ing in
their eyes the grim robber who stole from them their nearest and dearest,
and eventually deprived each of them of their share in terrestrial
existence. His name was so feared that it was never mentioned by mortals,
who, when they invoked him, struck the earth with their hands, and in
sacrificing to him turned away their faces.

The belief of the people with regard to a future state was, in the Homeric
age, a sad and cheerless one. It was supposed that when a mortal ceased to
exist, his spirit tenanted the shadowy outline of the human form it had
quitted. These shadows, or shades as they were called, were driven by Aides
into his dominions, where they passed their time, some in brooding over the
vicissitudes of fortune which they had experienced on earth, others in
regretting the lost pleasures they had enjoyed in life, but all in a
condition of semi-consciousness, from which the intellect could only be
roused to full activity by drinking of the blood of the sacrifices offered
to their shades by living friends, which, for a time, endowed them with
their former mental vigour. The only beings supposed to enjoy any happiness
in a future state were the heroes, whose acts of daring and deeds of
prowess had, during their life, reflected honour on the land of their
birth; and even these, according to Homer, pined after their career of
earthly activity. He tells us that when Odysseus visited the lower world at
the command of Circe, and held communion with the shades of the heroes of
the Trojan war, Achilles assured him that he would rather be the poorest
day-labourer on earth than reign supreme over the realm of shades.

The early Greek poets offer but scanty allusions to Erebus. Homer appears
purposely to envelop these realms in vagueness and mystery, in order,
probably, to heighten the sensation of awe inseparably connected with {132}
the lower world. In the Odyssey he describes the entrance to Erebus as
being beyond the furthermost edge of Oceanus, in the far west, where dwelt
the Cimmerians, enveloped in eternal mists and darkness.

In later times, however, in consequence of extended intercourse with
foreign nations, new ideas became gradually introduced, and we find
Egyptian theories with regard to a future state taking root in Greece,
which become eventually the religious belief of the whole nation. It is now
that the poets and philosophers, and more especially the teachers of the
Eleusinian Mysteries, begin to inc