But such reassertions of the antique temper were of rarer and rarer occurrence. The ancient world to which it had given such toughness and energy of purpose was on its death-bed. With the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century it enters upon its last agony; a general failure of nerve had long threatened the loosely bound masses that shared in the Græco-Roman civilization. In the general atrophy that beset its old age the vigorous blood of the genuine and unadulterated Greek and Roman stocks was flowing but feebly. Now the universal process of decay sets in irresistibly. It was its own inherent weakness that made the attacks of outside forces so ominous to the old world. In the West the old order vanished more swiftly and submitted more 545 completely to the new forces, than in the Hellenized East. It was not that the old civilization was any less rotten in the East than in the West. The enfeebled hand and the failing mind betray themselves in every utterance—in the last spasms of vital energy that inspired the art and literature of moribund Greece. The impoverishment of the vital forces out of which Greece had once brought forth the flower of its special and characteristic spirit makes itself felt in the altered relation of the individual to the whole, and of the totality of visible life to the shadowy powers of the unseen world. Individualism has had its day. No longer is the emancipation of the individual the object of man’s endeavour; no longer is he required to arm himself against all that is not himself, that is outside the region of his free will and choice. He is not strong enough, and should not feel himself strong enough, to trust to the self-conscious strength of his own intelligence. Authority—an authority that is the same for all—must be his guide. Rationalism is dead. In the last years of the second century a religious reaction begins to assert itself and makes itself felt more and more in the period that follows. Philosophy itself becomes at last a religion, drawing its nourishment from surmise and revelation. The invisible world wins the day over the meagre present, so grievously bound down by the limitation of mere experience. No longer does the soul await with courage and calmness whatever may be hidden behind the dark curtain of death. Life seemed to need something to complete it. And how faded and grey life had become171—a rejuvenation upon this earth seemed to be out of the question. All the more complete, in consequence, is the submission that throws itself with closed eyes and eager yearning upon another world, situated now far beyond the limits of the known or knowable world of the living. Hopes and a vague longing, a shrinking before the mysterious terrors of the unknown, fill the soul. Never in the history of the ancient world is the belief in an immortal life of the soul after death a matter of such burning and exacerbated ardour as in these last days when the antique civilization was preparing itself to breathe its last.
Hopes of immortality, widely espoused by the masses and fed rather on faith than on reflexion, sought satisfaction in the brilliant ceremonial of religions that easily outshone the simple worship of every day officially undertaken by the city. In these new rites the worshippers united in the secret cult seemed to be placed more directly in the hands of the gods; and, above all, a blessed existence hereafter was assured to pious 546 believers. In these days the ancient and hallowed mysteries of Eleusis awake to a new life and remain in vigorous activity till nearly the end of the fourth century.172 Orphic conventicles must have attracted worshippers for ages;173 the Hellenized Orient was familiar with many such orgiastic cults.
In the mixed populations of the East the new religions proved more attractive to the Greeks, too, than their old worship of the gods of Greece. Clear and definite obligations, fixed commandments and dogmas, holding the weak and frail individual in their stronger embrace, seemed to belong more peculiarly to these foreign worships than to the old beliefs of Greece. Rigid and unalterable maintenance of primitive ideas and practices seemed to give the former the stamp of sacred and certain knowledge. From all men they demanded perfect submission to the God and his priests; perfect renunciation of the world, conceived as dualistically opposed to the divine; the purging away of the contamination of its lusts by purifications and sanctifications, ceremonial expiations and asceticisms. By these means the faithful prepared themselves for the highest reward that piety could conceive; an unending life of bliss far away from this unclean world in the realm of the holy and the consecrated. To the belief in a blessed immortality these foreign mysteries contributed their much desired support; and the populace welcomed their message of salvation with all the greater eagerness since their varied and impressive ceremonial contrasted so strikingly with the plain and homely worship of the Greek gods. In the symbolism of these exotic cults men seemed to discern a mysterious and secret knowledge; and to the divine figures illuminated by such a halo were easily attributed strange and magical powers beyond belief or experience. The cult of the Egyptian deities had long been familiar both in the East and in the West, and they maintained and extended their influence down to the last days of the ancient religions. The Phrygian deities, the Thraco-Phrygian cults of Sabazios, Attis, and Kybele, and the Persian worship of Mithras were later comers, but they, too, took equally firm root and spread over the whole extent of the empire.174
