[4\1: The first view is Nägelsbach's, the second that of
Grotemeyer.]

[5\1: And of civilized peoples, too, in antiquity. Just such a
second self, an ~ei/dôlon~ duplicating the visible self of man,
were, in their original significance, the _genius_ of the Romans,
the _Fravashi_ of the Persians, the _Ka_ of the Egyptians.]

[6\1: ~hupoti/thetai~ (sc. Homer) ~ta\s psucha\s toi=s eidô/lois
toi=s en toi=s _kato/ptrois_ phainome/nois homoi/as kai\ toi=s dia\
tô=n _huda/tôn_ sunistame/nois, ha\ katha/pax hêmi=n exei/kastai
kai\ ta\s kinê/seis mimei=tai steremniô/dê de\ hupo/stasin oudemi/an
e/chei eis anti/lêpsin kai\ haphê/n~, Apollod. ~p. theô=n~ ap.
Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 420 W.]

[7\1: Cf. Cic., _Div._ i, 63: iacet corpus dormientis ut mortui,
viget autem et vivit animus. Quod multo magis faciet post mortem cum
omnino corpore excesserit. _TD_. i, 29: visis quibusdam saepe
movebantur eisque maxime nocturnis, ut viderentur ei qui vita
excesserant vivere. Here we have precise ancient testimony both for
the subjective and the objective elements in dreaming and for their
importance for the origin of belief about the soul.]

[8\1: ~To\n d' e/lipe psuchê/ . . . au=tis d' ampnu/nthê~, ~E~ 696
f. ~Tê\n de\ kat' ophthalmô=n erebennê\ nu\x eka/lupsen, ê/ripe d'
exopi/sô, apo\ de\ psuchê\n eka/pussen . . . e/pei ou=n a/mpnuto
kai\ es phre/na thumo\s age/rthê~--~Ch~ 466 ff., 475; and ~ô~ 348:
~apopsu/chonta~.]

[9\1: Speaking of _suspirium_ ( = ~leipopsuchi/a~), Sen., _Ep._ liv,
2, says, medici hanc "meditationem mortis" vocant. faciet enim
aliquando spiritus ille quod saepe conatus est.]

[10\1: A remarkable idea seems to be obscurely suggested in an
expression such as that of ~x~ 207, ~all' ê/toi to\n Kê=res e/ban
thana/toio phe/rousai eis Aï/dao do/mous~; cf. ~B~ 302. Usually the
Keres bring death to men: here (like Thanatos himself in later
poetry) they conduct the dead into the realm of Hades. They are
_daimones_ of Hades, originally and primitively themselves souls of
the departed (see below, p. 168), and it is a natural idea to make
such soul-spirits, hovering in the air, carry off the souls of men
just dead to the realm of the souls. In Homer only a stereotyped
phrase preserves the vague memory of such a conception.] {45}

[11\1: Of the dead we read in ~l~ 219, ~ou ga\r e/ti sa/rkas te kai\
oste/a i=nes e/chousi~. Taking the words strictly this might mean
that the dead possess sinews but not the flesh or bones that should
be held together by the sinews. This is how Nauck, in fact,
understood the Homeric words: _Mélanges Grécorom._ iv, 718. But it
is very difficult to picture "shadows" which in this manner possess
sinews but no body of flesh and bones: the corrupt words of _fr._
229, preserved apart from their context, are quite insufficient to
prove that Aesch. derived such an unrealizable impression from the
Homeric words.--That the poet of these lines from the Nek. simply
meant "flesh, bones, and sinews, too, which might have held them
together", is shown quite clearly by what follows: ~alla\ ta\ me/n
te puro\s kratero\n me/nos aithome/noio damna=|, epei/ ke prô=ta
li/pê| leu/k' oste/a thumo/s, psuchê\ d' êü/t' o/neiros apoptame/nê
pepo/têtai~. How, then, could the fire help destroying the sinews
too?]

[12\1: The sacrificial character of the proceedings at the _rogus_
of Patroklos has again been called in question by v. Fritze, _de
libatione veterum Graecorum_, 71 f. (1893). He admits this
interpretation of the pouring of the blood on the pyre, but explains
the other circumstances differently. It would be quite easy to
disprove in this fashion the sacrificial character of every
~holokau/tôma~ for ~chtho/nioi~ whether Heroes or the dead. It is
true that the bodies of sheep and cattle, horses and dogs, thus
completely consumed by fire, are not a "food-offering", but they are
a sacrifice for all that, and belong to the class of expiatory
offerings in which the flesh is not offered for the food of the
daimon but the lives of the victims are sacrificed to him. That
Achilles slays the Trojan prisoners at the rogus ~ktame/noio
cholôthei/s~ (~Ps~ 23) does not destroy the sacrificial character of
this offering intended to appease the wrath (felt also by Achilles)
of the dead man.--The whole procedure gives a picture of primitive
sacrificial ritual in honour of the dead and differs in no
particular from the ritual of sacrifice to the ~theoi\ chtho/nioi~.
This is recognized by Stengel in his _Chthonischer und Todtencult_
(_Festschr. Friedländ._), p. 432, who also marks clearly the
differences between the two religious ceremonies as they were
gradually evolved in the process of time.]

[13\1: It cannot be denied that the libation of wine poured out by
Achilles during the night (to which he expressly summons the psyche
of Patroklos, ~Ps~ 218-22) is _sacrificial_ in character, like all
similar ~choai/~. The wine with which the embers of the funeral pyre
are extinguished may have been intended to serve that purpose alone
and not as a sacrifice. But the jars of honey and oil which Achilles
has placed upon the pyre (~Ps~ 170; cf. ~ô~ 67-8) can hardly be
regarded as anything but sacrificial (cf. Bergk, _Opusc._ ii, 675;
acc. to Stengel, _Jahrb. Philol._, p. 649, 1887, they only serve to
kindle the flames, but the honey, at any rate, seems a strange
material for the purpose. For libations at the _rogus_ or at the
grave honey and oil are regularly used--see Stengel himself, loc.
cit., and _Philol._ xxxix, 378 ff.). Acc. to v. Fritze, _de libat._,
72, the jars of honey and oil were intended not as libations but for
the "bath of the dead"--in the next world, in the Homeric
Hades!--Honey can only have been used for bathing purposes, in
Greece as elsewhere, by those who unintentionally fell into it like
Glaukos.]

[14\1: On Greek hair offerings see Wieseler, _Philol._ ix, 711 ff.,
who rightly regards these offerings as symbolic and as substitutes
for primitive human sacrifice. The same explanation of the offering
of hair is given in the case of other peoples also; cf. Tylor, ii,
401.] {46}

[15\1: Patroklos' request for prompt burial (69 ff.) gives no
sufficient motive, since Achilles has already given orders for the
funeral to take place next day, 49 ff. (cf. 94 f.).]

[16\1: ll. 19; 179. Again, in the night following the erection of
the funeral pyre, when the body is burning, Achilles calls to the
soul of Patroklos ~psuchê\n kiklê/skôn Patroklê=os deiloi=o~ 221.
The person thus called upon is evidently supposed to be still close
at hand. This is not contradicted by the formula ~chai=re . . . kai\
ein Aï/dao do/moisi~ (19, 179), for in l. 19. at least, the words
cannot mean _in Hades_, since the soul is still outside Hades, as it
tells us itself, 71 ff. The words can only mean "about", "before"
the House of Hades (like ~en **potamô=|~ "by the river", etc.). In
the same way ~eis Aï/dao do/mon~ often only means _towards_ the
house of Hades (Ameis on ~k~ 512).]

[17\1: From descriptions in ancient poetry? or had similar
customs--at least, at the funerals of chieftains--survived into the
poet's own time? Especially magnificent, e.g., were the burials of
Spartan kings--and also Cretan kings, it appears, so long as there
were any; cf. Arist. _fr._ 476, p. 1556a, 37 ff.]

[18\1: Funeral games for Amarynkeus, ~Ps~ 630 ff., for Achilles, ~ô~
85 ff. Such games are referred to as being quite the usual custom in
~ô~ 87 ff. Later poetry is full of descriptions of such ~agô=nes
epita/phioi~ of the heroic age.]

[19\1: As Aristarchos noticed: see _Rh. Mus._ 36, 544 f. Rather
different are the (certainly ancient) games and contests for the
hand of a bride (cf. stories of Pelops, Danaos, Ikarios, etc.).]

[20\1: Cf. ~Ps~ 274, ~ei me\n nu=n _epi\_ a/llô| aethleu/oimen
Achaioi/~, i.e. in _honour_ of Patroklos; cf. 646: ~so\n hetai=ron
ae/thloisi _ktere/ïze_~. ~ktereï/zein~ means to give the dead man
his ~kte/rea~, i.e. his former possessions (by burning them). The
games are therefore on exactly the same footing as the burning of
the personal effects of the dead in which the soul of the dead man
was supposed still to take pleasure.]

[21\1: Aug., _CD._ viii, 26: Varro dicit omnes mortuos existimari
manes deos, et probat per ea sacra quae omnibus fere mortuis
exhibentur, ubi et ludos commemorat funebres, tamquam hoc sit
maximum divinitatis indicium, quod non solent ludi nisi numinibus
celebrari.]

[22\1: Quae pietas ei debetur a quo nihil acceperis? aut quid
omnino, cuius nullum meritum sit, ei deberi potest? . . . (dei)
quamobrem colendi sint non intellego nullo nec accepto ab eis nec
sperato bono, Cic., _ND._ i, 116; cf. Pl., _Euthphr._ pass. Homer
speaks in the same way of the ~_amoibê\_ agakleitê=s hekato/mbês~,
~g~ 58-9 (cf. ~amoiba\s tô=n thusiô=n~ from the side of the gods,
Pl. _Smp._, 202 E).]

[23\1: ~tou=to/ nu kai\ ge/ras hoi=on oïzuroi=si brotoi=sin,
kei/rasthai/ te ko/mên bale/ein t' apo\ da/kru pareiô=n~, ~d~ 197
f.; cf. ~ô~ 188 f., 294 f.]

[24\1: ~ou ga\r e/t' au=tis ni/somai ex' Aï/dao epê/n me puro\s
lela/chête~, ~Ps~ 75 f.]

[25\1: ~--io/nti eis Aï/dao chersi\ kat' ophthalmou\s ele/ein su/n
te sto/m' erei=sai~, ~l~ 426; cf. ~L~ 453, ~ô~ 296. To do this is
the duty of the next of kin, mother or wife. The necessity for
closing the sightless eyes and dumb mouth of the dead is
intelligible without reference to any superstitious _arrière
pensée_. Such an idea is, however, dimly discernible in such a
phrase as ~a/chris ho/tou _psuchê/n_ mou mêtro\s che/res ei=lan ap'
o/ssôn~, _Epigr. Gr._, 314, 24. Was there originally some idea of
the "soul" being released by these means?--Seat of the soul in the
~ko/rê~ of the eye: ~psuchai\ d' en ophthalmoi=si tô=n
teleutô/ntôn~, Babr. 95, 35 (see Crusius, _Rh. Mus._ 46, 319).
Augurium non timendi mortem in aegritudine quamdiu oculorum pupillae
imaginem reddant, Plin., _N.H._ 28, 64; cf. Grimm, p. 1181. (If a
person can no longer see his or her ~ei/dôlon~ {47} in a mirror it
is a sign of approaching death, Oldenburg, _Rel. d. Ved._, 526 [p.
449^3 French tr.].)--Among many peoples it is believed that the eyes
of the dead must be closed in order to prevent the dead person
seeing or haunting anyone in the future: Robinsohn, _Psychol. d.
Naturv._, 44; cf. Cic., _Verr._ v, 118 (of the Greeks); Vg., _A._
iv, 684 f.: extremus si quis super halitus errat ore legam. Serv. ad
loc.: muliebriter, tamquam possit animam sororis excipere et in se
transferre (cf. _Epigr. Gr._, 547; _IG. Sic. et It._, 607e, 9-10).
~psuchê/~ making its exit through the mouth: ~I~ 409; cf. "Among the
Seminoles of Florida when a woman died in childbirth the infant was
held over her face to receive her parting spirit and thus acquire
strength and knowledge for future use," Tylor, i, 433.]

[26\1: And even ~ana\ pro/thuron tetramme/nos~, ~T~ 212, i.e. with
feet turned towards the door. The reason for this custom--which
existed elsewhere, too, and still exists--is hardly to be sought
only in the _ritus naturae_, as Plin. 7, 46, thinks. This has
generally little to do with the customs observed on the solemn
occasions of life. The meaning of the practice is much more naively
revealed in a statement about the manners of the Pehuenchen Indians
in South America given by Pöpig, _Reise in Chile, Peru, etc._, i,
393. There they carry the dead man feet foremost out of the door
"because if the corpse of the dead man were carried out otherwise
his wandering ghost might come back into the house". The Greek
custom, though in Homeric times long faded to a mere symbol, must be
supposed to have depended originally upon similar fears of the
return of the "soul". (Similar precautions arising from the same
belief were customary at funerals elsewhere: Oldenberg, _Rel. d.
Veda_, 573-4 [489 F.T.]. Robinsohn, _Psychol. d. Naturv._, 45 f.)
Belief in the incomplete departure of the soul from this world has
dictated these customs, too.]

[27\1: The details of the procedure until the funeral dirge are
given in ~S~ 343-55.]

[28\1: ~tu/mbos~ and ~stê/lê, P~ 457, 675, ~R~ 434, ~L~ 371, ~m~ 14.
A heaped-up ~sê=ma~ as the burial-place of Eetion round which the
Nymphs plant elms: ~Z~ 419 ff.--which preserves a trace of the
custom, obtaining also in later times, of planting trees and even a
whole grove round the grave.]

