὁλοκαρπούμενον and ὁλοκαυτισμός. καρποῦν = ὁλοκαυτοῦν in the sacrificial calendar from Kos, GDI. 3636; cf. Stengel, Hermes, 27, 161 f.

128 In manumission records it is sometimes definitely enjoined that the freed persons shall at the death of their masters θαψάντω καὶ τὰ ὥρια αὐτῶν ποιησάτωσαν: 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.) τὰ ὥρια when applied to the dead (GDI. 1545–6; ὡραίων τυχεῖν E., Sup. 175) means the καθ’ ὥραν συντελούμενα ἱερά (Hesych. ὡραῖα; funeral ordinance of the Labyadai, l. 49 ff.: τὰς δ’ ἄλλας θοίνας κατ’ τὰν ὥραν ἀγαγέσθαι), i.e. the sacrifices to be celebrated periodically (ταῖς ἱκνουμέναις ἡμέραις, n. 138; cf. τελεταὶ ὥριαι, Pi., P. ix, 98 ff.). This doubtless means in particular the ἐνιαύσια ἱερά (cf. nn. 81, 89, 92 of this chap.). Garlanding of graves κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ταῖς ὡρίοις (sc. ἁμέραις), GDI. 1775, 21; κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ὡραῖα ἱερὰ ἀπετέλουν (to the Heroes), Pl., Cri. 116 C.

129 The foll. are the expressions occurring in the speeches of Isaeus which conclusively warrant what is said above. The childless Menekles ἐσκόπει ὅπως μὴ ἔσοιτο ἄπαις, ἀλλ’ ἔσοιτο αὐτῷ ὅστις ζῶντα γηροτροφήσοι καὶ τελευτήσαντα θάψοι αὐτὸν καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον τὰ νομιζόμενα αὐτῷ ποιήσοι, 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 ἔκγονοι (thus securing the cult of the family) does not form the least important part (cf. Pl., Hipp. ma. 291 DE: it is κάλλιστον for a man—according to the popular view—ἀφικομένῳ ἐς γῆρας τοὺς αὑτοῦ γονέας τελευτήσαντας καλῶς περιστείλαντι ὑπὸ τῶν αὑτοῦ ἐκγόνων καλῶς καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς ταφῆναι. Medea says to her children in E., Med. 1032 εἶχον ἐλπίδας πολλὰς ἐν ὑμῖν γηροβοσκήσειν τ’ ἐμὲ καὶ κατθανοῦσαν χερσὶν εὖ περιστελεῖν, ζηλωτὸν ἀνθρώποισιν). 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 εἶναι κληρονόμον καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ μνήματα ἰέναι, χεόμενοι καὶ ἐναγιοῦντα (6, 51). It is a mark of the heir τὰ νομιζόμενα ποιεῖν, ἐναγίζειν, χεῖσθαι (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 τρίτα and ἔνατα καὶ τἆλλα τὰ περὶ τὴν ταφήν: 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, ἐναγίζεσθαι καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν (2, 46), and generally, καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον τὰ νομιζόμενα ποιεῖν (2, 10). Then, just as he has to carry on for the dead man his family worships, his ἱερὰ πατρῷα (2, 46: e.g. for Zeus Ktesios: 8, 16); so also he must, as the dead man once did, make regular offering to the πρόγονοι 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, ἵνα μὴ ἀνώνυμος ὁ οἶκος αὐτοῦ γένηται, 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 Βουσελίδαι 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 Appealing to φῆμαι, πολλαὶ καὶ σφόδρα παλαιαί, Plato asserts, Lg. 927 A, ὡς ἄρα αἱ τῶν τελευτησάντων ψυχαὶ δύναμιν ἔχουσί τινα τελευτήσασαι, ᾗ τῶν κατ’ ἀνθρώπους πραγμάτων ἐπιμελοῦνται. Hence the ἐπίτροποι of orphaned children πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς ἄνω θεοὺς φοβείσθων . . . εἶτα τὰς τῶν κεκμηκότων ψυχάς, αἷς ἐστιν ἐν τῇ φύσει τῶν αὑτῶν ἐκγόνων κήδεσθαι διαφερόντως, καὶ τιμῶσί τε αὐτοὺς εὐμενεῖς καὶ ἀτιμάζουσι δυσμενεῖς. It is only the circle of influence belonging to the ψυχαί which is here limited (and the circle of worship in consequence), not the potency of that influence.