The higher culture of these last centuries, having become credulous and avid of marvels, no longer looked with contempt upon the means of salvation and sanctification which had once been left almost entirely to the lower orders of the population. The most cultivated and educated people of these times used their culture and their education simply to justify everything mysterious and incomprehensible in itself—even 547 when it was expressed in the most physical symbolism. The newly awakened religious interest of the populace had coincided with a return on the part of philosophy to the teaching of Plato; a teaching which itself tended towards religion. Platonism had invaded the doctrine of other schools at many points, and it had already acquired a new home for itself in the restored Academy, where once an un-Platonic Scepticism had overthrown the teaching of the master. Now a new Platonism comes forward and overwhelms all the other schools of philosophy. Absorbing the doctrines of Aristotle and Chrysippos (which it fancied it could reconcile with Platonism), it weaved them into its own special teaching so that the whole presented a subtle and far-reaching system of thought. The speculative system of Neoplatonism, into which the old age of Greece, in spite of its weariness, contrived to introduce so much profundity, spirit, and ingenuity (together with a luxuriant mass of scholastic folly), fills the history of the last centuries of Greek thought. Its fundamental tendency is, once more, a turning away from the life of nature, and a determined invasion of a transcendent world of pure spirit; and it was by this tendency that it satisfied the needs of its time. The Sole and First Cause, lying beyond all being and continually expressing itself in creative emanations, yet never troubled or impaired in its perfect and eternal transcendency; the development, in an unbroken process from this One, of the world of thinking, of the Ideas and pure thought preserved in it—the world of Spirit and the world of Matter—until at last, in longing and desire,175 all things created return to the origin of all Being: to describe and express all this is the single theme, persisting throughout all variations, of this philosophy. The whole fabric of reality, the interplay of cause and effect, depends upon the inherence of the thing caused in its Cause from which it takes its origin and to which it returns at last. That which in the evolution of nature takes its origin from the One, and degenerates more and more completely, in the darkness and corruption of Matter, as it gets further away from its source—now becomes Man and seeks in morality and religion a conscious return to the pure and everlasting and unfailing One. The divine does not descend to earth and man must reach upwards to the divine heights in order to unite himself with the One that is before all multiplicity. This union can be brought about by the pure exercise of the human reason, but also in the mysterious harmony of the individual life with the First Cause that is beyond all reason in the ecstasy 548 that is above all rationality. It can be achieved when at last the whole series of rebirths has been passed through, whereupon the pure soul, the divine in man, enters into the divinity of the Whole.176
To fly from the world—not to work within the world to produce something better—is the teaching and injunction of this last Greek philosophy. Away from separate, divided Being, upward towards the uninterrupted glory of the One divine life, the soul wings its way. The world, this visible world of matter, is fair, says Plotinos, for it is the work and image of the divine, present and working in it. A last gleam of the departing sunlight of Greek sensibility seems to break through the words in which Plotinos rejects the Christian-Gnostic hatred of the world.177 The ugly, he says, is strange and contrary to God as well as to Nature.178 But the soul must no longer rest in the world of created beauty.179 The soul is so profoundly conscious of its derivation from the supra-sensual, of its divinity and eternity, that it must rise above all created being and reach out to the One that was before the world and remains for ever outside the world.180
This philosophy, profoundly estranged though it was from the old Greek attitude to life with its enjoyment of the world, nevertheless felt itself called upon to oppose the rising tide of the new and irresistible religion. It took under its protection the ancient Greek culture and the ancient faith that was so inseparably bound up with that culture. Its most convinced supporters, with the last of the Emperors of the old faith at their head, threw themselves whole-heartedly into the fray. And before them rode the Genius of ancient Hellas, and the old beliefs of Greece. But when the battle had been fought and lost it became apparent to all the world that it was a corpse that rode before the exalted combatants, like the body of the dead Cid Campeador fastened upon his horse and leading his hosts against the Moors. The ancient religion of Greece, and with it the whole civilized life of the Greek world, faded and died at that discovery, and could not be recalled to life. A newer faith, very differently endowed and having power to crush the heavily laden soul and point it upwards in absolute submission to the divine compassion, held the field. The new world that was coming into being had need of it.
