The earliest view held by primitive man about the activities of willing, feeling, or thinking, regards them simply as the manifestations of something which lives and wills inside the visible man. This something is regarded as embodied in one or other of the organs of the human body or as concealed 30 therein. Accordingly the Homeric poems give the name of the “midriff” (φρήν, φρένες) to most of the phenomena of will or feeling and even to those of the intellect. The “heart” (ἦτορ, κῆρ) is also the name of a variety of feelings that were regarded as located in the heart and even identified with it. But this mode of expression had already for Homer become mere formula; such expressions are not always to be taken literally; the words of the poet often show that as a matter of fact he thought of these functions and emotions as incorporeal, though they were still named after parts of the body.57 And so we often find mentioned side by side with the “midriff” and in the closest conjunction with it, the θυμός, a name which is not taken from any bodily organ and shows already that it is thought of as an immaterial function. In the same way many other words of this kind (νόος-νοεῖν-νόημα, βουλή, μένος, μῆτις) are used to describe faculties and activities of the will, sense, or thought, and show that these activities are thought of as independent, free-working, and incorporeal. A single thread still attaches the poet to the modes of conception and expression of the older world, but he himself has penetrated adventurously far into the realm of pure spirit. With a less cultured people the identification of the special functions of the will and the intellect only leads to the materialization of these into the notion of special physical entities, and consequently to the association of still other “souls”, in the shape of “Conscience”, it may be, or “Will”, in addition to that other shadowy “double” of mankind, the “second self”.58 The tendency of the Homeric singers was already setting in just the opposite direction—the mythology of the “inner man” was breaking down altogether. They had only to take a few steps further in the same direction to find that they could dispense with the psyche as well. The belief in the existence of the psyche was the oldest and most primitive hypothesis adopted by mankind to explain the phenomena of dreams, swoons, and ecstatic visions; these mysterious states were accounted for by the intervention of a special material personality. Now, Homer has little interest in premonitions and ecstatic states, and no inclination in that direction whatever. He cannot, therefore, have been very much concerned with the evidence for the existence of a psyche in living men. The final proof of the idea that the psyche must have been dwelling in man is the fact that it is separated from him in death. A man dies when he breathes out his last breath. This breath, something like a breath of air, and not a “nothing”, any more than the wind its relative, 31 but a body with a definite form (though it may not be visible to waking eyes)—this is the psyche, whose shape, the image of the man himself, is well known from dream-vision. One, however, who has become accustomed to the idea of bodiless powers working inside man will, on this last occasion when the powers within man show themselves, be likely to suppose that what brings about the death of a man is not a physical thing that goes out of him, but a power—a quality—which ceases to act; nothing else, in fact, than his “life”. And he would not, of course, think of ascribing an independent continuous existence after the disruption of the body to a mere abstract idea like “life”. Homer, however, never got quite as far as this; for the most part the psyche is for him and always remains a real “thing”—the man’s second self. But that he had already begun to tread the slippery path in the course of which the psyche is transformed into an abstract “concept of life”, is shown by the fact that he several times quite unmistakably uses the word “psyche” when we should say “life”.59 It is essentially the same mode of thought that leads him to say “midriff” (φρένες) when he no longer means the physical diaphragm, but the abstract concept of will or intellect. To say “psyche” instead of “life” is not the same thing as saying “life” instead of “psyche” (and Homer never did the latter); but it is clear that for him in the process of dematerializing such concepts, even the psyche, a figure once so full of significance, is beginning to fade and vanish away.

