Chapter I: Beliefs About the Soul and Cult of Souls in the Homeric Poems (1)

I

§ 1

To the immediate understanding of mankind nothing seems so self-evident, nothing so little in need of explanation, as the phenomenon of Life itself, the fact of man's own existence. On the other hand, the cessation of this so self-evident existence, whenever it obtrudes itself upon his notice, arouses man's ever-renewed astonishment. There are primitive peoples to whom death whenever it occurs seems an arbitrary abbreviation of life: if it is not due to visible forces, then some invisible magic must have caused it. So difficult is it for such peoples to grasp the idea that the present state of being alive and conscious can come to an end of its own accord.

Once reflection on such problems is aroused, life itself, standing as it does on the threshold of all sensation and experience, soon begins to appear no less mysterious than death--that kingdom into which no experience reaches. It may even come about that when they are regarded too long and too hard, light and darkness seem to change places. It was to a Greek poet that the question suggested itself: "Who knows then whether Life be not Death, and what we here call Death be called Life there below?"

From such jaded wisdom and its doubts Greek civilization is still far removed when, though already at an advanced stage in its development, it first speaks to us in the Homeric poems. The poet and his heroes speak with lively feeling of the pains and troubles of life, both in its individual phases and as a whole. The gods have allotted a life of pain and misery to men, while they themselves remain free from care. On the other hand, to turn aside from life altogether never enters the head of anyone in Homer. Nothing may be said expressly of the joy and happiness of life, but that is because such things {4} go without saying among a vigorous folk engrossed in a movement of progress, whose circumstances were never complicated and where all the conditions of happiness easily fell to the lot of the strong in activity and enjoyment. And, indeed, it is only for the strong, the prudent, and the powerful that this Homeric world is intended. Life and existence upon this earth obviously belongs to them--is it not an indispensable condition of the attainment of all particular good things? As for death--the state which is to follow our life here--there is no danger of anyone mistaking _that_ for life. "Do not try and explain away death to me," says Achilles to Odysseus in Hades; and this would be the answer any Homeric man would have given to the sophisticated poet, if he had tried to persuade him that the state of things after life on this earth is the real life. Nothing is so hateful to man as death and the gates of Hades: for when death comes it is certain that life--this sweet life of ours in the sunlight--is done with, whatever else there may be to follow.

§ 2

But what _does_ follow? What happens when life departs for ever from the inanimate body?

It is strange that anyone should have maintained (as it has been in recent times[1\1]) that in any stage of the development of the Homeric poems the belief can be found that with the moment of death all is at an end: that nothing survives death. We are not warranted by any statement in either of the two poems (to be found perhaps in their oldest parts, as is suggested) nor yet by the tell-tale silence of the poet, in attributing such an idea either to the poet or his contemporaries. Wherever the occasion of death is described we are told how the dead man (still referred to by his name, or his "Psyche", hastens away into the house of Aïdes--into the kingdom of Aïdes and the grim Persephoneia; goes down to the darkness below the earth, to Erebos; or, more vaguely, sinks into the earth itself. In any case, it is no mere _nothing_ that can enter the gloomy depths, nor over what does not exist could one suppose that the divine Pair holds sway below.

But how are we to think of this "Psyche" that, unnoticed during the lifetime of the body, and only observable when it is "separated" from the body, now glides off to join the multitude of its kind assembled in the murky regions of the "Invisible" (Aïdes)? Its name, like the names given to the {5} "soul" in many languages, marks it off as something airy and breathlike, revealing its presence in the breathing of the living man. It escapes out of the mouth--or out of the gaping wound of the dying--and now freed from its prison becomes, as the name well expresses it, an "image" (~ei/dôlon~). On the borders of Hades Odysseus sees floating "the images of those that have toiled (on earth)". These immaterial images withdrawing themselves from the grasp of the living, like smoke (_Il._ xxiii, 100) or a shadow (_Od._ xi, 207; x, 495), must at least recognizably present the general outlines of the once living person. Odysseus immediately recognizes his mother, Antikleia, in such a shadow-person, as well as the lately dead Elpenor, and those of his companions of the Trojan War who have gone before him. The psyche of Patroklos appearing to Achilleus by night resembles the dead man absolutely in stature, bodily appearance and expression. The nature of this shadowy double of mankind, separating itself from man in death and taking its departure then, can best be realized if we first make clear to ourselves what qualities it does _not_ possess. The psyche of Homeric belief does not, as might have been supposed, represent what we are accustomed to call "spirit" as opposed to "body". All the faculties of the human "spirit" in the widest sense--for which the poet has a large and varied vocabulary--are indeed only active and only possible so long as a man is still alive: when death comes the complete personality is no longer in existence. The body, that is the corpse, now becomes mere "senseless earth" and falls to pieces, while the psyche remains untouched. But the latter is by no means the refuge of "spirit" and its faculties, any more than the corpse is. It (the psyche) is described as being without feeling, deserted by mind and the organs of mind. All power of will, sensation, and thought have vanished with the disintegration of the individual man into his component parts. So far from it being permissible to ascribe the functions of "spirit" to the psyche, it would be more reasonable to speak of a contrast between the two. Man is a living creature, conscious of himself and intelligently active, only so long as the psyche remains within him. But it is not the psyche which communicates its own faculties to man and gives him capacity for life together with consciousness, will and knowledge. It is rather that during the union of the psyche and the body all the faculties of living and acting lie within the empire of the body, of which they are functions. Without the presence of the psyche, the body cannot perceive, feel, or will, but it does not use these {6} or any of its faculties through or by means of the psyche. Nowhere does Homer attribute any such function to the psyche in living man: it is, in fact, only mentioned when its separation from the living man is imminent or has occurred. As the body's shadow-image it survives the body and all its vital powers.