And yet—was Greece quite extinguished and dead for ever? Much—only too much—of the philosophy of its old age lived on in the speculative system of the Christian faith. And in the whole of modern culture so far as it has built itself upon 549 Christianity or by extension from it, in all modern science and art, not a little survives of Greek genius and Greek inspiration. The outward embodiment of Hellas is gone; its spirit is imperishable. Nothing that has once been alive in the spiritual life of man can ever perish entirely; it has achieved a new form of existence in the consciousness of mankind—an immortality of its own. Not always in equal measure, nor always in the same place, does the stream of Greek thought rise to the surface in the life of mankind. But it is a river that never quite runs dry; it vanishes, to reappear; it buries itself to emerge again. Desinunt ista, non pereunt.
2 Lucian 50, De Luctu: washing, anointing, crowning of the dead body, πρόθεσις: c. 11. Violent dirge-singing over the dead, 12; accompanied by the αὐλός, 19; and led by a special singer θρηνῶν σοφιστής, 20. Special lament by the father, 13. The dead is before them with jaws tied up and so secured against unsightly gaping—19 fin. (a stronger form of the Homeric σύν τε στόμ’ ἐρείδειν, λ 426). For this purpose narrow bands are drawn round the chin, cheeks, and forehead of the dead man. We sometimes see them represented on vases depicting a lying-in-state, and they have also been found sometimes in graves in which case they have been made of metal (gold or lead): see Wolters, Ath. Mitth. 1896, p. 367 ff. ἐσθής, κόσμος (even including horses and slaves) burnt or buried in company with the dead for his pleasure, 14. ὀβολός given to the dead, 10. The dead fed by χοαί and καθαγίσματα, 9. The gravestone crowned; sprinkled with ἄκρατος; burnt offering, 19. περίδειπνον after a three days’ fast, 24.
3 From a rather earlier period we hear that it is a bad thing to be dead μὴ τυχόντα τῶν νομίμων—it is an infamous deed for the son to deny his father τὰ νομιζόμενα after death; Din., Aristog. viii, 18; cf. [D.] 25, 54.—The dead man says with satisfaction πάνθ’ ὅσα τοῖς χρηστοῖς φθιμένοις νόμος ἐστὶ γενέσθαι τῶνδε τυχὼν κἀγὼ τόνδε τάφον κατέχω, Epigr. Gr., 137; cf. 153, 7–8.
4 ὁμόταφοι are mentioned among other associations as occurring in a Solonian law: Digest. 47, 22, 4. These would probably be special collegia funeraticia (at any rate societies of which the exclusive or essential bond of union consisted in ὁμοῦ ταφῆναι—and not, therefore, any of the ordinary θίασοι or any “gentilician association” as Ziebarth thinks, Gr. Vereinswesen, p. 17 [1896]). There are also traces (but not very frequent) of common burial grounds belonging to θίασοι; e.g. in Kos, Inscr. Cos, 155–9. ἐρανισταί bury their dead member, CIA. ii, 3308; συμμύσται do the same, Ath. Mitt. ix, 35. A member contributes as ταμίας of the collegium out of his own means, for the benefit of dead members of an ἔρανος, εἰς τὴν ταφήν, τοῦ εὐσχημονεῖν αὐτοὺς καὶ τετελευτηκότας κτλ., CIA. ii, 621 (about 150 B.C.). Another ταμίας δέδωκεν τοῖς μεταλλάξασιν (θιασώταις) τὰ ταφικὸν παραχρῆμα ins. from Attica, third century B.C. CIA. iv, 2, 623b; cf. ib., 615b, l. 14–15; Rhod. inscr. in BCH. iv, 138. Dionysiastai, Athenaistai