The separation from the land of their forefathers, and habituation to the use of cremation, the new direction taken by religious thought, the tendency to turn the once material forces of man’s inner life into attractions—all these things contributed to weaken the belief in a powerful and significant life of the disembodied soul and its connexion with the affairs of this world. And at the same time it caused the decline of the cult of the Souls. So much, I think, we may safely assert. The deepest and most fundamental reasons for this decline in both belief and cult may elude our search, just as it is impossible for us to be sure how far in detail the Homeric poems reflect the beliefs of the people who first listened to them, and where the free invention of the poet begins. But the combination of the various elements of belief into a whole which, though far from being a dogmatically closed system, may yet not unfairly be called the Homeric Theology—this, we may say, is most probably the work of the poet. The poet has a free hand in the picture he gives of the gods and never comes into conflict with any popular doctrine because Greek 32 religion then, as always, consisted essentially in the right honouring of the gods of the country and not in any particular set of dogmas. There could hardly be any general conception of godhead and divinity with which the poet might come into conflict. That the popular mind absorbed thoroughly that picture of the world of gods which the Homeric poems had given, is shown by the whole future development of Greek culture and religion. If divergent conceptions did, in fact, also maintain themselves, they derived their strength not so much from a different religious theory, as from the postulates of a different religious cult that had not been influenced by any poet’s imagination. They might also more particularly have had the effect of causing an incidental obscurity within the epic itself, in the poet’s vision of the Unseen World and its life.

III

A test case of the thorough-going uniformity and consistency of the Homeric conception of the nature and circumstances of the souls of the departed is provided for us, within the limits of the poems themselves, by the story of Odysseus’ Journey to Hades—a test they are hardly likely to survive, it may well be thought. How is the poet in describing a living hero’s dealings with the inhabitants of the shadow-world, going to preserve the immaterial, dreamlike character of the Homeric “Souls”? How keep up the picture of the soul as something that holds itself resolutely aloof and seems to avoid all active intercourse with other folk? It is hard to see what could tempt the poet to try and penetrate with the torch of imagination into this underworld of ineffectual shadows. The matter becomes somewhat more intelligible, however, as soon as it is realized in what manner the narrative arose; how through continual additions from later hands it gradually assumed a form quite unlike itself.60