If we now ask--as our Homeric psychologists generally do--which, in the face of this mysterious association between a living body and its counterfeit the psyche, is the "real" man, we find that Homer in fact gives contradictory answers. Not infrequently (indeed, in the first lines of the Iliad) the material body is contrasted,[2\1] as the "man himself", with the psyche--which cannot therefore be any organ or component part of the living body. On the other hand, that which takes its departure at death and hastens into the realm of Hades is also referred to by the proper name of the person as "himself"[3\1]--which means that here the shadowy psyche (for nothing else can go down to Hades) is invested with the name and value of the complete personality, the "self" of the man. But those who draw from these phrases the conclusion that either the body or the psyche must be the "real man" have, in either case,[4\1] left out of account or unexplained one half of the recorded evidence. Regarded without prejudice, these apparently contradictory methods of speaking simply prove that both the visible man (the body and its own faculties) _and_ the indwelling psyche could be described as the man's "self". According to the Homeric view, human beings exist twice over: once as an outward and visible shape, and again as an invisible "image" which only gains its freedom in death. This, and nothing else, is the Psyche.

Such an idea--that the psyche should dwell with the living and fully conscious personality, like an alien and a stranger, a feebler double of the man, as his "other self"--this may well seem very strange to us. And yet this is what so-called "savage" peoples,[5\1] all over the world, actually believe. Herbert Spencer in particular has shown this most decisively. It is therefore not very surprising to find the Greeks, too, sharing a mode of thought that lies so close to the mind of primitive mankind. The earlier age which handed down to the Greeks of Homer their beliefs about the soul cannot have failed any more than other nations to observe the facts upon which a fantastic logic based the conclusion of man's double personality. It was not the phenomena of sensation, will, perception, or thought in waking and conscious man which led to this conclusion. It was the experience of an apparent {7} double of the self in dreaming, in swoons, and ecstasy, that gave rise to the inference of a two-fold principle of life in man, and of the existence of an independent, separable "second self" dwelling within the viable self of daily life. One has only to listen to the words of a Greek writer of a later period who, far more explicitly than Homer, describes the nature of the psyche and at the same time lets us see the origin of the belief in such an entity. Pindar (fr. 131) tells us that the body obeys Death, the almighty, but the image of the living creature lives on ("since this alone is derived from the gods": which, of course, is not Homeric belief); for it (this _eidôlon_) is _sleeping_ when the limbs are active, but when the body is asleep it often reveals the future in a dream. Words could hardly make it plainer that in the activities of the waking and conscious man, the image-soul has no part. Its world is the world of sleep. While the other "I", unconscious of itself, lies in sleep, its double is up and doing. In other words, while the body of the sleeper lies wrapped in slumber, motionless, the sleeper in his dream lives and sees many strange and wonderful things. It is "himself" who does this (of that there can be no doubt), and yet not the self known and visible to himself and others; for that lies still as death beyond the reach of sensation. It follows that there lives within a man a second self, active in dreaming. That the dream experiences are veritable realities and not empty fancies for Homer is also certain. He never says, as later poets often do, that the dreamer "thought" he saw this or that. The figures seen in dreams are real figures, either of the gods themselves or a "dream spirit" sent by them, or a fleeting "image" (eidôlon) that they allow to appear for a moment. Just as the dreamer's capacity for vision is no mere fancy, so, too, the objects that he sees are realities. In the same way it is something real that appears to a man asleep as the shape of a person lately dead. Since this shape can show itself to a dreamer, it must of necessity still exist; consequently it survives death, though, indeed, only as a breath-like image, much as we have seen reflections of our own faces mirrored in water.[6\1] It cannot, indeed--this airy substance--be grasped or held like the once viable self; and hence comes its name, the "psyche". The primeval argument for such a counterpart of man is repeated by Achilleus himself (_Il._ xxiii, 103 f.) when his dead friend appears to him and then vanishes again: so, then, ye Gods, there yet lives in Hades' house a psyche and shadowy image (of man), but there is no midriff in it (and consequently none of the faculties which preserve the visible man alive). {8}

The dreamer, then, and what he sees in his dream proves the existence of an _alter ego_ in man.[7\1] Man, however, also observes that his body may suffer a deathlike torpor without the second self being occupied with dream experiences. In such moments of "swoon", according to Greek thought and actual Homeric expression, "the psyche has left the body."[8\1] Where had it gone? No man could tell. But on this occasion it comes back again: whereupon the "spirit is gathered again into the midriff". If ever, as happens in the case of death, the psyche should become completely separated from the visible body, then the "spirit" will never return. But the psyche, which in those temporary separations from the body[9\1] did not perish, will not vanish into nothingness now.