in Tanagra ἔθαψαν τὸν δεῖνα: GDI. 960–2 (IG. Sept. i, 685–9). The Iobakchai in Athens (third century A.D.) offer a crown and wine at the burial of a member: Ath. Mitt. 1894, 261, l. 158 ff. οἱ θίασοι πάντες and even οἱ ἔφηβοι καὶ οἱ νέοι, ὁ δῆμος, ἡ γερουσία erect the monument, CIG. 3101, 3112. (Teos) συνοδεῖται bury together the members of their σύνοδοι, IPE. ii, 60–5. A gymnasiarch also undertakes τῶν ἐκκομιδῶν ἐπιμέλειαν, Inscr. Perg., ii, 252, l. 16; noteworthy also is ii, 374 B, l. 21–5. A few more exx. are given by E. Loch, Zu d. griech. Grabschriften (Festschr. Friedländer, 1895), p. 288. 551
5 δημοσία ταφή frequently. Resolution πανδημεὶ παραπέμψασθαι τὸ σῶμα τοῦ δεῖνος ἐπὶ τὴν κηδείαν αὐτοῦ, inscr. of Amorgos, BCH. 1891, p. 577 (l. 26); p. 586 (l. 17 ff.). Resolution of the council and people of Olbia (first century B.C.): when the body of a certain deserving citizen who has died abroad is brought into the city, all workshops are to close, the citizens wearing black shall follow his ἐκφορά; an equestrian statue of the dead man to be erected and every year at the ἱπποδρομίαι of Achilles the golden crown granted to the dead man to be proclaimed, etc.: IPE. i, 17, 22 ff.—Honour paid to a dead man by granting a golden crown, CIG. 3185; cf. Cic., Flac. 75. This example comes from Smyrna, where such honours were particularly common: see Böckh on CIG. 3216. Frequent on Asia Minor inss.: ἁ πόλις sc. στεφανοῖ, ἔθαψεν, τὸν δεῖνα. ὁ δᾶμος τῷ δεῖνι, sc. ἀνέθηκε, on graves: see esp. G. Hirschfeld, Greek Inscr. in Brit. Mus. iv, 1, p. 34. More ap. Loch, op. cit., p. 287.
6 This seems to have been particularly common in Amorgos; cf. CIG. 2264b: four inss. from Amorgos. BCH. 1891, p. 574 (153-4 B.C.), 577, 586 (242 B.C.), 588 f. The Council of the Areopagos and the people of Athens decree the erection of a statue in honour of a young man of rank (T. Statilius Lamprias) who has died πρὸ ὥρας in Epidauros, and also the dispatch of envoys to παραμυθήσασθαι ἀπὸ τοῦ τῆς πόλεως ὀνόματος his parents and his grandfather Lamprias. In the same way the citizens of Sparta send an embassy of sympathy and consolation to other relatives of the same youth (first century A.D.), Fouil. d’Epidaur. i, 205–9, pp. 67–70. Honorific decree of council and people of Corinth for the same person, Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1894, p. 15. ψηφίσματα παραμυθητικά of two Lydian cities at the death of a man of rank (first century A.D.), Anz. Wien. Ak., Phil. Hist. Cl., 16th Nov., 1893 (n. 24) = Ath. Mitt. 1894, p. 102 f.; cf. Paros, CIG. 2383 (the council and people decree the erection of a statue to a dead boy ἐπὶ μέρους παραμυθησόμενοι τὸν πατέρα); Aphrodisias in Karia, CIG. 277b, 2775b–d; Neapolis, CIG. 5836 = IG. Sic. It. 758.—The grounds of consolation, so far as they are alluded to, are regularly independent of any theological teaching: φέρειν συμμέτρως τὰ τῆς λύπης εἰδότας ὅτι ἀπαραίτητός ἐστιν ἡ ἐπὶ πάντων ἀνθρώπων μοῖρα and the like (φέρειν τὸ συμβεβηκὸς ἀνθρωπίνως, F. d’Epid. i, 209). We are reminded of the παραμυθητικοὶ λόγοι of the philosophers which are literary expressions of these consolations—the philosophers in fact were expected ex officio to offer such consolations to the mourners, cf. Plu., Superst. 186 C; D. Chr. 27, § 9 (ii, 285 Arn.).
