and the murderer was
caught exactly where the ghost had indicated, and was duly punished.

This is one of the very few stories in which the apparition is seen at
or near the moment of death, as is the case in the vast majority of the
well-authenticated cases collected during recent years.

Aristeas of Proconesus, a man of high birth, died quite suddenly in a
fulling establishment in his native town.[92] The owner locked the
building and went to inform his relatives, when a man from Cyzicus,
hearing the news, denied it, saying that Aristeas had met him on the way
thither and talked to him; and when the relatives came, prepared to
remove the body, they found no Aristeas, either alive or dead.
Altogether, he seems to have been a remarkable person. He disappeared
for seven years, and then appeared in Proconesus and wrote an epic poem
called _Arimispea_, which was well known in Herodotus's day. Two hundred
and forty years later he was seen again, this time at Metapontum, and
bade the citizens build a shrine to Apollo, and near it erect a statue
to himself, as Apollo would come to them alone of the Italian Greeks,
and he would be seen following in the form of a raven. The townsmen were
troubled at the apparition, and consulted the Delphic oracle, which
confirmed all that Aristeas had said; and Apollo received his temple and
Aristeas his statue in the market-place.

Apollonius[93] tells virtually the same story, except that in his
version Aristeas was seen giving a lesson in literature by a number of
persons in Sicily at the very hour he died in Proconesus. He says that
Aristeas appeared at intervals for a number of years after his death.
The elder Pliny[94] also speaks of Aristeas, saying that at Proconesus
his soul was seen to leave his body in the form of a raven, though he
regards the tale as in all probability a fabrication.

The doctor in Lucian's _Philopseudus_ (_c._ 26) declares that he knew a
man who rose from the dead twenty days after he was buried, and that he
attended him after his resurrection. But when asked how it was the body
did not decompose or the man die of hunger, he has no answer to give.

Dio Cassius[95] describes how, when Nero wished to cut a canal through
the Isthmus of Corinth, blood spurted up in front of those who first
touched the earth, groans and cries were heard, and a number of ghosts
appeared. Not till Nero took a pickaxe and began to work himself, to
encourage the men, was any real pro