§ 3

So far experience takes us, from which primitive logic arrived at very much the same conclusions all over the world. But, we may proceed to ask, where does this liberated psyche go? What becomes of it? Here begins "the undiscovered country" and it might appear that at its entrance there was a complete parting of the ways.

Primitive people are accustomed to attribute unlimited powers to the disembodied "soul"--powers all the more formidable because they are not seen. Indeed, they refer in part _all_ invisible forces to the action of "souls", and strain anxiously by means of the richest offerings within their power to secure for themselves the goodwill of these powerful spirits. Homer, on the contrary, knows nothing of any influence exerted by the psyche upon the visible world, and, consequently, hardly anything of a cult of the psyche. How, indeed, could the souls (as I may venture to call them without further risk of misunderstanding) have any such influence? They are all without exception collected in the realm of Aïdes, far from the living, separated from them by Okeanos and Acheron, guarded by the relentless god himself, the inexorable doorkeeper. Only a fabled hero like Odysseus may for once, perhaps, reach the entrance of that gloomy kingdom alive: the souls themselves, once they have crossed the river, never come back--so the soul of Patroklos assures his friend. How do they get there? The implication seems to be that on leaving the body the soul passes away, unwilling and complaining of its fate, but, nevertheless, unresisting, to Hades; and after the destruction of the body by fire, disappears for ever into the depths of Erebos. It was only a {9} later poet who, in giving the final touches to the Odyssey, introduced Hermes, the "Guide of the Dead". Whether this is an invention of the poet's, or, as appears more likely, it is borrowed from the ancient folk-belief of some remote corner of Greece, in the completely rounded circle of Homeric belief at any rate it is an innovation and an important one. Doubt has arisen, it appears, whether indeed _all_ the souls must of necessity pass away into the Unseen; and they are provided with a divine guide who by his mysteriously compelling summons (_Od._ xxiv, 1) and the power of his magic wand constrains them to follow him.[10\1]

Down in the murky underworld they now float unconscious, or, at most, with a twilight half-consciousness, wailing in a shrill diminutive voice, helpless, indifferent. Of course, flesh, bones, and sinews,[11\1] the midriff, the seat of all the faculties of mind and will--these are all gone for ever. They were attached to the once-visible partner of the psyche, and that has been destroyed. To speak of an "immortal life" of these souls, as scholars both ancient and modern have done, is incorrect. They can hardly be said to _live_ even, any more than the image does that is reflected in the mirror; and that they prolong to eternity their shadowy image-existence--where in Homer do we ever find this said? The psyche may survive its visible companion, but it is helpless without it. Is it possible to believe that a realistically imaginative, materially minded people like the Greeks would have regarded as immortal a creature incapable (once the funeral is over) of requiring or receiving further _nourishment_--either in religious cult or otherwise?

The daylight world of Homer is thus freed from spectres of the night (for even in dreams the psyche is seen no more after the body is burnt); from those intangible and ghostly essences at whose unearthly activity the superstitious of every age tremble. The living are no longer troubled by the dead. The world is governed by the gods alone; not pale and ghostly phantoms, but palpable and fully materialized figures, working powerfully everywhere, and dwelling on the clear mountain tops: "and brightness gleams around them." No daimonic powers can compare with the gods or can avail against them; and night does not set free the departed souls of the dead. The reader starts involuntarily and begins to suspect the influence of another age, when in a part of Book XX of the Odyssey, added by a later hand, he reads how shortly before the destruction of the suitors the clairvoyant soothsayer beholds in hall and forecourt the soul-phantoms (eidôla) {10} floating in multitudes and hurrying down to the darkness under the earth: "the sun was darkened in the heaven and a thick mist came over all." The later poet has been very successful in suggesting the terror awakened by a foreboding of tragedy; but such terror in the face of the doings of the spirit world is entirely un-Homeric.