7 In spite of any brevity in the narrative the fact of ritual burial is regularly alluded to (as an important circumstance) in the romance of Xen. Eph. and in the Historia Apollonii: Griech. Roman, 391, 3; 413, 1.
8 At Athens his friend vainly tries to obtain burial intra urbem for the murdered Marcellus: quod religione se impediri dicerent; neque id antea cuiquam concesserunt (while in Rome people were occasionally buried in the city in spite of the prohibition of the XII tables: Cic., Lg. ii, 58): Servius to Cicero, Fam. 4, 12, 3 (45 B.C.). There it was permitted uti in quo vellent gymnasio eum sepelirent and finally his body was cremated and the remains buried in nobilissimo orbis terraram gymnasio, the Academy. ἐνταφὰ καὶ θέσις τοῦ σώματος ἐν τῷ γυμνασίῳ (of an aristocratic Roman) in Kyme: GDI. 311. To a living benefactor of that city συνεχωρήθη καὶ ἐνταφῆναι (in the future) ἐν τῷ γυμνασίῳ, CIG. 279b (Aphrodisias in Karia). As a special mark of honour paid to a benefactor of the city it is permitted that his body in oppidum introferatur (into Smyrna: Cic., Flac. 75), ἐνταφὰ κατὰ πόλιν καὶ 552 ταφὰ δημοσία, ἐνταφὰ κατὰ πόλιν ἐν τῷ ἐπισαμοτάτῳ τοῦ γυμνασίου τόπῳ, Knidos, GDI. 3501, 3502 (time of Augustus). The city buries a youth γυμνάδος ἐν τεμένει, Epigr. Gr. 222 (Amorgos).—Ulpian, Dig. 47, 12, 3, 5, implies the possibility that lex municipalis permittat in civitate sepeleri.
9 σῆμα, i.e. probably grave and monument, of Messia set up by her husband in his own house: Epigr. Gr. 682 (Rome).
10 Thus Inscr. Perg. ii, 590, ζῶν ὁ δεῖνα κατεσκεύασε τὸ μνημεῖον τῇ ἰδίᾳ μάμμῃ . . . καὶ τῷ πάππῳ, ἑαυτῷ, γυναικί, τέκνοις, ἐκγόνοις ἀνεξαλλοτρίωτον ἕως διαδοχῆς κτλ. Similar directions, ib., n. 591, and frequently. The series includes the old and traditional circle of the ἀγχιστεῖς: see above, chap. v, nn. 141 and 146 (where μέχρι ἀνεψιαδῶν παίδων should be read).
11 There was even a Solonian law against violation and plunder of tombs: Cic., Lg. ii, 64. The specially invented word τυμβωρύχος shows that such practices were frequent at a quite early period; cf. σημάτων φῶρα, Herond. v, 57. Complaint on account of the rifling of a tomb: Egypt, papyr. of 127 B.C., Notices et extraits, xviii, 2, p. 161 f. Frequent rescripts of emperors of the fourth century against the profanation of graves, Cod. Theod. ix, 17. But even emperors of second and third centuries had to deal with the subject: Dig. 47, 12, and cf. Paul., Sent. 1, 21, 4 ff.; sepulchri violati actio, Quint., Decl. 299, 369, 373. Grave-thieves were a favourite character in romance: e.g. ap. Xen. Eph., Chariton and others. Epigram of Greg. Naz. on the subject of looted graves, Anth. Pal. viii, 176 ff. From the fourth century the Christians in particular seem to have been a danger to heathen burial places (cf. Gothofred., ad Cod. Theod. iii, p. 150 Ritt.)—in fact, ecclesiastics were specially given to grave-robbery: Novell. Valentin. 5 (p. 111 Ritt.), Cassiod., Var. iv, 18; bustuarii latrones (Amm. Marc. 28, 1, 12), were then frequent. An Egyptian anchorite had at an earlier period become latronum maximus et sepulchrorum violator: Rufin., Vit. Patr. 9 (p. 446b Rossw.).
