FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   260   261   262   263   264   265   266   267  
268   269   270   271   272   273   274   275   276   277   278   279   280   281   282   283   284   285   286   287   288   289   290   291   292   >>   >|  
conversion of Constantine. The cake of rice and honey borne in the dead hand for Cerberus, the periodical offerings to the ghosts of the departed, as at the festivals called Feralia and Parentalia,41 the pictures of the scenery of the under world, hung in the temples, of which there was a famous one by Polygnotus,42 all imply a literal crediting of the vulgar doctrine. Altars were set up on the spots where Tiberius and Caius Gracchus were murdered, and services were there performed in honor of their manes. Festus, an old Roman lexicographer who lived in the second or third century, tells us there was in the Comitium a stone covered pit which was supposed to be the 36 Christoph Meiners, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften. Commentarius quo Stoicorum Sententia; de Animorum post mortem Statu satis illustrantur. 37 Epist. 102. 38 Troades, 1. 397. 39 Phado, 34. 40 Republic, lib. i. cap. 5. 41 Ovid, Fasti, lib. ii. II. 530-580. 42 Pausanias, lib. x. cap. 28. mouth of Orcus, and was opened three days in the year for souls to rise out into the upper world.43 Apuleius describes, in his treatise on "the god of Socrates," the Roman conceptions of the departed spirits of men. They called all disembodied human souls "lemures." Those of good men were "lares," those of bad men "larva." And when it was uncertain whether the specified soul was a lar or a larva, it was named "manes." The lares were mild household gods to their posterity. The larva were wandering, frightful shapes, harmless to the pious, but destructive to the reprobate.44 The belief in necromancy is well known to have prevailed extensively among the Greeks and Romans. Aristophanes represents the coward, Pisander, going to a necromancer and asking to "see his own soul, which had long departed, leaving him a man with breath alone."45 In Latin literature no popular terror is more frequently alluded to or exemplified than the dread of seeing ghosts. Every one will recall the story of the phantom that appeared in the tent of Brutus before the battle of Philippi. It pervades the "Haunted House" of Plautus. Callimachus wrote the following couplet as an epitaph on the celebrated misanthrope: "Timon, hat'st thou the world or Hades worse? Speak clear! Hades, O fool, because there are more of us here!" 46 Pythagoras is said once to have explained an earthquake as being caused by a synod of ghosts assembled under ground! It is one of the best of the n
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   260   261   262   263   264   265   266   267  
268   269   270   271   272   273   274   275   276   277   278   279   280   281   282   283   284   285   286   287   288   289   290   291   292   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

departed

 

ghosts

 

called

 
Greeks
 

breath

 
necromancer
 

leaving

 

Pisander

 

coward

 
Aristophanes

represents

 

Romans

 

shapes

 

household

 

posterity

 

uncertain

 

wandering

 
frightful
 
necromancy
 
belief

prevailed

 

reprobate

 
harmless
 

destructive

 

extensively

 

phantom

 

celebrated

 
epitaph
 

misanthrope

 

caused


assembled

 

ground

 

earthquake

 

Pythagoras

 

explained

 

couplet

 

exemplified

 
alluded
 

frequently

 
literature

popular

 

terror

 

recall

 

Haunted

 

pervades

 

Plautus

 

Callimachus

 

Philippi

 

battle

 

appeared