[29\1: ~kte/rea ktereï/zein~ in the formula ~sêma/ te/ hoi cheu=ai
kai\ epi\ kte/rea ktereï/zein~, ~a~ 291, ~b~ 222. Here the
~ktereï/zein~ comes after the heaping up of the
grave-mound--possibly the ~kte/rea~ are to be burnt on or at the
grave-mound. Schol. B on ~T~ 212 is, however, mistaken in the rule
deduced from these cases: ~prouti/thesan, ei=ta e/thapton, ei=ta
etumbocho/oun, ei=ta ektere/ïzon~. All the cases refer to the
ceremonial at _empty_ graves. Where the body was obtainable the
relatives or friends would have burnt the ~kte/rea~ with the body.
This is done in the case of Eetion and Elpenor, and it must be
understood in the close connexion of the words ~en puri\ kê/aien
kai\ epi\ kte/rea kteri/saien~, ~Ô~ 38, and again ~o/phr' he/taron
tha/ptoi kai\ epi\ kte/rea kteri/seien~, ~g~ 285.]

[30\1:--a custom that originally belonged to all primitive peoples
and remained in force for a very long time among many of them. _All_
the possessions of a dead Inca remain his own absolute property:
Prescott, _Peru_^4, i, 31. Among the Abipones of Paraguay all the
possessions of the dead are burnt: Klemm, _Culturges._ ii, 99. The
Albanians of the Caucasus buried all the dead man's possessions with
him, ~kai\ dia\ tou=to pe/nêtes zô=sin oude\n patrô=|on e/chontes~,
Str. 503. Of ancient origin are also the extravagant burial customs
of the Mingrelians living in what was formerly Albania: Chardin,
_Voy. en Perse_ (ed. **Langlès), i, 325, 298, 314, 322.] {48}

[31\1: Examples given by O. Jahn, _Persius_, p. 219 fin.]

[32\1: ~psuchê\ d' ek rhethe/ôn ptame/nê A/ïdo/sde bebê/kei, ho\n
po/tmon goo/ôsa lipou=s' androtê=ta kai\ hêbên~, ~P~ 756. ~Ch~ 362
cf. ~U~ 294, ~N~ 415. ~psuchê\ d' Aïdo/sde katê=lthen~, ~k~ 560, ~l~
65. Complete departure into the depths of the kingdom of Hades is
more clearly expressed in such words as ~bai/ên do/mon A/ïdos
_ei/sô_~, ~Ô~ 246, ~ki/on A/ïdos ei/sô~, ~Z~ 422, etc. Again, in ~l~
150, the soul of Teiresias while speaking to Odysseus is still in
Hades in the wider sense but is more exactly on the extreme edge of
that region: we are told ~psuchê\ me\n e/bê do/mon A/ïdos
_ei/sô_~--now at last it goes back again into the depths of the
Kingdom of Hades.]

[33\1: Aristonikos on ~Ps~ 104: ~hê diplê= ho/ti ta\s tô=n ata/phôn
psucha\s Ho/mêros e/ti sôzou/sas tê\n phro/nêsin hupoti/thetai~.
(Rather too systematically put by Porph. ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p.
422, 20 ff., 425, 25 ff. W.) Elpenor is the first to approach
Odysseus' sacrificial trench ~ou ga/r pô ete/thapto~, ~l~ 52. His
~psuchê/~ had not yet been received into Hades (_Rh. Mus._ 1, 615).
Achilles' treatment of the body of Hektor shows that he thought of
his enemy (because he was still unburied) as being able to feel what
was done to him: lacerari eum et sentire credo putat, Cic., _TD._ i,
105.]

[34\1: Plin. vii, 187, explains the change among the Romans from
burial to cremation as being due to the fear that in times of war
and disturbance the dead might be deprived of their rest. If a man
dies in war time, i.e. during a period of temporary nomadism, his
body is burnt, but a limb (sometimes the head) is cut off to be
taken home and buried ad quod servatum iusta fierent, Paul. Festi,
148, 11; Varro, _LL._ v, 23; Cic., _Lg._ ii, 55, 60. The same custom
is found among certain German tribes: see Weinhold, _Sitzb. Wien.
Ac._ xxix, 156; xxx, 208. Even among the negroes of Guinea and the
South American Indians practices resembling the _os resectum_ of the
Romans are found in the case of those who die in war in foreign
country; cf. Klemm, _Culturg._ iii, 297; ii, 98 f. In every case
burial is regarded as the ancient and traditional mode of disposing
of the dead, and the one strictly required on religious grounds.]

[35\1: Only once is there any mention of taking home the burnt
bones, ~Ê~ 334 f. Aristarch. rightly recognized this as being in
conflict with the normal conceptions and practice of Homer and
regarded the lines as the composition of a later poet (Sch. A ad
loc. and on ~D~ 174; Sch. EMQ., ~g~ 109). The lines may have been
inserted to account for the absence from the Troad of such enormous
grave-mounds as the burial of the ashes of both armies should have
produced. The same reason--the desire expressed in these lines to
bring back those who have died in a foreign country to their own
land at last--is implied as the origin of cremation in the
illustrative story of Herakles and Argeios, the son of Likymnios, in
the ~histori/a~ (derived from Andron) of Sch. A on ~A~ 52.]

[36\1: _Kl. Schr._ ii, 216, 220.]

[37\1: It would apply better to Roman beliefs; cf. Vg., _A._ iv,
698-9--though even that means something else. (Cf. also Oldenberg,
_Rel. d. Veda_, 585, 2.)]

[38\1: Cf. esp. ~Ps~ 75-6, ~l~ 218-22.]

[39\1: Serv. ad _A._ iii, 68: Aegyptii condita diutius servant
cadavera scilicet ut anima multo tempore perduret et corpori sit
obnoxia nec cito ad aliud transeat. Romani contra faciebant,
comburentes cadavera ut statim anima in generalitatem, i.e. in suam
naturam rediret (the pantheistic touch may be neglected).--Cf. the
account given by Ibn Foslan of the burial customs of the pagan
Russians {49} (quoted from Frähn by J. Grimm, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 292):
the preference for burning was due to the idea that the soul was
less quickly set free on its way to Paradise when the body was
buried intact, than when it was destroyed by fire.]

[40\1: Cf. the Hymn of the Rigveda (x, 16) which is to be said at a
cremation, esp. v. 2, 9 (quoted by Zimmer, _Altind. Leben_, 402 f.),
and also _Rigv._ x, 14, 8 (Zimmer, p. 409). The Indians also wished
to prevent the return of the dead to the world of the living. The
feet of the corpse were chained so that the dead could not return
(Zimmer, p. 402).]

[41\1: It lies at the root of the stories of Demeter and Demophoon
(or Triptolemos), and also that of Thetis and Achilles, when the
goddess, laying the mortal child in the fire, ~periê/|rei ta\s
thnêta\s sa/rkas, e/phtheiren ho\ ê=n autô=| thnêto/n~, in order to
make it immortal (cf. Preller, _Dem. u. Perseph._, 112); cf. also
the custom observed at certain festivals (? of Hecate, cf. Bergk,
_PLG._ iii, 682) of lighting fires in the streets and leaping
through the flames carrying children, see Grimm (E.T.), p. 625; cf.
also Cic., _Div._ i, 47: o praeclarum discessum cum ut Herculi
contigit mortali corpore cremato in lucem animus excessit! Ov.,
_M._, ix, 250: Luc., _Herm._, 7; Q.S. v, 640 ff. (For more about the
"purifying" effects of fire, see below, chap. ix, n. 127.)]

[42\1: Nothing else than this is implied by the words of ~Ê~ 409-10,
~ou ga\r tis pheidô\ neku/ôn katatethnêô/tôn gi/gnet', epei/ ke
tha/nôsi puro\s meilisse/men ô=ka~. The souls of the dead must be
quickly "assuaged with fire" (their longing gratified) and so their
bodies are burnt. Purification from what is mortal and unclean,
which Dieterich (_Nekyia_, 197, 3) thinks is referred to in this
passage, is certainly not suggested as such by the words of the
poet.]

[43\1: Light may be incidentally thrown on the question of the
transition from burial to cremation by such a story as that which an
Icelandic Saga tells of a man who is buried by his own wish before
the door of his house; "but as he returned and did much mischief his
body was exhumed and burnt and the ashes scattered over the sea"
(Weinhold, _Altnord. Leben_, 499). We often read in old stories how
the body of a dead man who goes about as a vampire is burnt. His
soul is then exorcized and cannot come back again.]

[44\1: It is natural to think of Asiatic influence. Cremation
hearths have recently (1893) been discovered in Babylonia.]

[45\1: See Helbig, _D. Hom. Epos aus d. Denkm. erl._, 42 f.]

[46\1: That the men of the "Mycenaean" culture, though much affected
by foreign influences, were Greeks--the Greeks of the Heroic age of
whom Homer speaks--may now be regarded as certain (see esp. E.
Reisch, _Verh. Wien. Philol._, 99 ff.).]

[47\1: See Schliemann, _Mycenae_, E.T., 155, 165, 213-14.]

[48\1: Helbig. _Hom. Epos_^2, p. 52.]

[49\1: Cf. K. Weinhold, _Sitzb. Wien. Ak._, 1858 (_Phil. hist.
Cl._), xxix, pp. 121, 125, 141. The remarkable coincidences between
the Mycenaean and these North European burial customs do not seem as
yet to have been noticed. (The object of this elaborate foundation
and covering may have been to preserve the corpse from decay longer,
and especially from the effects of damp.)]

[50\1: Also in the domed grave of Dimini: _Ath. Mitth._, xii, 138.]

[51\1: The soul of a dead man from whom a favourite possession is
withheld returns (equally whether the body and the possessions with
it are burnt or buried). The story in Lucian, _Philops._, xxvii, of
the wife of Eukrates (cf. Hdt. v, 92~ê~), is quite in accordance
with popular belief.] {50}

[52\1: Schliemann, _Myc._, 212-13: see plan F. A similar altar in
the Hall of the Palace of Tiryus: Schuchhardt, _Schliemann's Exc._
(E.T.), p. 107.]

[53\1: ~escha/ra~ is essentially ~eph' hê=s toi=s hê/rôsin
apothu/omen~, Poll. i, 8; cf. Neanthes ap. Ammon., _Diff. Voc._, p.
34 V. Such an altar rested directly on the ground without anything
intervening (~mê\ e/chousa hu/psos all' epi\ gê=s hidrume/nê~), it
is round (~strogguloeidê/s~) and hollow (~koi/lê~): cf. esp. Harp.,
87, 15 ff. Phot., s.v. ~escha/ra~ (2 glosses); _AB._ 256, 32; _EM._,
384, 12 ff.; Sch. on ~z~ 52; Eust., _Od._, p. 1939 (~ps~ 71): Sch.
Eur., _Ph._, 284. It is evident that the ~escha/ra~ is not very far
removed from the sacrificial trench of the cult of the dead: thus it
is actually called also ~bo/thros~; Sch. Eur., _Ph._, 274 (~skaptê/~
S. Byz., 191, 7 Mein.).]

[54\1: Stengel has a different view (_Chthon. u. Todt._, 427, 2).]

II

[55\1: It is doubtful whether Homer even knew of dream-oracles
(which would be closely related to oracles of the dead**). That in
~A~ 63 ~egkoi/mêsis~ is "at least alluded to" (as Nägelsbach,
_Nachhom. Theol._, 172, thinks) is by no means certain. The
~oneiropo/los~ would not be a priest who intentionally gave himself
up to prophetic sleep and thus ~hupe\r hete/rôn onei/rous hora=|~,
but rather an ~oneirokri/tês~--an interpreter of other men's
unsought dream-visions.]

[56\1: Even the river-gods and Nymphs who are usually confined to
their own homes are called to the ~agora/~ of all the gods in
Olympos, ~U~ 4 ff. These deities who remain fixed in the locality of
their worship are weaker than the Olympians just because they are
not elevated with the rest to the ideal summit of Olympos. Kalypso
resignedly admits this, ~e~ 169 f., ~ei/ ke theoi/ g' ethe/lôsi,
toi\ ourano\n euru\n e/chousin, hoi/ meu phe/rteroi/ eisi noê=sai/
te krê=nai/ te~. They have sunk to the second rank of deities. They
are, however, never thought of as free and independent, but as a
mere addition to the kingdom of Zeus and the other Olympians.]

[57\1: Exx. in Nägelsbach, _Hom. Theol._^2, 387 f. (~phre/nes~), W.
Schrader, _Jb. f. Philol._ 1885, p. 163 f. (~ê=tor~).]

[58\1: The belief in the existence of more than one soul in the same
person is very wide-spread. See J. G. Müller, _Americ. Urrelig._, p.
66, 207 f., Tylor, i, 432 f. The distinction between the five
spiritual powers dwelling within man given by the Avesta rests upon
similar grounds (Geiger, _Civ. of East. Iran_, 1, 124 ff.). Even in
Homer Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, i, 249, finds a "two-soul" theory
fully developed. According to him Homer recognizes in the
~thumo/s~--a word supposed to be derived from the steam rising from
freshly shed and still warm blood--a second soul in addition to the
~psuchê/~: a "smoke-soul" side by side with the "breath-soul". But
if by soul a "something" is meant--as it must be in popular
psychology--which is added independently to the body and its
faculties, something which lives separately in the body and after
the death of the body (with which it is not indissolubly united)
dissociates itself and goes off independently--then the ~thumo/s~ of
Homer cannot be called a "soul" or a double of the ~psuchê/~. Again
and again the ~thumo/s~ is clearly referred to as a mental faculty
of the living body; either thinking or willing or merely feeling
(~thumô=| noe/ô, thumô=| dei=sai, gêthê/sei thumô=|, echolô/sato
thumô=|, ê/rare thumo\n edôdê=|~, etc.) is conducted by its means.
It is the seat of the emotions (~me/nos e/llabe thumo/n~) and
belongs to the body of the living man, and is especially enclosed in
the ~phre/nes~. In the face of {51} this it is impossible to regard
it as something independent of the body or as anything else than a
special faculty of the same living body. Once, indeed, ~Ê~ 131, the
~thumo/s~ is spoken of, instead of ~psuchê/ as that which goes down
to Haides, but this can only be an error or an oversight (see also
below, ch. xi, n. 2). According to Homeric ideas--and this is a
conception repeated over and over again in Greek literature and even
in Greek philosophy--the body has all its vital powers in itself,
not merely ~thumo/s~ but ~me/nos, no/os, mê=tis, boulê/~. Yet it
only acquires life when supplemented by the ~psuchê/~, which is
something different from all these bodily powers--something with an
independent being of its own and alone deserving the name "soul", a
name which belongs as little to ~thumo/s~ as to ~no/os~. Gomperz
thinks that ~thumo/s~, etc., were at first the only recognized
faculties of the body and that ~psuchê/~ was only (for the Greeks)
added later. This is certainly not to be made out from Homer--or any
other part of Greek literature.]