12 Inscrr. indicating such sepulchral penalties are rare on the mainland of Greece, common in Thrace and the Greek cities of Asia Minor, but most frequent of all in Lykia. Most of them belong to the Roman period, but also appeal occasionally to τὸν τῆς ἀσεβείας νόμον of the city (cf. also Korkyra. CIG. 1933); or refer to the ἔγκλημα τυμβωρυχίας as though it were a local process of law which had perhaps been confirmed by an Imperial ordinance (ὑπεύθυνος ἔστω τοῖς διατάγμασι καὶ τοῖς πατρίοις νόμοις, inscr. from Tralles: see Hirschfeld, p. 121). They therefore cannot be simply borrowed from the Roman custom, but belong to the old law of the country esp. in Lykia where a similar prescription has been found dating from the third century B.C.: CIG. 4529; see Hirschfeld, Königsb. Stud. i, pp. 85–144 (1887)—doubt is thrown on the legal validity of the penal clauses in such inscrr. by J. Merkel, Festg. f. Ihering, p. 109 ff. (1892).
13 Curses directed against those who bury unauthorized persons in a grave or damage the monument are rare in European Greece: e.g. Aegina, CIG. 2140b; Thessaly, BCH. xv, 568; Athens, CIA. 1417–28; among these is a Thessalian grave, 1427; a Christian, 1428; 1417–22 are set up by Herodes Atticus to Apia Regilla and Polydeukion (cf. K. Keil, Pauly-Wiss. i, 2101), but his coquetting with the cult of the χθόνιοι proves nothing for the common opinion of his fellow citizens. Sepulchral curses are particularly common in inss. from Lykia and Phrygia; also Cilicia, JHS. 1891, p. 228, 231, 267; a few also from Halikarnassian graves; Samos, CIG. 2260.—The 553 grave and its peace are placed under the care of the underworld deities in these inss.: παραδίδωμι τοῖς καταχθονίοις θεοῖς τοῦτο τὸ ἡρῷον φυλάσσειν κτλ., CIA. iii, 1423–4. Cf. also a Cretan inscr. Ath. Mitt. 1893, p. 211. Whoever introduces a stranger into the grave or damages the grave ἀσεβὴς ἔστω θεοῖς καταχθονίοις (thus in Lykia, CIG. 4207; 4290; 4292), ἀσεβήσει τὰ περὶ τοὺς θεούς τε καὶ θεὰς πάσας καὶ ἥρωας πάντας (from Itonos in Phthiotis, BCH. xv, 568). ἁμαρτωλὸς ἔστω θεοῖς καταχθονίοις, CIG. 4252b, 4259, 4300e, i, k, v, 4307, 4308; BCH. 1894, p. 326 (n. 9)—all from Lykia. (The formula occurs already in a Lyk. inscr. of 240 B.C.; BCH. 1890, p. 164: ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἔστωσαν—the archons and citizens who neglect to offer the yearly sacrifice to Zeus Soter—θεῶν πάντων καὶ ἀποτινέτω ὁ ἄρχων κτλ., which thus corresponds exactly with the oldest Lyk. inscr. with sepulchral penalty, CIG. 4259). ἔστω ἱερόσυλος θεοῖς οὐρανίοις καὶ καταχθονίοις, CIG. 4253 (Pinara in Lykia). This must mean: he shall be regarded as having transgressed the law against ἀσέβεια, ἱεροσυλία (cf. οἱ νόμοι οἱ περὶ ἱεροσύλου, Teos, SIG. 523, 51), τυμβωρυχία, having at the same time offended against the gods (see Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 120 f.). More particular is another Lyk. ins.: ἁμαρτωλὸς ἔστω θεῶν πάντων καὶ Λητοῦς καὶ τῶν τέκνων (as the special gods of the country), CIG. 4259, 4303, (iii, p. 1138), 4303 e3 (p. 1139). In Cilicia ἔστω ἠσεβηκὼς ἔς τε τὸν Δία καὶ τὴν Σελήνην, JHS. xii, 231. Phrygian: κεχολωμένον ἔχοιτο Μῆνα καταχθόνιον, BCH. 1886, p. 503, 6; cf. ἐνορκιζόμεθα Μῆνα καταχθόνιον εἰς τοῦτο μνημεῖον μηδένα εἰσελθεῖν, Amer. School at Athens iii, 174. The same