§ 4

Were the Greeks, then, always so untroubled by such fears of the souls of the dead? Was there never any _cult_ of disembodied spirits, such as was not only known to all primitive peoples throughout the world, but was also quite familiar to nations belonging to the same family as the Greeks, for instance, the Indians and the Persians? The question and its answer have more than a passing interest. In later times--long subsequent to Homer--we find in Greece itself a lively worship of ancestors and a general cult of the departed. Were it demonstrable--as it is generally assumed without proof--that the Greeks only at this late period first began to pay a religious cult to the souls of the dead, this fact would give very strong support to the oft-repeated theory that the cult of the dead arose from the ruins of a previous worship of the gods. Anthropologists are accustomed to deny this and to regard the worship of disembodied souls as one of the earliest forms (if not as originally the only form) of the reverence paid to unseen powers. The peoples, however, upon whose conditions of life and mental conceptions such views are generally based, have indeed behind them a long past, but no history. What is to prevent pure speculation and theorizing in conformity with the preconceived idea just mentioned (which is almost elevated to the position of a doctrine of faith by some comparative religionists) from introducing into the dim past of such savage peoples the primitive worship of gods, out of which the worship of the dead may then subsequently arise? But _Greek_ religious development can be traced from Homer onwards for a long period; and there we find the certainly remarkable fact that a cult of the dead, unknown to Homer, only appears later, in the course of a long and vigorous expansion of religious ideas in after times; or, at least, then shows itself more plainly--but not, it is important to notice, as the precipitate of a dying belief in gods and worship of the gods, but rather as a collateral development by the side of that highly developed form of piety.

Are we, then, really to believe that the cult of disembodied {11} spirits was absolutely unknown to the Greeks of pre-Homeric times?

Such an assertion, if made without due qualification, is contradicted by a closer study of the Homeric poems themselves.

It is true that Homer represents for us the earliest great stage in the evolution of Greek civilization of which we have clear evidence. But the poems do not stand at the beginning of that evolution. Indeed, they only stand at the beginning of Greek Epic poetry--so far as this has been transmitted to us--because the natural greatness and wide popularity of the Iliad and the Odyssey secured their preservation in writing. Their very existence and the degree of artistic finish which they show, oblige us to suppose that behind them lies a long history of heroic "Saga" poetry. The conditions which they describe and imply point to a long course of previous development--from nomadic to city life, from patriarchal rule to the organization of the Greek Polis. And just as the maturity of material development tells its tale, so do the refinement and maturity of culture, the profound and untrammelled knowledge of the world, the clarity and simplicity of thought reflected in them. All these things go to show that before Homer, in order to reach Homer, the Greek world must have thought and learned much--must, indeed, have unlearned and undone much. As in art, so in all the products of civilization, what is simple, appropriate, and convincing is not the achievement of beginners, but the reward of prolonged study. It is prima facie unthinkable that during the whole length of Greek evolution before Homer, religion alone, the relationship between man and the invisible world, should have remained stationary at any one point. It is not from the comparison of religious beliefs and their development among kindred nations, nor even from the study of apparently primitive ideas and usages in the religious life of the Greeks themselves of later times, that we are to seek the truth about the religious customs of that remote period which is obscured for us by the intervening mass of the Homeric poems. Comparative studies of this kind are valuable in their way, but must only be used to give further support to the insight derived from less easily misleading methods of inquiry. For us the only completely satisfactory source of information about pre-Homeric times is Homer himself. We are allowed--indeed, we are forced--to conclude that there have been change in conceptions and customs, if, in that otherwise so uniform and rounded Homeric world, we meet with isolated occurrences, customs, forms of speech that contradict the {12} normal atmosphere of Homer and can only be explained by reference to a world in all essentials differently orientated from his own and for the most part kept in the background by Homer. All that is necessary is to open our eyes, freed from preconceived ideas, to the "rudiments" ("survivals", as they are better called by English scholars) of a past stage of civilization discoverable in the Iliad and Odyssey themselves.

§ 5

Such rudiments of a once vigorous soul-worship are not hard to find in Homer. In particular, we may refer to what the Iliad tells us of the manner in which the dead body of Patroklos is dealt with. The reader need only recall the general outline of the story. In the evening of the day upon which Hektor has been slain, Achilles with his Myrmidons sings the funeral dirge to his dead friend: they go three times in procession round the body, Achilles laying his "murderous hands" on the breast of Patroklos and calling upon him with the words: "Hail, Patroklos mine, even in Aïdes' dwelling-place; what I vowed to thee before is now performed; Hektor lies slain and is the prey of dogs, and twelve noble Trojan youths will I slay at thy funeral pyre." After they have laid aside their arms he makes ready the funeral feast for his companions--bulls, sheep, goats, and pigs are killed, "and all around, in beakers-full, the blood flowed round the corpse." During the night the soul of Patroklos appears to Achilles demanding immediate burial. In the morning the host of the Myrmidons marches out in arms, bearing the body in their midst. The warriors lay locks of their hair, cut off for the purpose, upon the body, and last of all Achilles places his own hair in the hand of his friend--it was once pledged by his father to Spercheios the River-god, but Patroklos must now take it with him, since return to his home is denied to Achilles. The funeral pyre is got ready, many sheep and oxen slaughtered. The corpse is wrapped in their fat, while their carcasses are placed beside it; jars of oil and honey are set round the body. Next, four horses are killed, two dogs belonging to Patroklos, and last of all twelve Trojan youths taken prisoner for this purpose by Achilles. All these are burnt together with the corpse, and Achilles spends the whole night pouring out dark wine upon the earth, calling the while upon the psyche of Patroklos. Only when morning comes is the fire extinguished with wine; the bones of Patroklos are collected and laid in a golden casket and entombed within a mound. {13}

