ad and sacrifices are offered to them.[687]

+371+. The worship of the dead in the great civilized communities,
though more elaborate and refined than the savage cult, is in substance
identical with it. The Egyptians provided the departed soul with food
and honored the dead man with laudatory notices of his earthly life; the
royal ancestor of a king, it was believed, might act as mediator between
him and the gods.[688] The Babylonians, while they lamented the
departure of men to the gloomy existence in the Underworld, recognized
the quasi-divine power of the dead and addressed prayer to them.[689]
The Hebrews offered food to the dead, had funeral feasts, and consulted
ghosts who were regarded as divine.[690] The Hindu "fathers," though
kept distinct from the gods, were yet conceived of as possessing godlike
powers and were worshiped as gods.[691] The Persian "forefathers"
(_fravashis_), particularly the manes of eminent pious men, were held to
be bestowers of all the blessings of life; offerings were made and
prayers addressed to them.[692]

+372+. Early notices of a cult of the dead among the Greeks are scanty.
There was the usual kindly provision of food, arms, and other
necessaries for them.[693] Odysseus in Hades pours out a libation
(honey, wine, water, to which meal is added) to all the dead, addresses
vows and prayers to them, and promises to offer to them a barren heifer
on his return to Ithaca, and a black sheep separately to Teiresias.[694]
From the sixth century onward the references in the literature show that
the worship of the dead (including children) was then general (and of
course it must have begun much earlier). The offerings made to them were
both vegetable and animal; the sacrificed animal was slaughtered in the
same way as in the sacrifices to chthonic deities--the dead were, in
fact, regarded as underground deities.[695] The flesh of the animals
offered was not eaten by the worshipers.

+373+. Among the dead thus honored is to be included one class of
heroes. A Greek "hero" was sometimes an eminent man, sometimes such a
man divinized, sometimes an old god reduced to human dimensions,
reckoned in some cases to belong to the circle of the gods proper.[696]
Such personages might be worshiped as gods, with the sacrifices
appropriate to the gods, or as departed men, with the sacrifices that
custom fixed for the dead. The hero-cult included many men of note
recently deceased, like Brasidas and those t