is intended by the peculiarly Phrygian denunciation ἔστω αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν, πρὸς τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ θεοῦ, πρὸς τὸ μέγα ὄνομα τοῦ θεοῦ, CIG. 3872b (p. 1099), 3890, 3902 f.o., 3963: Amer. School iii, 411; BCH. 1893, p. 246 ff. That these are Christian formulae—as Ramsay, JHS. iv, p. 400 f., supposes—is hardly likely. Equally unlikely in the case of 3902r (Franz rightly protests against the idea): ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν ζῶντα θεόν (the same occurs again in a decisively non-Christian sense: BCH. 1893, p. 241) καὶ νῦν καὶ ἐν τῷ κρισίμῳ ἡμέρᾳ (κρίσις apparently = death in CIG. 6731, from Rome, which, considering the words ἄγαλμα εἰμι Ἡλίου, can hardly be Christian). τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ὀργῆς μεθέξεται, CIA. iii, 1427. Obscure threat: οὐ γὰρ μὴ συνείκῃ . . ., CIG. 2140b (Aegina). The profaner of graves is cursed in more detail: τούτῳ μὴ γῆ βατή, μὴ θάλασσα πλωτή, ἀλλὰ ἐκρειζωθήσεται παγγένει (the ἀραί on the mss. of Herod. Att. agree so far at least in intention, CIA. iii, 1417–22). πᾶσι τοῖς κακοῖς πεῖραν δώσει, καὶ φρείκῃ καὶ πυρετῷ καὶ τεταρταίῳ καὶ ἐλέφαντι κτλ., CIA. iii, 1423–4 (similar curse on a lead tablet from Crete: Ath. Mitt. 1893, p. 211). The first half of this imprecation represents the regular formula in such ἀραί and ὅρκοι—μὴ γῆ βατή κτλ.; cf. Wünsch, Defix., p. vii, and a Jewish-Greek inscr. from Euboea: Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1892, p. 175; it occurs also in CIG. 2664, 2667 (Halikarnassos); 4303 (p. 1138 Phrygia). δώσει τοῖς καταχθονίοις θεοῖς δίκην, 4190 (Cappadocia). ὄρφανα τέκνα λίποιτο, χῆρον βιόν, οἶκον ἔρημον, ἐν πυρὶ πάντα δάμοιτο, κακῶν ὕπο χεῖρας ὄλοιτο 3862, 3875, 400 (Phrygia). These are all peculiarly and originally Phrygian; something similar seems to occur in inss. in the Phrygian language: see Ztschr. vergl. Sprachf. 28, 381 ff.; BCH. 1896, p. 111 ff. Phrygian, too, is the curse οὗτος δ’ ἀώροις περιπέσοιτο συμφοραῖς, Epigr. Gr., p. 149, Amer. Sch. Ath. ii, 168—i.e. may his children die ἄωροι. (More plainly τέκνων ἀώρων περιπέσοιτο συμφορᾷ, BCH. 1893, p. 272.) Sometimes the additional phrase is found καὶ μετὰ θάνατον δὲ λάβοι τοὺς ὑποχθονίους θεοὺς τιμωροὺς καὶ κεχολωμένους, 554 CIG. 3915 (Phrygian). Besides the common imprecations we also have θανόντι δὲ οὐδὲ ἡ γῆ παρέξει αὐτῷ τάφον, 2826 (Aphrodisias in Karia); μήτε οὐρανὸς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ παραδέξαιτο, Am. Sch. Ath. iii, 411 (Pisidia). Barbarous in the extreme is an inscr. from Cilicia (JHS. 1891, p. 287): ἕξει πάντα τὰ θεῖα κεχολωμένα καὶ τὰς στυγερὰς Ἐρεινύας καὶ ἰδίου τέκνου ἥπατος γεύσεται.—With these grave-imprecations we may compare also the threats uttered against those who shall neglect the directions for the honouring of King Antiochos of Kommagene who lies buried in his ἱεροθέσιον (ib, 13; iiib, 3: hence correct ἱεροθύσιον in Paus. 4, 32, 1) on the Nemrud Dagh: εἰδότας ὅτι χαλεπὴ νέμεσις βασιλικῶν δαιμόνων, τιμωρὸς ὁμοίως ἀμελίας τε καὶ ὕβρεως, ἀσέβειαν διώκει καθωσιωμένων τε ἡρώων ἀτειμασθεὶς νόμος ἀνειλάτους ἔχει ποινάς. τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὅσιον ἅπαν κουφὸν ἔργον, τῆς δὲ ἀσεβείας ὀπισθοβαρεῖς ἀναγκαί (iiia, 22 ff., Ber. Berl. Akad. 1883).