Here we have a picture of the funeral of a chieftain which, in the solemnity and ceremoniousness of its elaborate detail, is in striking conflict with the normal Homeric conception of the nothingness of the soul after its separation from the body. A full and rich sacrifice is here offered to such a soul. This sacrifice is inexplicable if the soul immediately upon its dissolution flutters away insensible, helpless and powerless, and therefore incapable of enjoying the offerings made to it. It is therefore not unnatural that a method of interpretation which isolates Homer as far as possible and adheres closely to his own fixed and determinate range of ideas, should attempt to deny the sacrificial character of the offerings made on this occasion.[12\1] We may well ask, however, what else but a sacrifice, i.e. a repast offered in satisfaction of the needs of the person honoured (in this case the psyche), can be intended by this stream of blood about the corpse; this slaughtering and burning of cattle and sheep, horses and dogs, and finally of twelve Trojan prisoners on or at the funeral pyre? To explain it all as a mere performance of pious duties, as is often done in interpreting many of the gruesome pictures of Greek sacrificial ceremonies, is impossible here. Besides, Homer often tells us of merely pious observances in honour of the dead, and they are of a very different character. And the most horrible touch of all (the human sacrifice is not put in simply to satisfy Achilles' lust for vengeance--twice over does Achilles call to the soul of Patroklos with the words: "To _you_ do I bring what I formerly promised to _you_" (_Il._ xxiii, 20 ff., 180 ff.).[13\1] The whole series of offerings on this occasion is precisely of the kind which we may take as typical of the oldest sort of sacrificial ritual such as we often find in later Greek religion in the cultus of the infernal deities. The sacrificial offerings are completely burnt in honour of the Daimon and are not shared between the bystanders as in the case of other offerings. If such "holocausts", when offered to the Chthonic and some of the Olympian deities, are to be regarded as sacrificial in character, then it is unjustifiable to invent some other meaning for the performances at the funeral pyre of Patroklos. The offering of wine, oil, and honey, at least, are normal in sacrificial rituals of later times. Even the severed lock of hair spread out over the dead body or laid in the cold hand is a well known sacrificial tribute, and must be supposed such here as much as in later Greek ceremonial or in that of many other peoples.[14\1] In fact, this gift in particular, symbolically representing as it does a more valuable sacrifice by means of another and less important {14} object (in the giving of which only the goodwill of the giver is to be considered)--this very offering, like all such symbolical substitutions, bears witness to the long duration and past development of the cultus in which it occurs--in this case of the worship of the dead in pre-Homeric times.

The whole narrative presupposes the idea that by the pouring out of streams of blood, by offerings of wine and burnt offerings of human beings and of cattle, the psyche of a person lately dead can be refreshed, and its resentment mollified. At any rate, it is thus thought of as accessible to human prayers and as remaining for some time in the neighbourhood of the sacrifice made to it. This contradicts what we expect in Homer, and, in fact, just in order to make this unusual performance plausible to an audience no longer familiar with the idea, and to make it admissible on a special occasion, the poet (though the actual course of his story does not really require it)[15\1] makes the psyche of Patroklos appear by night to Achilles. And, in fact, to the end of the narrative Achilles repeatedly greets the soul of Patroklos as though it were present.[16\1] The unusual way in which Homer deals with this whole affair, so full of primeval, savage ideas as it is, seems, indeed, to betray a certain vagueness about what its real meaning may be. That the writer has certain qualms on the subject is indicated by the brevity--not at all like Homer--with which the most shocking part of the story, the slaughter of human beings, together with horses and dogs, is hurried over. But the thing to be noted particularly is that the poet is certainly not devising such unpleasant circumstances for the first time out of his own imagination. This epic picture of the worship of the dead was adopted by Homer from an earlier source (whatever that source may have been),[17\1] and not invented by him. He makes it serve his special purpose, which is to provide a satisfactory climax to the series of vivid and emotional scenes beginning with the tragic death of Patroklos and ending with the death and dishonouring of the champion of Troy. After such emotional exaltation the overstrained nerves must not be allowed to relax too suddenly; a last flicker of the superhuman rage and grief that made Achilles rave so furiously against his foes must show itself in the serving up of this awful banquet to the soul of his friend. It is as though a primitive and long-suppressed savagery had broken out again for a last effort. Only when all is over does the soul of Achilles find repose in melancholy resignation. More calmly he calls upon the rest of the Achæans to take their seats "in a wide circle round about"; and there follows the {15} description of those splendid "Games", a subject that must have awakened the enthusiasm of every experienced athlete in the audience--and was there ever a Greek who was not an athlete? It is true that athletic contests are described by Homer mainly on account of their own peculiar interest and for the sake of the artistic effects that their description allowed. Still, the selection of such games as a fitting conclusion to a chieftain's funeral cannot be fully understood except as a survival of an ancient and once vigorous worship of the dead. Such athletic contests in honour of the great immediately after their death are often referred to by Homer;[18\1] indeed, a funeral is the _only_ occasion[19\1] recognized by him as suitable for the exhibition of athletic prize-competitions. The practice never quite died out, and it became usual in later post-Homeric times to mark the festivals of Heroes and, later of gods, too, by Games which gradually became regularly repeated performances, developed from the traditional contests that had concluded the funeral ceremonies of great men. Now, no one doubts that the _Agon_ at the festival of a Hero or a god formed part of their religious worship. It is only reasonable, then, to suppose that the funeral games which accompany the burial of a chieftain (and are confined to that one occasion) belong to the religious _cult_ of the dead, and to recognize that such a mode of worship can only have been introduced at a time when men regarded the soul, in whose honour the ceremony took place, as capable of sharing consciously in its enjoyment. Even Homer is certainly conscious of the fact that the games, like the rest of the offerings made then, were intended for the satisfaction of the dead and not solely for the entertainment of the living.[20\1] We may also cite the declared opinion of Varro, who says that the dead in whose honour funeral games are celebrated are thereby proved to have been regarded originally, if not as gods, at least as very powerful spirits.[21\1] Of course, this feature of the original cultus of the soul was very easily stripped of its real meaning--it recommended itself quite apart from its religious significance--and for that very reason remained longer than other performances of the kind in general use.