§ 1

It may be taken as one of the few certain results of the critical analysis of the Homeric poems that the narrative of the Descent of Odysseus to the Underworld did not form part of the original plan of the Odyssey. Kirke bids Odysseus undertake the journey to Hades in order that he may see Teiresias there and be told of “the way and the means of his return, and how he may reach his home again over the fish-teeming deep” (Od. x, 530 f.). Teiresias, however, on being 33 discovered in the realm of shadows, fulfils this requirement only very partially and superficially. Whereupon, Kirke herself gives to the returned Odysseus a much fuller account, and as regards the one point already mentioned by Teiresias, a much more precise account, of the perils that lie before him on his homeward journey.61 The journey to the land of the dead was thus unnecessary, and there can be no doubt that originally it had no place in the poem. It is plain, however, that the composer of this adventure only used the (superfluous) inquiry addressed to Teiresias as a pretext which afforded a more or less plausible motive for the introduction of this narrative into the body of the poem. The real object of the poet, the true motive of the story, must then be sought elsewhere than in the prophecy of Teiresias, which turns out to be so brief and unhelpful. It would be natural to suppose that the aim of the poet was to give the eye of imagination a glimpse into the marvels and terrors of that dark realm into which all men must go. Such an intention would be very intelligible in the case of a medieval or a Greek poet of later times; and there were afterwards plenty of Greek poems which described a Descent to Hades. But it would be hard to account for it in a poet of the Homeric school; for such a poet the realm of the dead and its inhabitants could hardly supply a subject for a narrative. And, in fact, the inventor of Odysseus’ visit to the dead had quite a different object in view. He was anything but a Greek Dante. It is possible to see the purpose which guided him as soon as his poem is stripped of the manifold additions with which later times invested it. The original kernel which thus remains is then seen to be nothing but a series of conversations between Odysseus and the souls of those of the dead with whom he had stood in close personal relationship. Besides Teiresias he speaks with his old ship-companion Elpenor, who had just died, with his mother Antikleia, with Agamemnon and Achilles; and he tries in vain to effect a reconciliation with the implacable Aias. These conversations in Hades are, for the general furtherance of the story of Odysseus’ wanderings and return, quite superfluous, and they serve in a very minor degree and only incidentally to give information about the conditions and character of the inscrutable world beyond the grave. The questions and answers there given are confined entirely to the affairs of the upper world. They bring Odysseus, who has now been wandering so long alone and far from the world of actual humanity, into ideal association with the substantial world of flesh and blood to which his thoughts 34 stretch out, and in which he himself had once been an actor and is soon to play an important part again.62 His mother informs him of the distracted state of Ithaca, Agamemnon of the treacherous deed of Aigisthos carried out with the help of Klytaimnestra. Odysseus himself is able to console Achilles with an account of the heroic deeds of his son, who is still alive in the daylight; with Aias, resentful even in Hades, he cannot come to terms. Thus the theme of the second part of the Odyssey begins to appear; even to the shadows below there reaches an echo of the great deeds of the Trojan war and of the adventures of the Return from Troy, which occupied the minds of all the singers of the time. The introduction of these stories by means of conversations with the persons who took part in them is the essential purpose of the poet. The impelling instinct to expand in all directions the circle of legend in whose centre stood the adventure of the Iliad, and link it up with other circles of heroic legend, was fully satisfied by later poets in the separate poems of the Epic Cycle. At the time when the Odyssey was composed these other epic narratives were in the full tide of their youthful exuberance. The streams had not yet found a convenient bed in which to run, and they added their individual contributions (for they all related events which preceded it) to the elaborate narration of the return of the last Hero who still wandered vainly and alone. The main object of the story of Telemachos’ journey to meet Nestor and Menelaos (in the third and fourth books of the Odyssey) is manifestly to bring the son into relation with the father’s companions in war, and so to provide occasion for further narratives in which a more detailed picture of some of the events between the Iliad and the Odyssey might be given. Demodokos, the Phæacian bard, is made to recount (in abbreviated form) two adventures that had occurred to the great chieftain. Even when such stories did not immediately add to the picture of Odysseus’ deeds or character, they served to point to the great background from which the adventures of the much-enduring wanderer, now completely isolated, should stand out; and to set these in the ideal framework which could alone give them their full significance. This natural creative instinct of legendary poetry also inspired the poet of the “Journey to Hades”. He, too, saw the adventures of Odysseus not in isolation but in lively and vital connexion with all the other adventures that took their origin from Troy. He conceived the idea of bringing once more, for the last time, the chieftain famed in council and war, into communication with the mightiest king and the noblest 35 hero of that famous expedition; and to do that he had to take him to the realm of the shadows which had long contained them. Nor could he well avoid the tone of pathos which is natural to this interview on the borders of the realm of nothingness to which all the desire and the strength of life must eventually come. The questioning of Teiresias is merely, as has been said, the poet’s pretext for confronting Odysseus with his mother and his former companions, and this meeting was his prime motive. Probably this particular device was suggested by the recollection of the story which Menelaos tells of his meeting with Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea (Od. iv, 351 ff.),63 where the inquiry from the seer as to the means of reaching home again is also a mere pretext for the narration of Return adventures—those of Aias, Agamemnon, and Odysseus.