131 This is true at least of the Greeks, as ancient philosophy was already aware: Arist., Pol. i, 2; Dicaearchus ap. St. Byz. πάτρα (who apparently thinks of the πάτρα 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 The idea of the Lar familiaris can be translated into Greek not inadequately by the words ὁ κατ’ οἰκίαν ἥρως, ἥρως οἰκουρός, 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 ἥρως συγγενείας, CIA. iii, 1460. Inside the house, at the family hearth (in whose μυχοί, “dwells” Hekate: E., Med. 397), the Greeks worshipped—no longer the spirits of the ancestors—but the θεοὶ πατρῷοι, κτήσιοι, μύχιοι, ἑρκεῖοι. 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 δαίμονες πατρῷοι καὶ μητρῷοι: Luc., Peregr. 36. Στέφανος τοῖς τοῦ πατρὸς αὑτοῦ δαίμοσιν, ins. from Lykia, CIG. 4232 = BCH. xv, 552, n. 26. τοῖς δαίμοσι τῆς ἀποθανούσης γυναικός, Philo, Leg. ad G. 65, ii, p. 555 M. More in Lob., Agl. 769 n.)

133 The ἀγαθὸς δαίμων 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 ἀγαθὸς δαίμων with chthonic powers. He appears as a snake (Gerhard, Akad. Abh. ii, 24) like all χθόνιοι. (On a snake on a talisman the words are written τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ δαίμονος: P. Mag. Par. 2427 ff.) ἀγαθοδαίμονες 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, αρεῖαι ὄφεις, and again esp. s.v. ὄφεις παρείας, 364, 1). Sacrifice was made to them in Alexandria on the 25th Tybi as τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς δαίμοσι τοῖς προνοουμένοις τῶν οἰκιῶν: [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 ἀγ. δ. is evidently a good spirit who protects the house. Only with this in mind can we understand how anyone could consecrate his house ἀγαθῷ δαίμονι, as Timoleon did at Syracuse (ἀγαθῷ δαίμονι, Plu., Ips. Laud., 11, p. 542 E; τὴν οἰκίαν ἱερῷ δαίμονι καθιέρωσεν, Plu., Timol. 36, where ἱερῷ 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 ἀγαθὸς δαίμων (Hug, Plat. Symp.², p. 23); then follows the libation to Zeus Soter. But sometimes it was the “Heroes” and not the ἀγ. δ. who preceded Zeus Soter (Sch. Pi., I v, 10; Gerhard, p. 39): they have taken the place of the ἀγ. δ., which itself reveals the connexion between the ἀγ. δ. and these “souls”. Another fact pointing in the same direction is the worship of the ἀγαθὸς δαίμων 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 δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν sometimes occurs as completely equivalent to Dis Manibus: e.g. Δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν Ποτίου, CIG. 2700 b.c. (Mylasa); δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν Ἀρτέμωνος καὶ Τίτου, 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: Δαίμονος ἀγαθοῦ Ἀριστέου κτλ. BCH. ’90, p. 626 (Karia). (δαίμοσιν ἑαυτοῦ τε καὶ Λαιτιτίας τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ = 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 ἀγαθὸς δ. 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 In Boeotia (and elsewhere, particularly in Thessaly) the designation of the dead as ἥρως—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”, τί οὐκ ἀπήγξω, ἵνα Θήβησιν ἥρως γένῃ; (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 Among the Epizephyrian Locrians ὀδύρεσθαι οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπὶ τοῖς τελευτήσασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὰν ἐκκομίσωσιν, εὐωχοῦνται, 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 e.g. Is. 2, 47: βοηθήσατε καὶ ἡμῖν καὶ ἐκείνῳ τῷ ἐν Ἅιδου ὄντι. Strictly speaking no one can βοηθεῖν 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.

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