If we now survey the whole series of ritual acts directed to the honouring of the soul of Patroklos, we can deduce from the seriousness of these attempts to please the disembodied spirit what must have been the strength of the original conception--how vivid must have been the impression of enduring sensibility, of formidable power possessed by a soul {16} to whom such a cult was offered. It is true of the cult of the dead, as of any other sacrificial custom, that its perpetuation is due solely to the hope of avoiding hurt and obtaining assistance at the hands of the Unseen.[22\1] A generation that no longer anticipated either help or harm from the "Souls" might be ready to perform last offices of all kinds to the deserted body out of pure _piety_, and to offer to the dead a certain traditional reverence. But this would testify rather to the grief of those left behind than to any special reverence felt for the departed.[23\1] This is mostly the case in Homer. It is not, however, what we should call piety, but much rather mistrust of a "ghost" become powerful through its separation from the body, that explains the exaggerated fullness of the funeral offerings that are made at the burial of Patroklos. They cannot be made to fit in with the ordinary circle of Homeric ideas. Indeed, that this circle of ideas excluded all misgiving at the possible action of unseen spirits is quite clearly shown by the fact that the honours paid even to a dead man held in such veneration as Patroklos are confined to the solitary occasion of his funeral. As the psyche of Patroklos himself assures his friend, once the burning of the body is completed, it, the psyche, will take its departure to Hades, never to return.[24\1] It is easy to see that from this point of view there was no motive whatever that could lead to a permanent cult of the soul such as was common among the Greeks of later times. But it should be noticed further that the luxurious repast offered to the soul of Patroklos on the occasion of his funeral had no point if the goodwill of the soul which was to be assured by that process would never have an opportunity in the future of making itself felt. The contradiction between Homeric belief and Homeric practice on this occasion is complete, and shows decisively that the traditional view that would see in this description of soul-worship at the funeral of Patroklos an effort after _new_ and more lively ideas of the life after death, must certainly be wrong. When new surmises, wishes, conjectures begin to arise and seek a means of expression, the new ideas generally find incomplete utterance in the old and inappropriate external forms, but express themselves more clearly and certainly (generally with some tendency to exaggeration) in the less conservative words and language of men. Here just the opposite occurs: every word the poet utters about the circumstances contradicts the elaborately wrought ceremonial which those circumstances call forth. It is impossible to point to a single touch that accords with the belief implied by the {17} ceremonial. The poet's bias is a different and, indeed, an opposite one. Of this much at least there cannot be the slightest doubt: the funeral ceremonies over the body of Patroklos are not the first budding of a new principle, but rather represent a "vestige" of a more vigorous worship of the dead in earlier times, a worship that must once have been a complete and sufficient expression of belief in the great and enduring power of the disembodied spirit. It has, however, been preserved unaltered into an age that, with quite other religious beliefs, no longer understands, or at best half-guesses at the sense of such strange ceremonial observances. Thus ritual generally outlives both the state of mind and the belief which originally gave rise to it.