§ 2

It is certain that the intention of this poet cannot possibly have been simply the description of the underworld for its own sake. Even the scenery of these mysterious incidents which might well have attracted his fancy, is only given in brief allusions. The ship sails over Okeanos to the people of the Kimmerians64 that never see the sun, and reaches at last the “barren coast” and the “Grove of Persephone”, with its black poplars and weeping willows. Odysseus with two companions goes on ahead to the entrance of Erebos, where Pyriphlegethon and Kokytos, a branch of the Styx, flow into Acheron. There he digs his sacrificial trench to which the souls flock upward out of Erebos over the asphodel-meadows. It is the same underworld in the bowels of the earth that is presupposed in the Iliad, too, as the dwelling-place of the dead, only more accurately described and more fully realized.65 The details of the picture are so lightly sketched in that one might well suppose that they, too, had been taken from some older mythical material. At any rate, he borrowed the “Styx”, so well known in the Iliad; and it may be supposed that the same applies to the other rivers as well, whose names are clearly derived from words meaning burning (of dead bodies?),66 lamentation, and sorrow.67 The poet himself, interested only in the representation of character, is not at all disposed to dwell upon the merely fanciful, and confines himself to a few brief allusions. Nor does he give any very lengthy account of the dwellers in Erebos, and what he does say of them keeps well within the limits of the usual Homeric belief. The Souls resemble shadow- or dream-pictures, and 36 are impalpable to the human touch.68 They are without consciousness when they appear. Elpenor alone, whose body still lies unburnt, has for that very reason retained his senses and even shows a form of heightened consciousness that approaches prophecy; resembling in this respect Patroklos and Hektor at the moment when the psyche is parted from the body.69 This, however, is to leave him as soon as his corpse is destroyed. Teiresias alone, the prophet famed above all others in Theban legend, has preserved his consciousness and prophetic vision even in the Shadow-world through the good-will of Persephone; but this is an exception which only establishes the rule. What Antikleia tells her son of the powerlessness and immateriality of the soul after the burning of the body70 sounds almost like an official confirmation of the orthodox Homeric view. Everything, in fact, in this poet’s description enforces the truth of this belief, and though the living are, indeed, untroubled by the feeble souls banished to outer darkness, yet out of Erebos itself the piteous knell of this decree reaches us in the lament of Achilles as he refuses his friend’s attempt at comfort—everyone knows the unforgettable words.

§ 3

And yet the poet ventures to go beyond Homer in one important point. What he hints rather than actually says of the condition of things in Hades conflicts in no single point with the conventional Homeric view; but it is an innovation to suggest that this condition of things can even for the briefest moment be interrupted. The blood drunk by the souls gives them back for a moment their consciousness; their remembrance of the upper world returns to them. Their senses must then all the while have been not dead but sleeping. There can be no doubt that the poet for whom this supposition is indispensable to his story did not thereby intend to formulate an entirely new doctrine. But in order to add to his poetic effect, he was led to include in his story some touches which, meaningless within the circle of his own beliefs, pointed elsewhere, and, indeed, backward, to older, quite differently moulded beliefs, and to the usages founded upon them. He makes Odysseus, following the advice of Kirke, dig a grave at the entrance of Hades in which to pour out a solemn drink-offering to “all the dead”, consisting first of all in a mixture of milk and honey, then wine and water, over which white meal is finely sprinkled. Next he slays a ram and a black ewe, bending their heads downwards into the grave.71 37 Then the bodies of the animals are burnt, and round the blood collect all the souls, who flutter about it, kept at a distance by Odysseus’ sword72 till Teiresias has first drunk. Here the drink-offerings constitute undoubtedly a sacrificial offering devoted to the dead and poured out for their satisfaction. The poet indeed does not think of the slaughtered animals as a sacrifice; the tasting of the blood is simply intended to restore to the souls their consciousness; in the case of Teiresias, who retains his senses, the gift of prophetic clairvoyance. But this, we can see clearly, is a fiction of the poet’s: what he here describes is in every detail a sacrifice to the dead, such as we so often find described as such in accounts from later times. The scent of the blood calls up the spirits; their satiation with blood (αἱμακουρία) is the essential purpose of such offerings; and these are what the poet’s imagination dimly recalls as models. Nothing in this picture has been invented. Neither, on the other hand, it is quite clear, has he altered his sacrificial ceremony to make it fit in with novel ideas that were beginning to gain ground; ideas that ascribed a more vital existence to the souls of the dead. For here, too, just as in the case of the offerings to the dead described in the funeral of Patroklos, the poet’s manner of conceiving the life of the dead is not such as could give support to new and more vigorous cult ceremonies. His conception tends rather to contradict the ceremonies that he describes. In fact, what we have here, too, is a “fossilized” and no longer intelligible vestige of a practice that was once rooted in belief—a relic deprived of its original meaning and adapted by the poet to the special purposes of his narrative. The sacrificial ritual used to attract the souls on this occasion strikingly resembles the ritual which was used in later times to conjure up the souls of the dead at those places which were supposed to give entrance to the ghostly world below the earth. It is also not impossible that, even in the time of the poet of the “Journey to Hades”, in some remote corners of Greek lands such calling-up of the dead was still practised as a relic of former belief. But, supposing that the poet had some information of such local cults of the dead, and modelled his story on them,73 that only makes it the more remarkable that he effaces all trace of the original meaning of his ritual, and in adherence to the strict Homeric doctrine on the point, banishes all thought that the souls may possibly continue in the neighbourhood of the living and can thence be conjured up into the light of day.74 He knows only of one kingdom of the Dead far off in the dim West, beyond the bounds of sea 38 and ocean, where the legendary hero of romance can, indeed, reach its gateway, but where alone he can have communication with the souls of the dead. The House of Hades never allows its inhabitants to pass out.