[59\1: ~peri\ psuchê=s the/on~, ~Ch~ 161; ~peri\ psuche/ôn
ema/chonto~, ~ch~ 245; ~psuchê\n paraballo/menos~, ~I~ 322;
~psucha\s parthe/menoi~, ~g~ 74, ~i~ 255; ~psuchê=s anta/xion~, ~I~
401; and cf. ~i~ 523: ~ai\ ga\r dê\ psuchê=s te kai\ aiô=no/s se
dunai/mên eu=nin poiê/sas pe/mpsai do/mon A/ïdos ei/sô~. No one
strictly speaking can go into Hades bereft of his ~psuchê/~, for it
is the ~psuchê/~ alone which goes there. Thus ~psuchê/~ here clearly
= life, as is shown also by the addition of the words ~kai\ aiô=nos~
for the sake of clearness. It is more doubtful whether this is the
explanation of ~psuchê=s o/lethros~, ~Ch~ 325, or of ~psucha\s
ole/santes~, ~N~ 763, ~Ô~ 168. Other passages adduced by Nägelsb.,
_Hom. Th._^2, 381, and Schrader, _Jb. f. Philol._ 1885, p. 167,
either admit or require the material sense of the word ~psuchê/~:
e.g. ~E~ 696 ff., ~Th~ 123, ~s~ 91, etc.]

[60\1: A more detailed statement and documentation of the following
analysis of the Nekyia in Od. ~l~ will be found in _Rh. Mus._ 1, 600
ff. (1895). [_Kl. Schr._ ii, 255.]]

[61\1: The information given by Teiresias, ~l~ 107 ff., about
Thrinakia and the cattle of Helios seems to be put in such a brief
and inadequate form just because the fuller account given by Kirke,
~m~ 127, was already known to the poet who did not wish to repeat
this word for word.]

[62\1: A final example of such pictures intended to suggest the
background of the Odyssey is the conversation between Achilles and
Agamemnon in the "second Nekyia", ~ô~ 19 ff. The composer of these
lines has understood quite correctly the meaning and purpose of his
model, the original Nekyia of ~l~, though his continuation of it is
certainly very clumsy.]

[63\1: ~k~ 539-40 is borrowed from ~d~ 389-90, 470.--I find after
writing this that Kammer had already suggested imitation of ~d~ in
the Nekyia: _Einheit d. Od._, 494 f.]

[64\1: It is striking (and may have some special reason) that in
Kirke's account there is no mention of the Kimmerians. It is easier
to see why the careful description of the country in Kirke's speech,
~k~ 509-15, is not afterwards repeated but merely recalled to the
memory of the reader in a few words (~l~ 21-2).]

[65\1: I can see no essential difference between the conception and
situation of Hades as indicated in the Iliad and the account given
in the Nekyia of the Odyssey. J. H. Voss and Nitzsch were right in
this matter. Nor do the additional details given in the "second
Nekyia" of ~ô~ essentially "conflict" (as Teuffel, _Stud. u.
Charact._, thinks) with the description of the first Nekyia. It does
not adhere {52} slavishly to its original, but it rests upon the
same fundamental conceptions.]

[66\1: Sch. H.Q., ~k~ 514, ~Puriphlege/thôn, ê/toi to\ pu=r to\
aphani/zon to\ sa/rkinon tô=n brotô=n~, cf. Apollodor., ~p. theô=n~,
ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 420, 9 W. ~Puriphlege/thôn ei/rêtai apo\ tou=
puri\ phle/gesthai tou\s teleutô=ntas~.]

[67\1: Acheron, too, seems to be regarded as a river. The soul of
the unburied Patroklos, which has already departed, ~an' eurupule\s
A/ïdos dô=~, and has therefore passed over Okeanos, is prevented by
the other souls from passing over "the river", ~Ps~ 72 f. This can
hardly be the Okeanos, and must, therefore, be Acheron (so, too,
Porph. ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 422 f., 426 W.). ~k~ 515 does not in
the least prove that Acheron was thought of as a lake and not a
river, as Bergk, _Opusc._ ii, 695, thinks.]

[68\1: Cf. ~l~ 206 ff., 209-393 ff., 475.]

[69\1: See ~P~ 851 ff. (Patroklos), ~Ch~ 358 ff. (Hektor), ~l~ 69
ff. Behind each of these there lies the ancient belief that the soul
in the moment of escape achieves a higher state of being and returns
to a form of knowledge independent of sense-perception (cf. Artemon
ap. Sch., ~P~ 854, Arist. _fr._ 12 (10) R.). Otherwise this power
belongs to gods and, strictly, only to Zeus, who can foresee
everything (in Homer). But the statements are intentionally modified
to suggest an undefined middle position between prophecy in the full
sense and mere ~stocha/zesthai~ (cf. Sch. B.V., ~Ch~ 359)--~Ch~ 359
at the most may go beyond this point.]

[70\1: ~l~ 218-24.]

[71\1: ~o/ïn arneio\n rhe/zein, thê=lu/n te me/lainan, eis E/rebos
stre/psas~, ~k~ 527 f. From the word ~me/lainan~ the ~o/ïn
arneio\n~ is also to be understood ~apo\ koinou=~ as being, more
precisely, black (and so again in 572)--the ram offered to the gods
(or Souls) of the underworld is regularly black. ~eis E/rebos
stre/psas~, i.e. bending the head downwards (not towards the west) =
~es bo/thron~, ~l~ 36--as Nitzsch rightly explains it. Everything
corresponds to the regular ~e/ntoma~ of later times for the
underworld beings (cf. Stengel, _Ztsch. f. Gymn._, 1880, p. 743
f.).]

[72\1: ~koinê/ tis para\ anthrô/pois esti\n hupo/lêpsis ho/ti
nekroi\ kai\ dai/mones si/dêron phobou=ntai~, Sch. Q., ~l~ 48. It is
really the _sound_ of the bronze or iron that drives away spirits:
Luc., _Philops_. 15 (cf. O. Jahn, _Abergl. d. bös. Blicks_, 70). But
even the mere presence of iron objects is sufficient: [Aug.] _Hom.
de sacrileg._ (about the seventh century), 22, states that to the
_sacrilegi_ belong among others those who wear rings or armlets of
iron, aut qui in domo sua quaecumque de ferro, propter ut daemones
timeant, ponunt.]

[73\1: The idea that the Thesprotian ~nekuomantei=on~ by the river
Acheron was the original of the Homeric picture was first started by
Paus. 1, 17, 5. He was followed by K. O. Müller, _Introd. to a
Scientific System of Myth._, pp. 297-8 (_E. T._, Leitch), who has
been followed by many others. But it has scarcely more justification
than has e.g. the localization of the Homeric entrance to Hades at
Cumae, Herakleia Pont. (cf. _Rh. Mus._ 36, 555 ff.), or other places
of ancient worship of the dead (e.g. Pylos). At such places the
traditional names of Acheron, Kokytos, Pyriphlegethon were easily
introduced--but taken from Homer and not coming thence into Homer.
The fact that it is just this Thesprotian oracle of the dead that is
mentioned in Hdt.'s well-known story (v, 92 ~ê~) does not at all
prove that this was the oldest of all such oracles.]

[74\1: To this extent Lobeck's denial of necromancy to the Homeric
poems (_Agl._ 316) may, perhaps, require to be modified; but so
modified it may be accepted.] {53}

[75\1: In accordance with primeval sacrificial custom. To the dead
only female (or castrated) animals are offered (see Stengel,
_Chthon. u. Todtenc._, 424). Here it is a ~stei=ra bou=s, a/gona
toi=s ago/nois~ (Sch.). So among the Indians, "to the Manes that are
without the powers of life and procreation" a wether instead of a
ram was offered: Oldenberg, _Rel. d. Ved._, 358 [= 306 Fr. T.].]

[76\1: ~Ô~ 592 ff. Achilles says to the dead Patroklos ~mê/ moi
Pa/trokle skudmaine/men ai/ ke pu/thêai ein A/ïdo/s per eô\n ho/ti
He/ktora di=on e/lusa patri\ phi/lô|, e/pei ou/ moi aeike/a dô=ken
a/poina. soi\ d' au= egô\ kai\ tô=nd' apoda/ssomai ho/ss'
epe/oiken~. The possibility that the dead in Hades may be able to
know what is happening in the upper world is referred to only
hypothetically (~ai/ ke~)--not so, however, the intention of giving
the dead man a share in the gifts of Priam (~di' epitaphi/ôn eis
auto\n agô/nôn~ as Sch. B.V. on 594 thinks). The strangeness of such
a promise seems to have been one of the reasons that made Aristarch.
(unjustly) athetize ll. 594-5.]

[77\1: 40-1. This is not un-Homeric, cf. esp. ~X~ 456. Thus on many
vase-paintings we see the psyche of a fallen warrior flying over the
corpse, often clad in full armour, but very diminutive in size--to
express invisibility.]

[78\1: Strictly speaking Odysseus is supposed to enter into
conversation with the women while each informs him of her fate
(231-4); every now and then comes a ~pha/to~ 236, ~phê=~ 237,
~eu/cheto~ 261, ~pha/ske~ 306. But the whole section is little more
than a review at which Odysseus assists without taking any real
part.]

[79\1: Cf. _Rh. Mus._ 1, 625 ff. The nearest parallel to such a
distinction between an ~ei/dôlon~ and the fully animated ~auto/s~ is
to be found in what Stesichoros (and Hesiod before him: see Paraphr.
ant. Lyc., 822, p. 71, Scheer, and _PLG._ iii, p. 215) relates of
Helen and her ~ei/dôlon~. Prob. this latter story gave rise to the
insertion of these lines, ~l~ 602 ff.]

[80\1: Cf. 623 ff.]

[81\1: Welcker, _Gr. Götterl._ i, 818, and others following him.]

[82\1: [Apollod.] 1, 9, 3, 2; Sch., ~A~ 180 (p. 18b, 23 ff., Bekk.)
gives as reason for the punishment of Sisyphos that he betrayed to
Asopos the rape of his daughter Aigina by Zeus. This, however, does
not rest upon good epic tradition. Another story follows up the
betrayal with the myth of the outwitting of Death and then Hades by
S., after which he is sent down to Hades again and punished by the
task of the endless stone-rolling. The story of the double
outwitting of the powers of death (cf. the similar fairy tale of
_Spielhansel_: Grimm, _Fairy Tales_, n. 82, and _Anm._, vol. ii, p.
163, ed. 1915) is obviously intended humorously, and so it seems to
have been treated in a satyr-drama of Aesch., the ~Si/suphos
drape/tês~ [Sch., ~Z~ 153.] The fact that this story ends in the
punishment of the stone-rolling ought to be sufficient warning
against taking it in the serious and edifying sense in which Welcker
and his followers interpret it. It is quite contrary to ancient
ideas to suppose that Sis. is punished for his cunning as a warning
to other crafty (as well as good) men. In ~Z~ 153 he is called
~ke/rdistos andrô=n~ as praise and not blame: so Aristarch. rightly
maintained and supported his case by clear ~anaphora/~ to the line
of the Nekyia (see Sch., ~Z~ 153, ~K~ 44, Lehrs, _Aristarch._^3, p.
117 and ~l~ 593). The idea that the adj. refers to the ~kako/tropon~
of S. is merely a misunderstanding of Porph. ap. Sch., ~l~ 385. How
little anyone thought of S. as a criminal, even with the Homeric
story in his mind, is shown by the Platonic Sokrates who _rejoices_
(_Apol._, 41 C) over the fact that in Hades he will meet, amongst
others, Sisyphos (cf. also {54} Thgn., 702 ff.). The case of Sis.
presents the most serious difficulties that face any attempt to give
a moralizing sense (quite outside the poet's intention) to the
section of the "three penitents". (See also _Rh. Mus._ 1, 630.)]

[83\1: ~G~ 279, ~T~ 260 (cf. _Rh. Mus._ 1, 8). Nitzsch, _Anm. z.
Od._ iii, p. 184 f., vainly employs all the arts of interpretation
and criticism to deny their obvious meaning to both passages.]

[84\1: K. O. Müller, _Aeschylus Eumenides_, p. 167 = E.T., 1853, p.
159.]

[85\1: It should be remembered also that no legal penalties against
perjury existed in Greece, any more than in Rome. They were
unnecessary in face of the general expectation that the deity whom
the perjurer had invoked against himself would take immediate
revenge upon the criminal. (Esp. instructive are the words of
Agamemnon on the Trojan breach of faith, ~D~ 158 ff.) Such revenge
would be taken either during the life time of the perjurer--in which
case the instruments of vengeance would be the spirits of Hell, the
Erinyes: Hes., _Op._, 802 ff.--or else after death.]