§ 6

Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey contains anything that can equal the scenes at the funeral of Patroklos as evidence of primitive worship of the dead. But even the ordinary forms of interment of the dead are not entirely without such "vestigial" features. The dead man's eyes and mouth are closed,[25\1] the body is washed and anointed, and after being wrapped in a clean linen cloth is laid upon a bier,[26\1] and the funeral dirge begins.[27\1] It is hardly possible to see even the remotest, lingering, reminiscence of a once vigorous worship of the dead in such performances as these; or in the very simple burial customs that follow the burning of the body; the bones are collected in a jar or a casket and buried under a mound, and a post set up to mark the place as a "grave-mound".[28\1] But when we find that the body of Elpenor, in accordance with the command issued by his psyche to Odysseus (_Od._ xi, 74), is burned together with his weapons (_Od._ xii, 13); when, further, we read that Achilles burnt the weapons of his overthrown foe together with his body on the funeral pyre (_Il._ vi, 418), it is impossible not to feel that we have here, too, survivals of an ancient belief that the soul in some mysterious fashion was capable of making use of these objects that are burnt along with its discarded bodily envelope. No one doubts that this is the reason for such a custom when it meets us in the case of other nations; with the Greeks, too, it must have had an equally good foundation, however little such is to be discovered in the ordinary Homeric view of the soul. The custom, moreover, more precisely described in these cases, was of general observance; we often hear how the completeness of a burial requires the burning of the possessions of the dead along with the body.[29\1] We cannot {18} tell to what extent the duty of offering to the dead _all_ his movable possessions[30\1] (a duty originally without doubt interpreted quite literally) had come in Homeric times to be interpreted in a symbolical sense--a process which reached its lowest stage in the custom prevalent in later times of presenting an obol "for the Ferryman of the Dead". Finally, the "funeral feast" offered by the king to the mourning people either after the funeral of a chieftain (_Il._ xxiv, 802, 665), or before the burning of his body (_Il._ xxiii, 29 ff.), could only have derived its full meaning from an ancient belief that the soul of the person thus honoured could itself take a share in the feast. In the banquet in honour of Patroklos the dead man is given a definite portion--the blood of the slaughtered animals which is poured round his body (_Il._ xxiii, 34). Like the funeral games, this banquet is apparently intended to propitiate the soul of the dead man. Consequently, we find even Orestes, after slaying Aigisthos, his father's murderer, offering him a funeral feast (_Od._ iii, 309)--not, surely, in a mood of simple "piety". The custom of inviting the whole people, on the occasion of important funerals, to such a banquet no longer appears in later times; it has little resemblance to the funeral feasts shared by the relations of the dead man (~peri/deipna~) that were afterwards customary; it is far closer to the great _cenæ ferales_ that accompanied the _silicernia_ in Rome, to which the relations of the dead man, if he were an important person, invited the whole population.[31\1] After all, it is no harder to understand the underlying conception of the soul in this case sharing the feast with the whole people, than it is to understand the same conception when applied to the great sacrifices to the gods which, though the congregation partakes, are, in name and in fact, essentially "Banquets of the Gods" (_Od._ iii, 336).

Such are the relics of ancient soul-worship to be found within the limits of the Homeric world. Further attention to the spirits of the dead beyond the time of the funeral was prevented by the deeply ingrained conviction that after the burning of the body the psyche was received into the inaccessible world of the Unseen, from which no traveller returns. But, in order to secure this complete departure of the soul, it is necessary for the body to be burnt. Though we do occasionally read in the Iliad or the Odyssey that immediately after death and before the burning of the body "the psyche departed to Hades",[32\1] the words must not be taken too literally; the soul certainly flies off at once towards Hades, but it hovers now between the realms of the living and {19} the dead until it is received into the final safekeeping of the latter after the burning of the body. The psyche of Patroklos appearing by night to Achilles declares this; it prays for immediate burial in order that it may pass through the door of Hades. Until then the other shadow-creatures prevent its entrance and bar its passage across the river, so that it has to wander restlessly round the house of Aïs of the wide gate (_Il._ xxiii, 71 ff.). This hastening off towards the house of Hades is again all that is meant when it is said elsewhere of Patroklos himself (_Il._ xvi, 856) that the psyche departed out of his limbs to the house of Hades. In exactly the same way it is said of Elpenor, the companion of Odysseus, that "his soul descended to Hades" (_Od._ x, 560). This soul meets his friend, nevertheless, later on, at the entrance of the Shadow-world, not yet deprived of its senses like the rest of the dwellers in that House of Darkness; not until the destruction of its physical counterpart is complete can it enter into the rest of Hades. Only through fire are the souls of the dead "appeased" (_Il._ vii, 410). So long, then, as the psyche retains any vestige of "earthliness" it possesses some feeling still, some awareness of what is going on among the living.[33\1]

But once the body is destroyed by fire, then is the psyche relegated to Hades; no return to this earth is permitted to it, and not a breath of this world can penetrate to it there. It cannot even return in thought. Indeed, it no longer thinks at all, and knows nothing more of the world beyond. The living also forget one so completely cut off from themselves (_Il._ xxii, 389). What, then, should tempt them, during the rest of their lives here, to try to hold communication with the dead by means of a _cult_?