And yet all this is hopelessly contradicted by the votive offerings that the poet, by what can only be called an oversight, makes Odysseus promise to all the dead, and particularly to Teiresias, upon his return home (Od. x, 521–6; xi, 29–33). Of what use would it be to the dead to receive the offering of a “barren cow”,75 of “treasures” burnt upon the funeral pyre; or how could Teiresias enjoy the slaughtering of a black sheep far away in Ithaca—when they are all confined to Erebos and could not taste the offerings made to them? This is the most remarkable and important of all vestiges of an ancient worship of the dead. It proves indubitably that in pre-Homeric times the belief prevailed that even after the funeral of the body the soul is not eternally banished to the inaccessible land of shadows, but is able to approach the sacrificer and to enjoy the sacrifices offered to it, just as much as the gods can. A single obscure allusion in the Iliad76 suggests what is here much more clearly and almost naïvely revealed—namely that even at the time when the Homeric view of the nothingness of the souls for ever parted from their bodies reigned supreme, the custom of making offerings to the dead after the funeral was over (though in exceptional circumstances only, and not as a regularly recurring performance) had not been entirely forgotten.

§ 4

The contradictions into which he is betrayed by the introduction of such intercourse between the living and the dead proves that the undertaking was rather venturesome for a Homeric poet of strictly orthodox views. Still, in the picture of Odysseus’ meeting with his mother and former companions, which was his main object, the poet hardly strayed at all from the normal Homeric path. This, however, was, as it happened, the very point in which later generations of poetically inclined readers or hearers found his narrative wanting. He himself carefully linked up every detail with his living hero, the central interest of his story, and only made him speak with the souls of such as had some real and close connexion with him. A review of the motley inhabitants of the underworld in their multitude hardly interested him at all. It was the very thing which seemed indispensable to later readers. They made additions to his story and introduced the multitudes of the dead of all ages; the warriors with 39 wounds still visible and in bloodstained armour;77 or else, more in the manner of a Hesiodic catalogue for the assistance of the memory than making them live in Homeric fashion for the imagination, they pictured a whole host of mothers, the illustrious ancestors of great families, passing before Odysseus, though they had no particular claim upon his sympathy; nor, indeed, is any serious attempt made to bring them into relationship with him.78 This seemed to improve the picture of the general multitude of the dead, represented in the persons of selected individuals. Next, the condition of things in the world below must at least be illustrated by a few examples. Odysseus casts a glance into the inner recesses of the underworld—which was hardly possible for him, considering that he stood at its outermost gateway—and sees there the heroic figures of those who, like true “images” (εἴδωλα) of the living, still continue the activities of their former lives. There he sees Minos giving judgment among the dead, Orion hunting, Herakles still with the bow in his hand, and the arrow fitted to the string, “like one ever about to shoot.” This is certainly not Herakles, the “Hero-God”, as he was known to later ages. The poet knows nothing as yet of the elevation of the son of Zeus above the lot of all mortals-—any more than the earliest poet of the “Journey” knew of the translation of Achilles out of Hades. The disregard of such things was naturally regarded by later readers as a negligence on the part of the poet. And, in fact, they boldly inserted three verses here which inform us that he “himself”, the real Herakles, dwells among the gods—what Odysseus saw in Hades was only his counterfeit. Whoever wrote this was practising a little original theology on his own account. Such a contrast between a fully animated “self” possessing the original man’s body and soul still united, and a counterfeit presentment of himself (which cannot be his psyche) relegated to Hades, is quite strange both to Homer and to Greek thought of later times.79 It is, in fact, an example of the earliest “harmonizer’s” solution of a difficulty. The poet does, indeed, attempt to connect Herakles with Odysseus by making the two enter into conversation, in imitation of the conversations with Agamemnon and Achilles. But it is soon evident that these two have really nothing to say to each other; Odysseus, in fact, is silent. There was no real relationship between them, at most an analogy; Herakles, too, having once descended alive into Hades. This analogy alone, in fact, appears to have suggested the introduction of Herakles in this place.80 40