[86\1: The oath as a bond in favour of the oath-gods: Thgn., 1195
f., ~mê/ti theou\s epi/orkon epo/mnuthi, ou ga\r anusto\n
athana/tous kru/psai _chrei=os_ opheilo/menon~. Perjury would be
~eis theou\s hamarta/nein~, Soph. _fr._ 431 (472 P.).]

[87\1: Eust., _Od._, p. 1614-15, has understood this. He calls
attention to Pi., _P_. 4, 159, ~ke/letai ga\r hea\n psucha\n
komi/zai Phri/xos eltho/ntas pro\s Aiê/ta thala/mous~--on which
passage the Sch. refers us back again to Homer. Both passages imply
the same belief: ~tô=n apolome/nôn en xe/nê| gê=| ta\s psucha\s
euchai=s tisin epekalou=nto apopleo/ntes hoi phi/loi eis tê\n
ekei/nôn patri/da kai\ edo/koun _kata/gein_ autou\s pro\s tou\s
oikei/ous~ (Sch. ~i~ 65 f., Sch. ~Ê~, ~i~ 62). Nitzsch, _Anm._ iii,
17-18, vainly attempts to get out of the necessity of seeing in this
act the fulfilment of a religious duty. He supposes that Odysseus is
merely satisfying a "need of the heart", etc. The real meaning of
religious performance is too often obscured by such "ethical"
interpretation.]

[88\1: The command of Athene to Telem., ~a~ 291, presupposes as
universally customary the erection of a cenotaph for those who die
in foreign lands unless their bodies can be obtained by their
friends. Menelaos erects an empty tomb to Agamemnon in Egypt, ~d~
584.]

[89\1: ~d~ 584, ~cheu=' Agame/mnoni tu/mbon hi=n' a/sbeston kle/os
ei/ê~. ~l~ 75 f., ~sê=ma/ te/ moi cheu=ai poliê=s epi\ thini\
thala/ssês, andro\s dustê/noio, kai\ essome/noisi pu/thesthai~.
Achilles in the second Nekyia, ~ô~ 30 ff., says to Agam.: Would thou
hadst died before Troy, for then the Achaeans would have set up a
tomb for thee and ~kai\ sô=| paidi\ me/ga kle/os ê/ra' opi/ssô~ (cf.
93 f., where Agam. says to Achilles ~hôs su\ me\n oude\ thanô\n
o/nom' ô/lesas alla/ toi aiei\ pa/ntas ep' anthrô/pous kle/os
e/ssetai esthlo\n Achilleu=~). The words of Hektor, ~Ê~ 84 ff., show
how the ~sê=ma epi\ platei= Hellêspo/ntô|~ served to remind sailors
as they passed, ~andro\s me\n to/de sê=ma pa/lai katatethnêô=tos
ktl.~ and to suggest that this was the proper and principal purpose
of such erections.--In contrast with this cf. what is stated of the
inhabitants of the Philippine Islands: "they laid their illustrious
dead in a chest and set them up on a high place or on a rock by the
bank of a river in order that they might be _worshipped_ by the
pious": Lippert, _Seelencult_, p. 22.]

{{55}}

CHAPTER II

ISLANDS OF THE BLEST

_TRANSLATION_

The Homeric picture of the shadow-life of the disembodied soul is
the work of resignation, not of hope. Hope would never have beguiled
itself with the anticipation of a state of things which neither
afforded men the chance of further activity after death, nor, on the
other hand, gave them rest from the toil of life; one which promised
them only a restless, purposeless fluttering to and fro, an
existence, indeed, but without any of the content that might have
made it worthy of the name of life.

Was there never any aspiration after a more consolatory picture of
the life after death? Did the tremendous vital energies of that time
really devote themselves so completely to the realms of Zeus that
not even a ray of hope penetrated to the House of Hades? We should
have had to suppose so were it not for a single passing glimpse
which we get of a distant land of hearts' desire, such as even the
Greece that lay under the sway of the Homeric order of things still
imagined for itself.

When Proteus, the sea-god who could foretell the future, has
finished informing Menelaos, on the sea-shore of Egypt, of the
circumstances of his return home to his country and of the fate of
his dearest companions, he adds the prophetic words--so Menelaos
himself informs Telemachos in the fourth book of the Odyssey (560
ff.): "But thou, god-like Menelaos, art not ordained to die in
horse-pasturing Argos or to meet thy fate there; for the immortals
shall send thee far away to the Elysian plain, to the ends of the
world where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthys, and where life is most
easy for men. There is neither snow nor heavy storms nor rain, but
Okeanos ever sends zephyrs with soft-breathing breezes to refresh
men--because thou hast Helen to wife and art thereby in their eyes
the son-in-law of Zeus."

These verses allow us a glimpse into a world about which the Homeric
poems are otherwise silent. At the end of the {56} world, by the
River Okeanos, lies the "Elysian Plain", a land where the sky is
always clear, as in the land where the gods live.[1\2] There dwells
the great Rhadamanthys, not alone, one may suppose as "men" are
spoken of (565, 568). Thither shall the gods some day send
Menelaos--he is not to die (562); that is to say, he is to reach
that place alive nor shall he suffer death there. The place to which
he is to be sent is not a part of the realm of Hades, but a land on
the surface of the earth set apart as the abode not of disembodied
"souls", but of men whose souls have not been separated from their
visible selves--for only thus can they feel and enjoy the sense of
_life_ (565). The picture which fancy has drawn here is the precise
opposite of the blessed immortality of the soul in its separate
existence. Just because such an idea remained quite unthinkable for
Homeric singers, hope sought and found an exit from the shadow-world
which swallows up all living energy. Hope imagined a land at the end
of the world, but still of this world, to which occasionally some
few favourites of the gods might be "translated" without the psyche
being separated from its body and descending to Hades.

The actual mention of such miraculous "translation" stands alone in
the Homeric poems, and the passage in the Odyssey seems to have been
introduced by a later hand.[2\2] But the conditions of such a
miracle are all implied within the range of Homeric ideas. Menelaos
is carried off by the power of the gods and lives an eternal life
far from the world of mortals. The belief that a god could suddenly
withdraw his earthly favourite from the eyes of men and invisibly
waft him away on the breeze not infrequently finds its application
in the battle-scenes of the Iliad.[3\2] The gods could also make a
mortal "invisible" for a prolonged period. When Odysseus has been so
long lost to his friends they suspect that the gods have "made him
invisible" (_Od._ i, 235 ff.); they do not regard him as "dead" but
"the Harpies have carried him away", and he is consequently
withdrawn from all human ken (_Od._ i, 241 f.; xiv, 371). Penelope,
in her grief, prays _either_ for swift death through the arrows of
Artemis, _or_ that a storm wind may lift her up and carry her away
on dark pathways to the mouths of Okeanos, that is, to the entrance
of the Land of the Dead (_Od._ xx, 61-5; 79 ff.).[4\2] To explain
her wish she recalls a fairy tale of the kind that must often have
been told in the women's quarters; how the daughters of Pandareos,
after the violent death of their parents, were brought up to lovely
maidenhood by Aphrodite and provided by Hera, Artemis, and Athene
with all kinds of gifts and {57} accomplishments; till one day when
Aphrodite had gone to Olympos to ask Zeus to make a match for them,
the Harpies came and carried them off and made them the hand-maidens
of the hated Erinyes.[5\2] This folk-tale reveals more clearly than
is usual with the generally cultured Homeric narrative the popular
belief that men might be carried off permanently from the land of
the living, and, without seeing death, live on in another
dwelling-place. For the daughters of Pandareos are carried away
alive--to the Kingdom of the Dead, it is true, for that is where
they must go if they become the servants of the Erinyes, the spirits
of the underworld.[6\2] That is where Penelope wishes to be carried
off, and without dying first--away from the land of the living which
has become intolerable for her. Such a translation is accomplished
by means of the Harpies or the Stormwind, which is the same thing,
since the Harpies are nothing else but wind-deities of a peculiarly
sinister kind. They may be compared to the Devil's Bride or the
"Whirlwind's Bride" of German folk-tales, who rides in the whirlwind
and also carries off men with her.[7\2] The Harpies and what we are
here told of them, belong to the "vulgar mythology" which so seldom
finds any expression in Homer; a popular folk-lore that could tell
of many things between heaven and earth of which the Homeric "grand
style" takes little notice. In Homer the Harpies never act on their
own authority; only as the servants of the gods or of a single god
do they transport mortals where no word of man, no human power, can
reach.[8\2]

The prophesied removal of Menelaos to the Elysian fields at the end
of the world is only another example of such a "translation" by the
will and the might of the gods. Even the fact that prolonged
habitation in that happy land, inaccessible to other men, is
promised to him, does not differentiate the fate of Menelaos from
that of the daughters of Pandareos, or from that which Penelope
wishes for herself. For Menelaos, however, immortal life is promised
not in Hades, or even at its entrance, but in a special country of
the blest, as though in a new kingdom of the gods. He is to become a
"god"; for since to the Homeric poets "god" and "immortal" are
interchangeable terms, a man who is granted immortality (that is,
whose psyche is never separated from his visible self) becomes for
them a god.

It is also a Homeric belief that gods can raise mortals to their own
realm, to immortality. Kalypso wishes to make Odysseus "immortal and
ageless for all time", that he may remain for ever by her side
(_Od._ v, 135 f.; 209 f.; xxiii, 335 f.), {58} that is to say, make
him a god like herself. The immortality of the gods is conditioned
by the eating of the magic food ambrosia and nectar;[9\2] man, too,
by eating continually the food of the gods, becomes an immortal god.
What Odysseus in his longing for the earthly home, to which he is
drawn by loyalty and duty, rejects, has been attained by other
mortals. The Homeric poems can tell of more than one mortal promoted
to immortal life.

As he is struggling in the stormy sea rescue comes to Odysseus in
the person of Ino Leukothea, once the daughter of Kadmos, "who had
formerly been a mortal woman, but now in the waves of the sea shares
in the honour of the gods" (_Od._ v, 333 ff.).[10\2] Did some god of
the sea bear her away and imprison her for ever in his own element?
The belief existed that a god might descend from heaven even upon an
earthly maiden and carry her off for ever as his spouse (_Od._ vi,
280 f.).[11\2]

Ganymede, the most beautiful of mortals, had been carried away by
the gods to Olympos to dwell among immortals, as the cup-bearer of
Zeus (_Il._ xx, 232 ff.).[12\2] He was a scion of the old Trojan
royal house, to which Tithonos also belonged, whom both the Iliad
and the Odyssey already know as the husband of Eos; from his side
the goddess arose every morning to bring the light of day to gods
and men.[13\2] It appears that she had "translated" her beloved not
to Olympos but to the distant dwelling-place by the River Okeanos
from which she sets out in the morning.[14\2] It was Eos who had
once borne off the beautiful Orion, and in spite of the jealousy of
the other gods had enjoyed his love until Artemis "on Ortygia" had
slain him with her gentle arrow (_Od._ v, 122 ff.). The story may be
derived from ancient star-myths, which represented in the language
of myth what is actually to be observed in the morning sky. But in
such myths the elements and celestial phenomena are thought of as
living and animate like men. And in the same way, these
star-spirits, in accordance with the regular development of legend,
have long ago sunk, for the Homeric poet, to the level of earthly
youths and heroes. If the goddess can raise Orion into her own
kingdom, then, according to the belief of the time (which is all
that matters to us here), the same thing might happen to any mortal
through the favour of the gods. A simple imitation of the same
legend in a purely human setting is the story of Kleitos, a youth of
the family of the seer Melampous, whom Eos has carried off for the
sake of his beauty that he may dwell among the gods (_Od._ xv, 249
f.). {59}

§ 2

The translation, then, of Menelaos, while still alive, to the ends
of the earth to live there in perpetual blessedness is indeed a
miracle, but a miracle that finds its justification and precedent in
the range of Homeric belief. The only thing new about it is that
Menelaos has a special dwelling-place assigned to him, not in the
land of the gods, the proper realm of immortality, nor as in the
case of Tithonos and as Kalypso desired for Odysseus, in the company
of a deity, but in a separate place specially allotted to the
translated hero, the Elysian fields. Nor does this appear to be the
invention of the writer of these lines. He refers so briefly to the
"Land of the Departed"[15\2] and its delights that we are forced to
believe that he did not himself originate so enticing a
vision.[16\2] He can only, in the case of Menelaos, have added a
fresh companion to the company of the blessed. That Rhadamanthys the
Just dwells there seems to be known to him from ancient tradition,
for he evidently only intends to recall the fact and does not think
it necessary to justify this selection of the brother of
Minos.[17\2] It might even be supposed that the picture of such a
wonderland had been invented and embellished by older poets simply
for the benefit of Rhadamanthys. The only novelty is that this
picture, which has been fully adopted into the circle of Homeric
poetry, now includes a hero of the Trojan epic cycle among the
number of those translated to that land of ever unclouded happiness.
The lines were inserted, as has already been remarked, at a later
date, into the prophecy of Proteus, and it is hard not to suppose
that the whole idea lay far from the thoughts of previous Homeric
singers. Would the flower of the heroic chivalry, including Achilles
himself, have been doomed to that dim shadow-world in which we see
them wandering in the Nekyia of the Odyssey, if a way out into a
life exempt from death had already revealed itself to imagination at
the time when the Epic gave the stamp of its approval to the stories
which dealt with the fate of the greater number of the heroes?
Because the poem of the Trojan War and the adventures of the Return
from Troy had not yet decided upon the fate of Menelaos, a later
poet could speak of his "translation" to the--since
"discovered"--Land of Destiny. It is highly probable that even at
the time of the composition of the Journey to Hades of Odysseus this
conception--afterwards so important for the development of the Greek
belief in immortality--of a secluded resting-place of living and
translated heroes had not yet been completely {60} formulated. It
fits easily into the framework of belief prevailing in the Homeric
poems, but it is not necessarily required by that framework. It is
natural on this account to suppose that it entered the Epic from
without. And, remembering the Babylonian story of Hasisatra and the
Hebrew one of Enoch,[18\2] both of whom without suffering death were
translated into the realm of immortal life--either to "Heaven" or to
the "End of the Rivers" to the gods--we might be inclined to follow
the fashion that prevails in some quarters nowadays, and believe
that these earliest Greek translation legends were borrowed from
Semitic tradition. Little, however, would be gained by such a
mechanical derivation. Here and in all such cases the main question
remains still unanswered: what were the reasons which led the Greek
mind to wish to borrow this particular idea at this particular time
from abroad? In the present instance at least, nothing argues
specially for the handing on of the belief in translation from one
nation to another rather than for its independent origin in the
different countries out of similar needs.