14 From the point of view of religion, at any rate, it is true, though with considerable reservations, that most of the Greeks and Macedonians scattered over Asia and Egypt in coloniae, in Syros Parthos Aegyptios degenerarunt, Liv. 38, 17, 11–12. The only non-Greek nation (apart from the Romans) which learnt anything from the Greeks or from the semi-religious Greek philosophy was the Jewish—at once the most stubborn and the most pliable of them all.
15 At a quite late period, in order to explain the impiety of grave-robbing, Valentinian says (following the libri veteris sapientiae quite as much as Christian teaching) licet occasus necessitatem mens divina (of man) non sentiat, amant tamen animae sedem corporum relictorum et nescio qua sorte rationis occultae sepulchri honore laetantur (Nov. Valent. v, p. 111 Ritt.).
16 After the reception of the last person who has a right there ἀποιερῶσθαι τὸν πλάταν, ἀφηρωΐσθαι τὸ μνημεῖον, CIG. 2827, 2834. κορακωθήσεται, i.e. it will be finally shut up: 3919.
17 ἐπεὰν δὲ τοῖς καμοῦσιν ἐγχυτλώσωμεν, Herond. v, 84 (i.e. at the end of the month: festival of the dead at the τριακάδες, see above, chap. v, n. 88. ἡμέρας ληγούσης καὶ μηνὸς φθίνοντος εἰώθασιν ἐναγίζειν οἱ πολλοί, Plu., Q. Rom. 34, p. 272 D). Offerings to the dead at the grave: see besides Luc., Charon, 22.
18 Epikteta: see above, chap. v, n. 126. Traces of a similar foundation on an inscr. from Thera ap. Ross, Inscr. Gr. 198 (ii, p. 81).—Otherwise the son will perhaps offer to his father τὴν ταφὴν καὶ τὸν ἐναγισμόν (CIG. 1976, Thessalonike; 3645 Lampsakos)—τὸ ἡρῷον κατεσκεύασεν εἰς αἰώνιον μνήμην καὶ τῇ μετὰ θάνατον ἀφωσιωμένῃ θρησκείᾳ (CIG. 4224d, iii, p. 1119 Lykia). A dead man has left the council of a city a sum of money for a στεφανωτικόν (CIG. 3912, 3916 Hierapolis in Phrygia); i.e. in order that his grave may be crowned every year from the interest of the money: 3919. Another man leaves money to a society to celebrate his memory yearly by holding a εὐωχία with οἰνοποσία illumination and crowns: 3028 Ephesos. An annual feast in honour of a dead man’s memory on his γενέθλιος ἡμέρα: 3417 Philadelphia in Lydia (this is the proper day for a feast of the dead: see above, chap. v, n. 89). Annual memorial in the month Ὑακίνθιος for a dead ἀρχιερανιστής in Rhodos, ἀναγόρευσις of his crowns of honour and crowning of his μνημεῖον, regular ἀναγόρευσις τᾶν τιμᾶν ἐν ταῖς συνόδοις (of the ἔρανος) καὶ ταῖς ἐπιχύσεσιν (second century B.C.), IGM. Aeg. i, 155, l. 53 ff., 67 ff. Another foundation, in Elatea (BCH. x, 382), seems to have been much more elaborate in intention and to have included the sacrifice of a bull, as well as εὐωχία and an ἀγών. 555