There now remains (inserted after Minos and Orion and before Herakles and probably composed by the same hand that was responsible for them) the incident of the three “penitents” undergoing punishment; a passage that no reader can possibly forget. First Tityos, whose giant frame is preyed upon by two vultures, is seen, then Tantalos, who in the middle of a lake is parched with thirst and cannot reach up to the fruit-laden branches over his head, and last Sisyphos, who is bound to roll up-hill the stone that ever rolls back again. The limits of the Homeric conception (with which the pictures of Minos, Orion, and Herakles might still perhaps be reconciled) are in these pictures definitely overstepped. The souls of these three unfortunates are credited with complete and continuous consciousness. Without this, their punishment would not have been felt and would not have been inflicted. And, observing the extraordinarily matter-of-fact and cursory description, which takes the reasons of the punishment for granted except in the case of Tityos, we cannot help feeling that these examples of punishment after death were not invented for the first time by the composer of these lines. They cannot have been offered to the astonished ears of their hearers as a daring novelty, but were rather recalled briefly to those hearers’ recollection. Probably these three are selected as examples out of a much larger collection of such pictures. Can it be that still older poets (who may still, however, have been more recent than the poet of the earliest parts of the “Journey”) had already dared to desert the Homeric view of the soul?

However that may be, we may be sure that the punishment of the three “penitents” was not intended to contradict flatly the Homeric conception of the unconsciousness and nothingness of the shades. They could not in that case have accommodated themselves so well to a poem that is founded upon such conceptions. They do not disprove the rule because they are, and are only intended to be, exceptions to that rule. This, however, would be impossible if it were justifiable to interpret the poet’s fiction as representing, in the person of these three unfortunates, three types of special sins and classes of sinners; as, for example, unbridled Lust (Tityos), insatiable Gluttony (Tantalos), and Pride of the Intellect (Sisyphos).81 They would in that case be particular examples of the retribution which one must think of as being extended to all the innumerable hosts of shadows who have been guilty of the same sins. But nothing in the description itself warrants such a theological interpretation; indeed, we have no reason 41 or excuse for attributing to this particular poet such a desire to prove the existence of a compensatory justice in an after life. It is quite strange to Homer, and so far as it ever became known to later Greek theology, it was only introduced very late, through the influence of a speculative mysticism. No, the almighty power of the gods is able in special cases, so this picture assures us, to preserve for individual souls their consciousness; in the case of Teiresias as a reward, in the case of these three objects of the gods’ hatred, in order that they may be capable of feeling their punishment. The real fault for which they are punished can be guessed fairly certainly from what the poet tells us about Tityos—it is in each case a grievous offence committed by them against the gods. The crime of Tantalos we can make out from what we know of him through other sources. It is less easy to discover what was the exact misdeed for which the crafty Sisyphos is punished.82 In any case, it is clear that retribution has overtaken all three of them for sins against the gods themselves—sins which human beings of later times could not possibly commit. And for this reason alone, neither their deeds nor their punishment can have anything typical or representative about them; they are sheer exceptions, and that is why the poet found them interesting.