This new idea did not contradict the normal Homeric beliefs about
the soul but on the contrary presupposed them and supplemented them
without incongruity. It was also, as we have seen, based upon
conceptions that were familiar and natural to Greek thought. There
was, indeed, no need for any stimulus from without to produce from
these materials the undoubtedly new and peculiarly attractive idea
of which we receive the earliest intimation in the prophecy of
Proteus.

§ 3

The importance of this new creation for the later development of
Greek belief makes it all the more necessary to be quite clear as to
what exactly this novelty really was. Was it a Paradise for the
pious and the just? A sort of Greek Valhalla for the bravest
heroes?--or was it that a reconciliation and adjustment between
virtue and happiness such as this life never knows had revealed
itself to the eyes of hope in a Land of Promise? Nothing of the kind
is warranted by these lines. Menelaos was never particularly
remarkable for those virtues which the Homeric age rated
highest.[19\2] He is only to be transported to Elysium because he
has Helen to wife and is therefore the son-in-law of Zeus; such is
Proteus' prophecy to him. We are not told why Rhadamanthys has
reached the place of happiness; nor do we learn it through the title
by which he was referred to almost invariably by {61} later poets,
the "Just". We may, however, remind ourselves that as brother of
Minos he was also a son of Zeus.[20\2] It was not virtue or merit
that gave him a claim to blessedness after this life; indeed, of any
such claim we never find the least trace. Just as the retention of
the psyche in the body and the consequent avoidance of death can
occur only as a miracle or by magic--that is, as an exceptional
case--so does translation into the "Land of Destiny" remain a
privilege of a few special favourites of the gods. No one could
deduce from such cases any article of faith of universal
application. The nearest parallel to this miraculous preservation of
life for a few individuals in a land of blessed repose is to be
found in the equally miraculous preservation of consciousness in
those three enemies of the gods in Hades whom we hear of in the
Nekyia of the Odyssey. The Penitents in Erebos and the blessed in
Elysium correspond: both represent exceptions which do not destroy
the rule and do not affect the main outline of Homeric belief. In
the first case, as in the second, the omnipotence of Heaven has
broken through the rule. Those, however, who owe to the special
favour of the gods their escape from death and their translation to
Elysium are near relatives of the gods. This seems to be the only
reason for the favour shown to them.[21\2] If therefore any more
general reason beyond the capricious good-will of some god is to
account for the translation of these individuals it might perhaps be
found in the belief that near relationship with the gods, that is,
the very highest nobility of lineage, could preserve a man from the
descent into the common realm of hopeless nothingness after the
separation of the psyche from the body. In the same way the beliefs
of many primitive peoples represent the ordinary man as departing to
a joyless country of the dead (if he is not annihilated altogether)
while the descendants of gods and kings, or the aristocracy, go to a
land of unending happiness.[22\2] Such a fancy, however, is only
dimly apparent in the promise made to Menelaos; nowhere is anything
said of a general rule from which the individual case might be
deduced.--

§ 4

But the individuals who are admitted to an everlasting life in the
Elysian land at the end of the world are much too distantly removed
from the habitations of the living for them to be credited with the
power of influencing the world of men.[23\2] They resemble the gods
only in the enjoyment accorded to them of an unendingly conscious
life. Of the omnipotence of {62} the gods they have not the smallest
share[24\2] any more than the dwellers in Erebos, from whose fate
their own is otherwise so different. We must not suppose, therefore,
that the origin of the stories of the promotion of individual heroes
above their companions and their translation into a distant
dwelling-place, is to be sought in any _cultus_ offered to those
individuals in their previous earthly dwelling-place. Every
religious cult is the worship of something real and powerful; no
popular religion and no poet's fancy would have given the national
heroes, if they were to be regarded as powerful and worshipped
accordingly, such a distant and inaccessible home.

It was the free activity of the poetic fancy which created and
embellished this last refuge of human aspiration upon the Elysian
plain. The needs which this new creation was chiefly intended to
satisfy were poetical and not religious.

The atmosphere of the younger of the two Homeric epics already
differs widely from that of its older companion, the Iliad, with its
heroic delight in the untiring manifestation of vital energy. It is
likely that the feelings of the **conquerors of a new home upon the
Asiatic coast may have differed considerably from those of the same
people confirmed in undisturbed possession and enjoyment of their
conquests. It seems as if the Odyssey reflected the temper and
aspiration of these Ionian city-dwellers of a later time. A spirit
of contentment and leisure seems to flow like an undercurrent
through the whole poem, and has made for itself a haven of rest in
the midst of the busy action of the story. When the poet's own
feelings find their true expression they show us idyllic scenes of
quiet enjoyment of daily life; magnificent in the country of the
Phæacians, gay and more homely at the farm of Eumaios; pictures of
quiet repose after the fights of the heroic past, that have now
faded into a mere pleasant memory, such as we get in the house of
Nestor, or in the Palace of Menelaos and the regained Helen. Or,
again, we have a description of nature in a mood of liberality and
gentleness, as upon the island of Syriê, the home of Eumaios'
childhood, upon which in ample possession of cattle, wine and corn,
a people live free from necessity and pain, till they arrive at a
good old age when Apollo and Artemis with their gentlest shafts
bring swift death to them (_Od._ xv, 403 ff.). If you ask the poet
where this fortunate island lies he will tell you that it lies over
there beyond Ortygiê where the sun turns back. But where is
Ortygiê,[25\2] and who can point out the place where the sun begins
his return journey far in the West? The country of idyllic happiness
lies indeed almost beyond {63} the limit of this world. Phoenician
merchant-men who go everywhere may perhaps reach that land as well
(415 ff.), and Ionian seamen in this earliest period of Greek
colonization into which the composition of the Odyssey reaches may
well have hoped to find far out over the sea such propitious
habitations of a new life.

In the same way the country and the life of the Phæacians seem like
an ideal picture of an Ionian state newly founded in a distant land
far from the turmoil, the restless competition, and all the
limitations of their familiar Greek homes. But this unclouded
dream-picture, bathed in purest light, lies far away in a distant
land all but inaccessible to man. Only by chance is a strange ship
cast away on to that coast, and at once the magic ships of the
Phæacians carry back the stranger through night and cloud to his own
home again. True, there is no reason to see in the Phæacians a sort
of ferry-people of the dead, neighbours of the Elysian fields.
Still, the poetic fancy which invented the country of the Phæacians
is not unrelated to that which gave rise to the idea of an Elysian
plain beyond the bounds of the inhabited world. Given the idea that
a life of untroubled bliss can only be had in the remotest confines
of the earth, jealously guarded from all intrusion, only one more
step remains to be taken before men come to believe that such bliss
is really only to be found where neither accident nor purpose can
ever bring men, more remote even than the Phæacians, than the
country of the Æthiopians, the beloved of the gods, or than the
Abioi of the North, already known to the Iliad. It must lie beyond
the bounds of real life. Such idyllic longings have given rise to
the picture of Elysium. The happiness of those who there enjoy
everlasting life seemed to be fully safeguarded only if their place
of abode were removed for ever beyond the range of all exploration,
out of reach of all future discovery. This happiness is imagined as
a condition of perfect bliss under the most benignant sky; easy and
untroubled says the poet, is the life of men there, in this
resembling the life of the gods, but at the same time without
aspiration and without activity. It is doubtful whether the poet of
the Iliad would have considered such a future worthy of his heroes,
or given the name of happiness to such felicity as this.

§ 5

We were obliged to assume that the poet who inserted these
inimitably smooth, melodious verses in the Odyssey was not the first
inventor or discoverer of the Elysian paradise beyond {64} the realm
of mortality. But though he followed in the footsteps of others,
when he introduced into the Homeric poem a reference to this new
belief, he was giving this idea for the first time an enduring place
in Greek imagination. Other poems might disappear, but anything that
appeared in the Iliad or the Odyssey was assured of perpetual
remembrance.

The imagination of Greek poets or Greek people never gave up the
alluring fancy of a distant land of blessedness into which
individual mortals might by the favour of the gods be translated.
Even the scanty notices which have come down to us of the contents
of the heroic poems that led up to, continued, or connected the two
Homeric Epics and linked them up with the whole cycle of Theban and
Trojan legend enable us to see how this post-Homeric poetry took
pleasure in the recital of still further examples of translation.

The Kypria first described how the army of the Achæans for the
second time encamped in Aulis, was detained by adverse winds sent by
Artemis; and how Agamemnon on the advice of Kalchas would have
sacrificed his own daughter Iphigeneia to the goddess. Artemis,
however, snatched away the maiden and transported her to the land of
the Taurians, and there made her immortal.[26\2]

The Aithiopis, a continuation of the Iliad, tells of the help
brought to the Trojans by Penthesileia and her Amazons, and after
her death by Memnon the Æthiopian prince, an imaginary
representative of the eastern monarchies of inner Asia. Antilochos,
the new favourite of Achilles, falls in the war, but Achilles slays
Memnon himself. Thereupon Eos the mother of Memnon (and known as
such already to the Odyssey) obtains the permission of Zeus to give
immortality to her son.[27\2] It may be supposed that the poet
described what we see so often represented upon Greek vases: the
mother bearing through the air the dead body of her son. According
to the story told in the Iliad, Apollo, with the help of Sleep and
Death, the twin brothers, bore off the body of Sarpedon, the son of
Zeus, to his Lycian home after he had been slain by Achilles, merely
in order that he might be buried in his own country. But the poet of
the Aithiopis has tried to outdo the story in the Iliad in
impressiveness (for it was evidently his model),[28\2] and has made
Eos, with the permission of Zeus, not merely carry off the dead to
his far-off home in the East, but there awaken him to immortal life.

Soon after the death of Memnon fate overtakes Achilles himself. When
his body, rescued by his friends after much hard fighting, is laid
upon its bier, Thetis, his mother, with {65} the Muses and the other
sea-goddesses come and sing the funeral dirge. Of this we are told
in the last book of the Odyssey (xxiv, 47 ff.) which relates further
how his body was burnt, his bones gathered together and entombed
under a mound, and the psyche of Achilles departed to the House of
Hades; the whole story being told to him in the underworld by the
psyche of Agamemnon. But the author of the Aithiopis--always
remarkable for his bold innovations in the traditional
material--here ventures upon an important new touch. From the
funeral pyre, he tells us, Thetis carried off the body of her son
and brought him to Leuke.[29\2] That she restored him to life again
there and made him immortal the one meagre extract which accident
has preserved to us does not say. But there can be no question that
that is what the poet narrated--all later accounts conclude the
story in this way.

The parallel is clear: the two opponents, Achilles and Memnon, are
both set free from the fate of mortals by their goddess-mothers. In
bodies once more restored to life they continue to live, not among
men, nor yet among the gods, but in a distant wonderland--Memnon in
the east, Achilles in the "White Island". The poet himself can
hardly have imagined Achilles' Island to have been in the Euxine
Sea, where, however, later Greek sailors located this purely
mythical spot.

The translation of Menelaos is still more closely paralleled by the
story told in the Telegoneia, which was the final and the
latest-written of the Cyclic poems, of the fate which attended the
family of Odysseus. Telegonos, the son of Odysseus and Kirke, slays
his father unwittingly; when he discovers his mistake he brings the
body of Odysseus with Penelope and **Telemachos to his mother, Kirke,
who makes them immortal; and there they dwell now (in the Isle
Aiaia, far away over the sea, we must suppose--Penelope as the wife
of Telegonos, and Kirke with Telemachos.[30\2]

§ 6

It is natural to feel surprise that in none of these stories is
there any mention of translation to a common meeting-place of the
Elect, such as the Elysian plain seemed to be. We must on that
account be content to leave unanswered the question to what precise
extent these lines of the Odyssey which describe the translation of
Menelaos to Elysium may have influenced the development of
translation stories in the post-Homeric Epics. The influence must
clearly have been {66} considerable.[31\2] The stories of the
translation of individual heroes to a solitary after-life in
secluded abodes of immortality show, at any rate, the same direction
of fancy as that which produced the fields of Elysium. No longer
does Eos, after she has snatched him from Hades, raise her son to be
among the gods as once she had raised Kleitos and others of her
favourites. Memnon enters upon a peculiar state of being that
differentiates him from the rest of mankind as much as from the
gods. The same applies to Achilles and the other translated heroes.
Thus did poetry increase the number of those who belonged to this
middle realm; who, born in **mortality have, outside the realms of
Olympos, achieved immortality. It is still only favoured individuals
who enter this kingdom; it is still poetical aspiration, giving free
rein to its creative instinct, that continues to transport an
ever-increasing number of the bright figures of Legend into the
illumination of everlasting life. Religious worship can have had no
more influence in the development of these stories than it had in
the narrative of the translation of Menelaos. Achilles, for example,
may in later times have had a cult paid to him on an island at the
mouth of the Danube, supposed to be Leuke. But the cult was the
result and not the motive or the cause of the story. Iphigeneia was
certainly the epithet of a Moon-goddess; but the poet who told of
the translation of her namesake, the daughter of Agamemnon, had no
suspicion of the latter's identity with a goddess--otherwise he
would never have regarded her as Agamemnon's daughter. Nor, we may
be fairly certain, can it have been an accidental meeting with the
cult of the goddess Iphigeneia, which induced him to invent an
immortality _iure postlimini_ for his mortal Iphigeneia, by the
machinery of translation. Both for the poet and his contemporaries
the importance and the essence of his narrative--whether free
invention or a reconstruction out of older material--lay in the fact
that it told of the raising of a mortal maiden, the daughter of
mortal parents, to immortal life, and not to religious veneration
which could not have made itself very apparent to the maiden
relegated to the distant Tauric country.