§ 7

The practice of cremation itself will perhaps give us one last piece of evidence that there had been a time when the idea of the prolonged sojourn of the disembodied spirit in the realm of the living and its power of influencing the survivors existed among the Greeks. Homer knows of no other kind of funeral than that of fire. On a funeral pyre are burnt the bodies of king or leader with the most solemn ritual; those of the common people fallen in war are given to the flames with less ceremony; none are buried. We may well ask whence comes this custom, and what is its meaning for Greeks of the Homeric age? This means of disposing of the bodies of the dead is not by any means the most simple and obvious; it {20} is far easier to carry out, and far less expensive, to bury them in the earth. It has been suggested that the custom of cremation as observed by Persians, Germans, Slavs, and other peoples, is inherited from a nomadic period. The wandering horde has no permanent habitation in which or near which the body of the beloved dead can be buried and perpetual sustenance offered to his soul. Unless, therefore, as is the custom with some nomadic tribes, the dead body is given up to be the prey of beasts or weather, it might seem a natural idea to reduce it to ashes and carry the remains, preserved in a light jar, along with the tribe on its further journeyings.[34\1] Whether such practical reasonings can have had so much influence in a connexion that is generally governed entirely by fancy, and in which practical considerations are altogether scouted--I shall leave undecided. But, in any case, if we postulate a nomadic origin for the practice of burning the dead among the Greeks, we should have to go back altogether too far into the past to explain a mode of behaviour that, by no means exclusively practised in early times by the Greeks, becomes absolutely prescriptive in a period when they have long ceased to wander. The Asiatic Greeks, and in particular the Ionians, whose popular beliefs and customs are, in general outline, at least, reproduced for us in Homer, deserted one settled habitation in order to found another. Cremation then must have been so permanently established among them that it never entered their heads to seek any other method of disposing of their dead. In Homer not only the Greeks before Troy and Elpenor, far away from home, are burnt when they die; Eëtion, too, in his own home is given a funeral pyre by Achilles (_Il._ vi, 418). Hektor's body is burnt in the middle of Troy and the Trojans themselves in their own native land burn their dead (_Il._ vii). The box or urn that holds the cremated bones of the dead is buried in a mound; the ashes of Patroklos, Achilles, Antilochos, and Aias rest on foreign soil (_Od._ iii, 109 ff.; xxiv, 76 ff.). It never occurs to Agamemnon that if Menelaos dies before Ilios his brother's grave could be anywhere else than at Troy (_Il._ iv, 174 ff.). There is, therefore, evidently no intention on the part of the living of taking the remains of the dead with them on their return home;[35\1] and this cannot be the object of cremation. It will be necessary to look for some principle more in accordance with primitive modes of thought than such merely practical considerations. Jakob Grimm[36\1] suggested that the burning of the corpse might have been intended as an offering of the dead man to the gods. Among {21} the Greeks this could only mean the gods of the lower world; but nothing in Greek belief or ritual suggests such a grim intention.[37\1] The real purpose aimed at in cremation is not so far to seek. Since the destruction of the body by fire is supposed to result in the complete separation of the spirit from the land of the living,[38\1] it must be assumed that this result is also _intended_ by the survivors who employ the means in question; and consequently that the complete banishment of the psyche once and for all into the other world is the real purpose and the original occasion of the practice of cremation. Isolated expressions of opinion among the nations that have practised the custom do, as a matter of fact, indicate as its object the speedy and entire separation of soul from body.[39\1] The exact nature of the intention varies with the state of belief about the soul. When the Indians turned from the custom of burying their dead to that of burning them, they were actuated, it appears, by the idea that the sooner and more completely the soul was freed from the body and its limitations, the more easily would it reach the Paradise of the Just.[40\1] Of the purifying effects of the fire implied in this conception, the Greeks knew nothing until the idea was revived in later times.[41\1] The Greeks of the Homeric age, innocent of any such "Kathartic" notion, thought only of the destructive powers of that element to which they entrusted the body of their dead, and of the benefit that they were conferring upon the soul in freeing it by fire from the lifeless body, thus adding their assistance to its own efforts to get free.[42\1] Nothing can destroy the psyche's visible counterpart more quickly than fire. If, then, the body is burnt and the most treasured possessions of the dead man consumed along with it, no tie remains that can detain the soul any longer in the world of the living.

Cremation, therefore, is intended to benefit the dead, whose soul no longer wanders unable to find rest; but still more the living, for they will not be troubled by ghosts that are securely confined to the depths of the earth. The Greeks of Homer, accustomed by long usage to the burning of the dead, are free from all fears of haunting "ghostly" presences. But when the practice of the fire-funeral was first adopted, that which was to be guarded against in the future by the destruction of the body with fire must have been a real cause of fear.[43\1] The souls that were so anxiously relegated to the other world of the Unseen must have been feared as awesome inhabitants of this world. And so, from whatever source it may have come to them,[44\1] the custom of cremation gives firm ground for {22} supposing that at some period of their history the belief in the power and activity of the spirits of the dead and their influence upon the living--a subject of fear rather than reverence--must have been prevalent amongst the Greeks; even though only a few scattered hints still bear witness to such beliefs in the Homeric poems.

§ 8