The episode of Odysseus’ journey to Hades (even in its latest portions) suggests no acquaintance whatever with any general class of sinners who receive their punishment in that place. If, indeed, it had alluded to the punishment in the after-world of perjurers, orthodox Homeric doctrine would not in that case have been violated. Twice over in the Iliad, on solemn occasions of oath-taking, besides the gods of the upper world, the Erinyes also are called upon as witnesses of the oath; for they punish under the earth those who break their oath.83 Not without reason have these passages been held to show “that the Homeric conception of the phantasmal half-life of the souls under the earth, where they are without feeling or consciousness, was not a general folk-belief.”84 We must add, however, that the belief held in Homeric times of the punishment of oath-breakers in the realm of shadows cannot as yet have been very vital, for it was quite unable to prevent the success of the totally incompatible belief in the unconscious nothingness of disembodied spirits. A solemn oath-formula (so much that is primitive persisting, even after it has become dead letter, in formula) preserved a reference to that ancient belief, which had become strange to Homeric ears—a vestige, in fact, of a bygone point of view. It may be 42 that in the dim past, when men still vividly and literally believed in the reality of a punishment in after life for perjury, all the souls in Hades were credited with a conscious existence; but there never was a time when men generally believed that earthly sins (including perjury as only one among many) were punished in Hades. Oath-breaking was not punished as a specially outrageous moral failing—it may well be doubted whether the Greeks ever considered or felt it to be such. The perjurer, rather than any other particular sinner, was the special victim of the dread goddesses, for the simple reason that the perjurer in his desire to emphasize in the most awful manner his aversion to falsehood, has invoked against himself, if he fails to keep his oath, the most terrible fate of all—to suffer torment in the realm of Hades whence is no escape.85 To the Infernal Spirits of the Underworld, to whom he had condemned himself, he falls a victim if he breaks his word. Belief in the supernatural power of such imprecations,86 and not any special moral importance attached to truth-telling—an idea quite strange to the older Antiquity—gave to the oath its peculiar terrors.

§ 5

A final example of the tenacity with which custom may outlive the belief on which it is founded is afforded by the story told of Odysseus, that in fleeing from the Kikonian land, he did not leave it until he had called thrice upon those of his companions who had fallen in the battle with the Kikones (Od. ix, 65–6). References to similar callings upon the dead in later literature make the meaning of such behaviour clear. The souls of the dead who have fallen in foreign lands must be “called”;87 they will then, if this is properly done, follow the caller to their distant home, where an “empty grave” awaits them.88 This duty is regularly performed in Homer for the benefit of those whose bodies it is impossible to recover and bury in the proper way. But a summons of the dead and the erection of such empty receptacles—intended for whom if not for the souls who must then be accessible to the devotion of their relations?—was natural enough for those who believed in the possibility of the soul’s sojourn in the neighbourhood of its living friends; it was not admissible for supporters of the Homeric belief. Here we have once more a remarkable vestige of an ancient belief, surviving in a custom that has not been entirely given up even in altered times. Here, too, the belief which had given rise to the custom, was extinct. 43 If we ask the Homeric poet for what purpose a mound was heaped up over the grave of the dead and a gravestone set upon it, he will answer us: in order that his fame may remain imperishable among men, and that future generations may not be ignorant of his story.89 That sounds truly Homeric. When a man dies his soul departs into a region of twilit dream-life; his body, the visible man, perishes. Only his glorious name, in fact, lives on. His praises speak to after ages from the monument to his honour on his grave-mound—and in the song of the bard. A poet would naturally be inclined to think such things.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

I