The busy expansion of the legendary material went on in epics that
finally lost themselves in genealogical poems. To what extent it may
have made use of the _motif_ of translation or transfiguration we
can no longer accurately judge. The materials at our disposal are
quite insufficient to warrant any conclusion. When such a misty
figure as Telegonos is deemed worthy of immortality, it may be
supposed that in the mind {67} of the poet all the heroes of Epic
tradition had come to be possessed of a virtual claim to a share in
this mode of continued existence in a life after death. Certainly
the more important among them could not be left out--those at least
of whose end the Homeric poems themselves had not already given a
different version. The poem of the Return of the Heroes from Troy
may especially have given scope for many translation stories.[32\2]
We may, for example, ask whether Diomedes, at least, whose
immortality is often vouched for by later mythology, was not already
added to the number of the immortals in the epics of the Heroic
cycle. An Attic folk-song of the fifth century can speak with
assurance of Diomedes as not having died but as living in the
"Islands of the Blest". Thus a far greater company of the Heroes of
the Trojan War was thought of by the poetry of Homeric tradition as
gathered together in "Isles of the Blest", far out to sea, than we
should guess from the summaries of the post-Homeric Epics which
accident has preserved to us. This conclusion must be drawn from the
lines of a Hesiodic poem which give us some remarkable information
about the oldest Greek forms of the Cult of the Souls and belief in
immortality, and the lines, therefore, must be subjected to a closer
examination.

II

The Hesiodic poem known as the "Works and Days" consists of a number
of independent pieces of didactic or narrative interest loosely
strung together. In it, not far from the beginning, comes the story
of the Five Ages of Men. As regards its subject-matter, the train of
thought which unites this section to the passages which precede and
follow it is hardly discoverable; in form it is quite disconnected.

In the beginning we are there told the gods of Olympos created a
Golden race whose members lived like the gods, without care,
sickness or decrepitude, and in enjoyment of rich possessions. After
their death, which came upon them like sleep to tired men, they
became, by the will of Zeus, _Daimones_ and Guardians of mankind.
They were followed by a Silver race, far inferior to the first, and
unlike them in body as in mind. The men of this race had a long
childhood, lasting a hundred years, followed by a short youth,
during which their wantonness and pride in their dealings with each
other and with the gods brought them much sorrow. Because they
refused the honours due to the gods Zeus destroyed them and they are
now Daimones of the Underworld, honoured {68} but inferior to the
Daimones of the Golden Age. Zeus then created a third race, this
time of Bronze--hard-hearted and of great strength; war was their
delight, and being destroyed by their own hands they went down
unhonoured to the House of Hades. Thereupon Zeus made a fourth race
that was juster and better, the race of Heroes, who were called
"Demigods". They fought before Thebes and Troy and some of them
died, while others Zeus sent to dwell at the ends of the world on
the Islands of the Blest by the river Okeanos, where the Earth
brings them her fruits three times in the year. "Would that I did
not belong to the fifth Age; would that I had died earlier or been
born hereafter," says the poet, "since now is the Iron Age," when
toil and grief never leave men, when there is enmity of all against
all and force conquers right, and Envy, evil-tongued, delighting in
wickedness, fierce-eyed, is over everything. Now, Shame and the
goddess of retribution, Nemesis, depart from men and go to the gods;
every misfortune is left behind for man, and there is no defence
against evil.

The author here lays before us the results of gloomy reflection upon
the origin and growth of evil in the world of men. He sees the steps
of mankind's degeneration from the height of godlike happiness to
the extremes of misery and wickedness. He is following popular
conceptions. It is natural to every race of men to lay the scene of
earthly perfection in the past, so long, at least, as man gets his
information about that past not from distinct historical memory, but
from the picturesque stories and beautiful dreams of the poets which
encourage the natural tendency of fancy to retain only the more
attractive features of the past in the memory. The folk-lore of many
lands can tell of a Golden Age and how mankind gradually fell from
that high estate; and it is not at all surprising if fanciful
speculation starting from the same point and travelling along the
same road has reached the same conclusion in the case of more than
one people without the aid of any historical connexion. We have a
number of expressions of the idea of man's gradual degeneration
through several Ages which present the most striking similarities
among themselves and with the Hesiodic picture of the five Ages of
Men. Even Homer is sometimes overcome by the mood; it lies, for
instance, at the root of such idealizations of the past as are
implied when in his description of the heroic life he thinks of "men
as they now are" and "how few sons are equal to their fathers in
virtue; worse, most of them; few, indeed, are the men who are better
than their fathers" {69} (_Od._ ii, 276 f.). But the epic poet keeps
himself and his fancy on the heights of the heroic Past; only
occasionally, and in passing, his glance falls upon the commonplace
level of real life. But the poet of the "Works and Days" has all his
thoughts fixed upon the level plain of real and contemporary life;
the glance which he occasionally casts upon the heights of the
storied past is all the more bitter on that account.

What he has to say of the first condition of mankind and the gradual
process of deterioration is given, not as an abstract exposition of
what in the necessary course of things must have occurred, but
rather as a traditional account of what had actually happened--in
fact, as history.

In this light he himself must certainly have regarded it, though,
apart from a few vague memories, no historical tradition is
contained in what he says of the nature and deeds of the earlier
generations of mankind. His story remains an imaginary picture. And
for this reason the development, as he presents it, takes a
logically defined and regulated course, based on the idea of a
gradual deterioration. The uneventful happiness of the first race of
men who know neither virtue nor vice is followed by a second race,
which after a prolonged minority displays pride and contempt of the
gods. In the third, or brazen age, active wickedness breaks out,
with war and murder. The last age, at the beginning of which the
poet himself seems to stand, marks the breakdown of all moral
restraint. The fourth race of men, to which the heroes of the Theban
and Trojan wars belong, is alone among all the others in not being
named and ranked after a metal. It is an alien in the evolutionary
process. The downward course is checked during the fourth age, and
yet in the fifth it goes on again as if it had never been
interrupted. It is not apparent why that course should have been
interrupted. Most of the commentators have recognized in the story
of the fourth age a fragment of different material, originally
foreign to the poem of the Ages of Men and added deliberately by
Hesiod to this poem, which he may have taken over in its essential
features from older poets. But if we adopt this view we have to ask
what can have tempted the poet to such serious disturbance and
dislocation of the orderly succession of the original speculative
poem. It will not be enough to say that the poet, brought up in the
Homeric tradition, found it impossible to pass over, in a
description of the earlier ages of men, the figures of the heroic
poetry which, thanks to the power of song, had acquired in the
imagination of the Greeks more reality than the plainest
manifestations of actual life. Nor {70} is it likely that, having in
his grim description of the Bronze race introduced a darker picture
of the Heroic age, drawn from a point of view different from that of
the courtly Epos, he wished to set by its side this bright vision of
the same age as he saw it in his own mind. If the picture of the
Bronze race does really refer to the Heroic age,[33\2] giving its
reverse side, so to speak, Hesiod never seems to have noticed the
fact. He must have had stronger grounds than these for the
introduction of his narrative. He cannot have failed to perceive
that he was breaking the continuity of moral deterioration by his
introduction of the Heroic race. It follows that he must have had
some aim, other than that of the description of the moral
deterioration of men, which he imagined himself to be serving by the
introduction of this new section. This other purpose will become
plain if we inquire what it is that really interests the poet in the
Heroic race. It is not their higher morality--that only interrupted
the series of continually worsening generations. Nor would he in
that case have dismissed the subject with a few words which barely
suffice to connect this section with the theme of moral development.
Further, it is not the fights and great deeds done at Thebes or Troy
that interest him for he says nothing of their greatness, and at
once declares that the cruel war and the dread fury of battle
destroyed the Heroes. This, again, does not discriminate between the
Heroes and the men of the Bronze age who also, being destroyed by
their own deeds, had to go down to Hades. What distinguishes the
Heroic age from the others is the way in which some of the Heroes
depart from this life without dying. This is the point that
interests the poet, and this it must have been that chiefly induced
him to bring in here his account of the fourth race of men. He
combines clearly enough with his main purpose of describing the
advancing moral decline of man, a secondary aim--that of telling
what happened after death to the representatives of each successive
race. In introducing the Heroic race of men this secondary aim
becomes the chief one, and justifies what would otherwise have been
merely an intrusive episode. It is this aim, too, which gives the
Hesiodic narrative its importance for our present inquiry.

§ 2

The men of the Golden Age, after sleep has overcome them and they
have died and been laid in the earth, become by the will of Zeus
"Daimones"--Daimones upon earth, watchers of men, wandering over all
the earth, veiled in clouds, {71} observing justice and
injustice,[34\2] dispensing riches like kings. These men of the
earliest times have then become effective realities. They are not
spirits confined to an inaccessible region beyond this world, but
powers acting and working amongst men. In this exalted state Hesiod
calls them _Daimones_, and thus describes them by a name which is
otherwise applied by him as well as by Homer only to the immortal
gods. The name so employed is not to be understood as implying a
separate class of immortals, an intermediate class of beings between
gods and men, as later speculation used the word.[35\2] These later
beings of an intermediate class were thought of as possessing an
originally immortal nature like the gods, and as dwelling in an
intermediate region of their own. Hesiod's Daimones, on the
contrary, have once been men and have only after their death become
immortals invisibly[36\2] roaming the earth. When they are given the
name Daimones nothing more is implied than that they now share the
invisible might and unending life of the gods, and to that extent
may be called gods--with as much right as Ino Leukothea, for
instance, who, according to Homer, became a goddess after being a
mortal; or as Phaëthon, who, according to the Hesiodic Theogony, was
raised by Aphrodite from the world of mortality and is now called a
"godlike Daimon" (_Th._, 991). On the other hand, these immortals
who were once men are clearly distinguished from the everlasting
gods, "who have their Olympian dwellings," by being called Daimones
"who rule upon earth".[37\2] And though they are given the name,
familiar to everybody from Homer, of Daimones, i.e. gods, they,
nevertheless, form a class of beings which is entirely unknown to
Homer. Homer knows of certain individual men who are raised or
translated, body and soul together, to undying life. The later Epos
can tell of certain also who, like Memnon or Achilles, receive a new
life after their death and now live on in undivided unity of body
and soul. But that the soul outside Erebos could carry on a
conscious life of its own and influence living men--of this there is
no mention in Homer. Yet this is exactly what has happened according
to the Hesiodic poem. The men of the Golden Age have died and now
live on divided from their bodies, invisible and godlike, and
therefore called gods. Just as in Homer, the gods themselves assume
manifold shapes and visit the cities of men, observing the good and
evil deeds of men,[38\2] so also do the souls of the dead in Hesiod.
For the beings who here, after their separation from the body, have
become Daimones, are _Souls_--that is to say, beings who after their
{72} death have entered in any case upon a higher existence than was
theirs while they were united to the body. This, however, is an idea
that we never meet with in the Homeric poems.

And yet it is quite unthinkable that this remarkable conception is
the independent and passing invention of the Boeotian poet. He comes
back to it again later on in the course of his poem. "Thirty
thousand," that is, innumerable immortal Watchers over mortal men
wander invisibly in the service of Zeus over the earth, taking note
of right and wrong (_Op._, 252 ff.). The conception is important to
him for ethical reasons; if he is to make use of it in his argument
he must not have invented it himself. And, in fact, nothing that
belongs to the sphere of religious belief and cultus, or even the
lower levels of superstition, has been invented by this
earnest-minded poet. The Boeotian school of poetry to which he
belonged was far removed from, and indeed, hostile to the free
inventiveness and roaming fancy with which the Homeric school ". . .
know how to put forward many lies and make them seem like truth"
(_Th._, 27). In pursuance of their purpose not simply to please but
always in some sense to teach, the Boeotian poets never innovate in
the region of the purely mythical, but simply order or piece
together, or merely register what they find in the tradition. In
religion especially invention lies farthest from their minds, though
they do not by any means deny themselves the right of independent
speculation about the traditional. Thus, what Hesiod tells us about
the men of a previous age, whose souls after death become Daimones,
came to him from tradition. It might still be objected that this
tradition while being older than Hesiod may, nevertheless, be more
recent than Homer, and be the result of post-Homeric speculation. It
is unnecessary to develop the reasons which make such a view
untenable; the course of our inquiry up to the present has made it
possible for us to maintain decidedly that in what Hesiod here says
we have a fragment of primitive belief reaching back far beyond
Homer and surviving in the secluded Boeotian countryside. We have
found even in the poems of Homer vestiges of a cult of the dead
sufficient to make us believe that once in a distant past the Greeks
resembled the majority of other nations and believed in the
continued, conscious existence of the psyche after its separation
from the body and in its powerful influence upon the world of men.
We found, too, that in accordance with this belief, religious
honours of various sorts were paid to the disembodied souls. In
Hesiod's narrative we simply have documentary confirmation of {73}
what could only be with difficulty extracted from the study of
Homer. Here we encounter the still living belief in the elevation of
the soul after death to a higher life. They are the souls, it must
be noted, of a race of men long since disappeared, about whom this
belief is held. The belief in their godlike after-life must
therefore be long-standing, and the worship of these souls as
powerful beings still continues. For when it is said of the souls of
the second race "these also receive worship"[39\2] (_Op._, 142), it
is distinctly implied that the Daimones of the first or Golden
generation _a fortiori_ received worship.

The men of the Silver generation, on account of their refusal to pay
due honour to the Olympians, are "hidden" by Zeus under the earth,
and are now called "mortal Blessed Ones that live below the earth,
second in rank, yet worship is paid to them also" (141-2). Thus, the
poet knows of the souls of men who likewise belonged to the distant
past, whose home is in the bowels of the earth, who receive
religious honour and who must therefore have been conceived as
powerful. The poet has not specified the nature of their influence
upon the upper world. It is true that he does not distinctly call
the spirits of this second generation "good", as he had done the
first (122), and he makes them spring from the less perfect Silver
age and seems to have given them inferior rank. But it does not
follow that he here anticipated later speculation and thought of the
second generation as a class of wicked demons whose nature it is to
work evil.[40\2] Only to the Olympians do they seem to stand in a
rather more distant relationship--almost one of hostility. They had
before paid the gods none of their pious dues, and so now they are
not called, like the souls of the first race, "Daimones appointed by
Zeus to be Watchers of men." The poet refers to them with a
remarkable expression, "mortal Blessed Ones," that is, mortal gods.
This very singular denomination, the two parts of which really
cancel one another, points to a certain embarrassment felt by the
poet in making use of an expression taken from the Homeric
vocabulary (to which the poet felt himself confined) to designate
clearly and effectively a class of beings that was unknown to
Homer.[41\2] The disembodied souls of the first race he had simply
called Daimones. But this name, common as it was both to the race of
those who from mortality had achieved immortality and to the
immortal gods, left the essential difference between the two classes
of immortal beings unexpressed. For that very reason the name was
never employed in Hesiod's fashion by later ages,[42\2] who always
{74} called such as, not having been born immortal, had achieved
immortality, by the name of "Heroes". Hesiod, who could not use the
word in this sense, described them by the bold oxymoron: mortal
Blessed Ones, human gods. As immortal spirits they resembled the
gods in their new state of being. But their nature was still mortal,
and hence their bodies had to die, and this constituted their
difference from the everlasting gods.[43\2]

The name Daimones then does not appear to involve any essential
distinction between the spirits of the men of the Silver generation
and the Daimones of the Golden Age. Only the place where the two
classes of spirits have their dwelling is different--the Daimones of
the Silver race live in the depths of the earth. The expression "of
the underworld", used of them, is a vague one, and only suffices to
differentiate them from the spirits of the "upper world" who were
derived from the first race. Still, the abode of the souls of the
Silver Age is in any case not thought of as being the distant
meeting-place of the unconscious, vegetating shadow-souls--the House
of Hades; the "phantoms" that hover about that place could not have
been called Daimones or "mortal gods", nor do they receive any kind
of worship after their death.

§ 3

The Silver Age, then, belongs to a long-since vanished past.[44\2]
The stalwarts of the Bronze Age, we are told, destroyed by their
deeds, went down into the gloomy home of the dreadful Hades,
nameless. Black Death seized them, for all their violence, and they
left the light of the sun.

Except for the addition of the adjective "nameless" one might,
indeed, suppose that this was a description of the fate of the souls
of the Homeric heroes. Perhaps, however, the word[45\2] only means
that no honourable and distinctive title, such as belonged to the
souls of the first and second as well as to the fourth race, was
attached to those who had gone down into the shadow-world of
annihilation and become as nothing.

There follows "the divine race of Heroes who were called the
Demigods". The wars at Thebes and Troy destroyed these. Part were
"enfolded in the destiny of Death"; others received life and a home
far from men at the hand of Zeus Kronides, who gave them a
dwelling-place at the ends of the world. There they live, free from
care, in the Islands of the Blest, by the deep-flowing Okeanos;
favoured Heroes, for whom the Earth, of her own accord, brings forth
her sweet fruits three times a year. {75}

Here, at last, for the first time we have reached a clearly
definable period of legendary history. The poet means to speak of
the Heroes whose adventures were narrated in the Thebais, the Iliad
and kindred poems. What we notice here specially is how little the
Greeks yet knew of their history. Immediately after the
disappearance of the Heroes the poet begins the age in which he
himself must live. Where the realm of poetry ends, there is an end
of all further tradition; there follows a blank, and to all
appearances the present age immediately begins. That explains why
the Heroic Age is the last before the fifth, to which the poet
himself belongs, and why it does not, for example, precede the
(undated) Bronze Age. It connects itself conveniently with the
Bronze Age also in what is related of the fate suffered by a part of
its representatives, for the subject which here particularly
interests the poet is the fate of the departed. Some of the fallen
Heroes simply die--that is to say (there can be no doubt of it) they
enter the realm of Hades like the members of the Bronze race or the
Heroes of the Iliad. But when others are _distinguished_ from those
whom "Death took" in that they reach the Islands of the Blest, it is
impossible not to suppose that these last have not suffered death,
that is, the separation of the Psyche from the visible Self, but
have been carried away alive in the flesh. The poet is thinking of
such cases as those we have met with in the Odyssean narrative of
Menelaos, or, in the Telegoneia, of Penelope, Telemachos and
Telegonos. These few exceptional instances could hardly have made
such a deep impression on him that he felt himself bound on their
behalf to erect a special class of the Translated to be set over
against those who simply died. There can be no doubt that he had
many more examples before him of this same mysterious mode of
separation from the world of men that did not involve death. We have
already seen how the lines in the Odyssey in which the translation
of Menelaos is foreshadowed, point back to other and earlier poems
of the same kind. Further, the references to the subject which we
found in the remains of the Cyclic Epics make it easy to suppose
that later Heroic poetry had been continually widening the circle of
those who enjoyed translation and illumination.

Only from such a poetical source can Hesiod have derived his
conception of a common meeting-place where the Translated enjoy for
ever their untroubled existence. He calls that place the "Islands of
the Blest"; and these lie far removed from the world of men, in the
Ocean, on the confines of the earth, just where the Odyssey puts the
Elysian {76} plain, another meeting-place of the still-living
Translated, or rather the same under a different name. Its name does
not oblige us to regard the "Elysian plain" as an island, but
neither does it exclude that assumption. Homer never expressly calls
the land of the Phæacians an island,[46\2] but the imagination of
most readers will picture Scheriê as such, and so did the Greeks
perhaps already at the time of the Hesiodic school of poets. In the
same way a poet may have thought of the "Land of Destiny" that
receives passing mention in Homer as an island, or group of islands;
only an island surrounded and cut off by the sea can give the full
impression of a distant asylum far from the world, inaccessible to
all save those specially called thither. And accordingly the
mythology of many peoples, especially those who live by the sea, has
made a distant island the dwelling-place of the souls of the
departed.

Complete isolation is the essential feature of the whole idea of
translation, as Hesiod clearly shows. A later poet has added a
line--which does not quite fit into its place--to make this
isolation even more marked.[47\2] According to it, these Blessed
Ones live not only "far from men" (167), but also (169) far from the
immortals, and are ruled over by Kronos. The writer of this line
follows a beautiful legend, later, however, than Hesiod, in which
Zeus released the aged Kronos, together with the other Titans,[48\2]
from Tartaros, so that the old king of the gods, under whose rule
the Golden Age had once prevailed with peace and happiness upon
earth, now wields the sceptre of another Golden Age over the Blessed
in Elysium, himself a figure of peaceful contemplation dwelling far
away from the stormy world, from the throne of which he has been
ousted by Zeus. Hesiod himself has provoked this transference of
Kronos from the Golden Age to the land of the Translated; for in the
few lines that he devotes to the description of the life of the
Blessed a reminiscence of the picture of the Golden Age's untroubled
existence is clearly discernible. Both pictures, the one of a
childhood's paradise in the past, the other of unclouded happiness
reserved in the future for the elect, are closely related; it is
difficult to say which of them has influenced the other[49\2] since
the colours must have been the same in any case--the purely idyllic
having an inevitable uniformity of its own.

§ 4

Hesiod says nothing of any influence upon this world exerted by the
souls of the Translated in the Islands of the Blest, such as is
attributed to the Daimones of the Golden {77} race, nor of any
religious worship, which would be implied by such influence if it
existed, such as the underworld spirits of the Silver Age receive.
All relations with this world are broken off, for any influence from
this side would completely contradict the whole conception of these
blessed departed. Hesiod faithfully sets down the conception of the
Translated exactly as poetic fancy, without any interference from
religious cultus, or the folk-belief founded on it, had
instinctively shaped it.

Supposing, then, that he follows Homeric and post-Homeric poetic
tradition in this particular, whence did he derive his ideas about
the Daimones and spirits of the Golden and Silver Ages? He did not
and could not have got these from Homeric or semi-Homeric sources,
for they (unlike the idea of Translation) do not simply expand, but
actually contradict Homeric beliefs about the soul. To this question
we may answer with certainty; he derived them from _cultus_. There
survived, in spite of Homer, at least in central Greece where the
Hesiodic poetry had its home, a religious worship paid to the souls
of certain departed classes of men; and this cultus preserved alive,
at least as a vague tradition, a belief which Homer had obscured and
dispossessed. It only reached the Boeotian poet, whose own
conceptions spring entirely from the soil of Homeric belief, as from
a far distance. Already in the days of the Bronze race, he tells us,
the souls of the dead were swallowed up in the dread House of Hades,
and this (with a few miraculous exceptions) applies to the Heroic
race as well. And for the poet, standing as he does, at the opening
of the Iron Age, to which he himself belongs, nothing remains but
dissolution in the nothingness of Erebos. That such is his view is
proved by his silence about the fate after death of his
generation--a silence that is all the more oppressive because the
grim picture that he gives of the misery and ever-increasing
depravity of real and contemporary life might seem to require a
brighter and more hopeful picture of future compensation, if only to
balance it and make it endurable. But he is silent about all such
future compensation; he has no such hope to offer. Though in another
part of the same poem Hope alone of all the blessings of an earlier
and better age still remains among men, such Hope no longer
illuminates the next world, at any rate, with its beams. The poet,
more deeply distressed by the common realities of life, can by no
means dispense so easily as the singers of the epic tradition
enclosed in the magic circle of their poetry, with such hopes of the
future. He can draw comfort only from what poetry {78} or religious
myth tell him of the far distant past. It never enters his head to
believe that the miracle of the translation of living men could
transcend the limits of the Heroic Age and repeat itself in the
common and prosaic present day. And the time when, according to a
law of nature no longer (so it seems) in operation, the souls of the
dead became Daimones and lived a higher life upon and beneath the
earth, is situated far back in the distant past. Another law rules
now; the men of to-day may still worship the immortal spirits of the
Golden and the Silver Age, but they themselves will never be added
to the number of those illuminated and exalted souls.

§ 5

Hesiod's description, then, of the five Ages of Men gives us the
most important information about the development of Greek belief in
the soul. What he tells us of the spirits of the Silver and Golden
race shows that from the earliest dawn of history down to the actual
lifetime of the poet, a form of _ancestor-worship_ had prevailed,
based upon the once living belief in the elevation of disembodied
and immaterial souls to the rank of powerful, consciously active
spirits. But the company of these spirits receives no additions from
the life of the present day. For centuries now the souls of the dead
have been claimed by Hades and his vain shadow world. The worship of
the soul is stationary; it affects only the souls of the long-since
departed; it no longer increases the number of the objects of its
worship. In other words, the belief has changed; the Homeric poems
have triumphed and the view they held, and to which they gave
authority, and, as it were, official sanction, now prevails. They
teach men that the psyche once separated from the body loses all its
powers and consciousness; the strengthless shadows are received into
a distant Underworld. For them, no action, no influence upon the
world of men is possible, and therefore no cult can be paid to them.
Only on the farthest horizon faintly appear the Islands of the
Blest, but the circle of the fortunate, who, according to the
visionary fancy of the poets, are translated alive there, is now
closed, just as the circle of epic story is complete also. Such
miracles no longer happen.

Nothing in this evolutionary process so clearly depicted in the poem
of Hesiod contradicts what we have learned from Homer. One thing
only is new and immensely important; in spite of everything the
memory survives that once the souls of departed generations of men
had achieved a higher, {79} undying life. Hesiod speaks in the
present tense of their being and working and of the worship paid to
them after their death; if they are believed to be immortal, men
will naturally continue to worship them. And the opposite also is
true; if the worship of such spirits had not survived into the
present, no one would have held them to be deathless and eternally
potent.

In a word, we are in the old Greek mainland, the land of Boeotian
peasants and urban farmers, among a stay-at-home race which neither
knows nor desires to know of the seafaring life that tempts men to
foreign lands whence they bring back so much that is new and
strange. Here in the central uplands vestiges of ancient custom and
belief remained that had been forgotten in the maritime cities of
new Greece on the Asiatic coast. Even here, however, the new
learning had penetrated to this extent: the structure of ancient
belief, transported into the distant past, interwoven with fanciful
tales of the earliest state of mankind, like the expiring echo of
half-forgotten song lives on only in memory. But the cult of Souls,
is not yet quite dead; the possibility remains that it may yet renew
its strength and expand into fresh life when once the magic
influence of the Homeric view of the world shall have been broken.

NOTES TO CHAPTER II

[1\2: It is not for nothing that what is here said of the "climate",
if one may so call it, of the Elysian plain, ~d~ 566-8, reminds us
so strikingly of the description of the abode of the Gods on
Olympos, ~z~ 43-5.]

[2\2: The announcement of the fate of Menelaos is quite superfluous;
it is not necessitated (and not even justified) by his first request
(468 ff.), or by his further questions (486 ff.; 551 ff.). Nitzsch
already regarded the lines 561-8 as a later addition: _Anm. z. Od._
iii, p. 352--though indeed on grounds that I cannot regard as
conclusive. Others have done the same since.]

[3\2: The following are made invisible (by envelopment in a cloud)
and carried away--this, though not always stated, is most probably
to be understood in most cases: Paris, by Aphrodite, ~G~ 380 ff.;
Aeneas, by Apollo, ~E~ 344 f.; Idaios, son of Dares, the priest of
Hephaistos, by Heph., ~E~ 23; Hektor, by Apollo, ~U~ 443 f.; Aeneas,
by Poseidon, ~U~ 325 ff.; Agenor, by Apollo, ~Ph~ 596 ff.--this last
appears to be the original copied twice over in the story of this
one day of fighting by later poets (in the above-mentioned cases of
the use of the motif, ~U~ 325 ff.; 443 f.). It is remarkable (for no
special reason for it suggests itself) that all these cases of
translation are found on the _Trojan_ side. Otherwise we only have
one instance (and that only in the narrative of a long past
adventure, the translation of the Anaktoriones by their father
Poseidon, ~L~ 750 ff. Lastly, a case that hardly goes beyond those
already mentioned: Zeus could have translated alive his son Sarpedon
out of the fray and placed him in his Lykian home (~P~ 436), but
refrains owing to the warning of Hera (440 ff.).]

[4\2: The wish to die quickly is expressly _contrasted_ with the
wish to be carried off by the Harpies, 63 ~ê\ e/peita~--"or if not,"
i.e. if quick death is denied to me. (v. _Rh. Mus._ 50, 2, 2.) Again
79-80: ~hôs e/m' _aïstô/seian_ Olu/mpia dô/mat' e/chontes êe/ m'
eüplo/kamos ba/loi A/rtemis~. Thus the Harpies (= ~thu/ella~ 63) in
this case do not bring death but carry away men alive (~anarpa/xasa
oi/choito~ 63 f., ~ha/rpuiai anêrei/psanto~ 77 = ~ane/lonto
thu/ellai~ 66, and they carry them off ~kat' êero/enta ke/leutha~ 64
to the ~prochoai\ apsorro/ou Ôkeanoi=o~ 65 ~e/dosan stugerê=|sin
Erinu/sin amphipoleu/ein~ 78). At the "mouths of Okeanos" (where it
goes into the sea is the entrance to the world of the dead; ~k~ 508
ff., ~l~ 13 ff. To be carried off by the storm-spirits used
proverbially as a wish: ~Z~ 345 ff. ~hô=s m' o/phel' ê/mati tô=|
ho/te me prô=ton te/ke mê/têr oi/chesthai prophe/rousa kakê\
ane/moio _thu/ella_ eis o/ros ê\ eis ku=ma poluphloi/sboio
thala/ssês~ (i.e. to some solitary place, Orph., _H._ 19, 19; 36,
16; 71, 11). Such transportation through the air is elsewhere
contrasted with death and dwelling in Hades, as in Penelope's
prayer. (Roscher, _Kynanthropie_ [Abh. d. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss.
xvii], p. 67, gives a strange but hardly the correct explanation of
this.) Cf. Soph., _Tr._, 953 ff.; _Ai._, 1193 ff.; (_Phil._, 1092
ff.?); cf. also Eur., _Hipp._, 1279 ff.; _Ion_, 805 f.; _Supp._,
833-6. A deeply rooted popular mode of thought, and one of primeval
antiquity, lies at the root of all {81} these instances.--~hupo\
pneuma/tôn sunarpage/nta a/phanton gene/sthai~ is a reason for
~timai\ atha/natoi~, in the only half-rationalized story of Hesperos
in D.S. 3, 60, 3.]

[5\2: One would like to know more of this strange story, but what we
learn elsewhere of Pandareos and his daughters (Sch. ~u~ 66-7; ~t~
518; Ant. Lib. 36) contributes nothing to the understanding of the
Homeric narrative and probably belongs in part to another connexion.
Pandareos, father of Aëdon (~t~ 518 ff.), seems to be another
person. Even the strange representation of the two daughters of
Pandareos in Polygnotos' picture of the underworld (Paus. 10, 30, 2)
casts no light on the Homeric fable. (Cf. Roscher, _Kynan._, 4 ff.,
65 f.)]

[6\2: The Erinyes live normally in Erebos, as is shown esp. by ~I~
571 f.; ~T~ 259. But when they punish during the lifetime of the
criminal acts done in contravention of the laws of family life, it
must be supposed that they were sometimes thought of as going about
the earth, e.g. ~I~ 454: ~l~ 278--for "working at a distance" seems
impossible--as in Hes., Op., 803 f.--~Erinu/sin amphipoleu/ein~ (78)
cannot be anything but "serve the Erinyes", "become their
~amphi/poloi~". To understand it as Roscher does (_Kynan._, 65, n.
183) following Eustathius, in the sense "fly about in the train of
the E." is forbidden by the use of the simple dative ~Erinu/si~
joined closely with ~amph.~ (~theai=s amphipolô=n~ Soph., _O.C._,
680, is different.)]

[7\2: "When the Bride of the Wind comes by you must throw yourself
on the ground as though it were the Muodisheere (on which see Grimm
(E.T.), p. 931) otherwise they will carry you off." Birlinger,
_Volksthüml. a. Schwaben_, i, 192, "She is the Devil's Bride," ib.
(On the "Bride of the Wind", etc., see Grimm, pp. 632, 1009.) Such
wind-spirits are in unholy alliance with the "Furious Host", i.e.
the unquiet "souls" of the dead that travel through the air by
night.]

[8\2: On the Harpies, see _Rh. Mus._, 50, 1-5.]

[9\2: See Nägelsb., _H.T._, pp. 42-3, and Roscher, _Nektar u.
Ambrosia_, p. 51 ff., answering Bergk's objections, _Opusc._ ii,
669. (Arist. _Meta._, 1000a, 9-14, is very definite.)]

[10\2: It is not improbable that this Ino Leukothea was originally a
goddess who was later turned into a "Heroine" (identified with the
daughter of Kadmos for reasons no longer recoverable and only
afterwards turned back again into a goddess. But for the Homeric age
she was essentially a mortal who had _become_ a goddess: for this
reason, just because she was an example of such deification of
mortals, she remained an interesting character to later writers; cf.
in addition to the well-known passages in Pindar, etc., Cic., _T.D._
i, 28. Only what the actual conception of the people and their poets
was--not what may possibly be suggested as the doubtful background
of such conceptions--concerns me in this as in many other cases.]

[11\2: Only temporary translation (~anê/rpase~) of Marpessa by
Apollo ~I~ 564.]

[12\2: Ganymedes, ~anê/rpase the/spis _a/ella_~, _h. Ven._, 208, as
the ~thu/ella~ (= ~Ha/rpuia~) did the daughters of Pandareos. The
eagle is the addition of later poetry.]

[13\2: ~L~ 1; ~e~ 1.]

[14\2: ~Êô\s . . . ap' Ôkeanoi=o rhoa/ôn ô/rnuth', hi/n'
athana/toisi pho/ôs phe/roi êde\ brotoi=sin~, ~T~ 1 f.: cf. ~ps~ 244
(_h. Merc._, 184 f.). So also _h. Ven._, 224 ff., says of Tithonos:
~Êoi= terpo/menos chrusothro/nô| êrigenei/ê| nai=e par' Ôkeanoi=o
rhoê=|s epi\ pei/rasi gai/ês~, in good Homeric style. It seems that
the magic island Aiaia was considered the home of Eos (and of
Tithonos): ~m~ 3: ~nê=so/n t' Aiai/ên, ho/thi t' Êou=s êrigenei/ês
{82} oiki/a kai\ choroi/ eisi antolai\ êeli/oio~. I need not here go
into the attempts made even in antiquity to explain the
much-discussed difficulty introduced by this verse and to bring it
into conformity with the westerly situation of Aiaia implied in the
rest of the Odyssey. One thing is certain: the first composer of
this verse thought of Aiaia as lying towards the east. Only the last
resources of the commentator's art could situate the place of the
"sun's uprising" and the "dwelling of the Dawn" in the west.]

[15\2: Among innumerable unsuccessful attempts made by the ancients
at finding an etymological derivation for the word ~Êlu/sion~ (Sch.,
~d~ 563, Eust., p. 1509, Hesych., s.v., etc., also Cels. ap. Orig.,
_Cels._ vii, 28, p. 53 L.) occurs also the right one, _E.M._, 428,
36: ~para\ tê\n e/leusin, e/ntha hoi eusebei=s paragi/nontai~. The
grammarians seem to have disputed over the question, did Menelaos
live for ever in Elysion? It was agreed on all hands that he reached
that abode alive, without separation of psyche from body; but the
over-subtle thought that the prophecy meant that he too should die
there though not in Argos--not that he should never die at all: so
esp. _E. Gud._, 242, 2 ff. This was the opinion also of those who
derived ~Êlu/sion~ from the fact that there the ~psuchai\
_lelume/nai_ tô=n sôma/tôn dia/gousi~: Eust., 1509, 29, _E.M._, etc.
The etymology is as bad as the interpretation of the line. The line
remained, however, throughout antiquity as a curiosity; intelligent
readers understood the prophecy quite rightly as referring to the
translation of Menelaos to everlasting life without separation of
~psuchê/~ from body; e.g. Porph. ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 422, 8 ff.,
W. So, too, those who gave the right interpretation of fact, but
rested it upon the more dubious etymology: ~Êlu/sion oulu/sion,
ho/ti ou dialu/ontai apo\ tô=n sôma/tôn hai psuchai/~. Hesych. (cf.
_E.M._, 428, 34-5; Sch., ~d~ 563; Procl. on Hes., _Op._, 169).]

[16\2: ~ou mê\n phai/netai/ ge (ho poiêtê/s) proagagô\n to\n lo/gon
es ple/on hôs heu/rêma a/n tis oikei=on, prosapsa/menos de\ autou=
mo/non ha/te es ha/pan ê/dê diabeboême/nou to\ Hellêniko/n~--to
adopt the words that Pausanias (10, 31, 4) uses of a similar case.]

[17\2: The reasons for the special favour shown to Rhadamanthys are
as unknown to us as they evidently were to the Greeks of later
times. What is generally said of the "justice" of Rhad. rests upon
private opinion only and does not supply the place of the precise
legend that should have justified his translation. That he once had
a complete legend of his own may be guessed from the allusion to him
in ~ê~ 323, though that passage still leaves us quite in the dark.
At any rate, it certainly does not follow from that reference that
while dwelling in Elysion he was a neighbour of the Phaeacians as
Welcker thinks: nor further that he had always been a dweller in
Elysion, as Preller supposes, instead of being transported there.
Nothing in the former passage justifies us in regarding him as then
dwelling in Elysion; while the other reference to him must be
supposed to mean that Rhad. just as much as Menelaos, was translated
to Elys. (and so e.g. Paus. understood the poet 8, 53, 5: ~pro/teron
de\ e/ti Rhada/manthun entau=tha hê/kein~; doubtful: Aesch. _fr._
99, 12-13). In fact, we have lost the legends which gave the details
of his translation: his figure had become isolated and had not
entered into the greater circle of epic figures--and as a
consequence his mythical context soon disappeared too.]

[18\2: Hasisatra's _Translation_: see the translation of the
Babylonian account in Paul Haupt's _Der Keilins. Sintfluthber._
(Leip. 1881), p. 17, 18. The expressions used by the Greek-writing
reporters are exactly like those common in Greek accounts of
translation: ~gene/sthai aphanê= {83} (to\n Xi/southron) meta\ tô=n
theô=n oikê/sonta~, Beros. ap. Sync., p. 55, 6, 11 Di.; ~theoi/ min
ex anthrô/pôn aphani/zousi~, Abydenus ap. Syncell., p. 70, 13. Of
Enoch we read, Gen. 5^24: ~ouch heuri/sketo ho/ti mete/thêken auto\n
ho theo/s (metete/thê~, Ecclus., 44^16; Hebr. 11^5); ~anelê/phthê
apo\ tê=s gê=s~, Ecclus. 49^14; ~anechô/rêse pro\s to\ thei=on~,
Jos., _AJ._ i, 3, 4 (of Moses: ~aphani/zetai~, Jos., _AJ._ iv, 8,
48). On the translation of Enoch and Elijah, see also Schwally, _D.
Leben. nach d. Tode n. d. Vorst. d. a. Israel_ (1892), p. 140.
Translation of the living into Sheol often in the O.T., see
Schwally, p. 62. Even Enoch has not escaped the fate of being
regarded by comparative mythologists as the sun. Enoch may be given
up to them, if the Orientalists have no objection; but it seems a
pity that the theory, in accordance with the favourite argument from
analogy, should be applied to Greek Translation-myths too, so that
we should see the whole series of such figures, from Menelaos to
Apollonios of Tyana, transformed by magic into mythological suns (or
dawns, water-meadows, thunder-clouds, etc.).]

[19\2: ~malthako\s aichmêtê/s~, ~R~ 588.]

[20\2: ~X~ 321-2.]

[21\2: One might even suspect that Menelaos is translated to
everlasting life not merely because he has Helen, Zeus' daughter, to
wife: ~hou/nek' e/cheis Hele/nên~ as Proteus tells him, but in
_imitation_ of a much earlier mythical tradition, according to which
Helen herself was translated and made immortal. No ancient tradition
reports the _death_ of Helen--with the exception of the absurd
invention of Ptolemaios Chennos (Phot. _Bibl._, p. 149_a_, 37 Bk.;
42; 149_b_, 1 ff.) and the not very superior aetiological myth in
Paus. 3, 19, 10. On the other hand, we often hear of her
deification, living on the island Leuke or else in the Islands of
the Blest. It was not unnatural that mythological tradition should
have at an early period set free the most "daemonic" of women from
the usual fate of mankind and that Menelaos should rather have
followed her example than she his (as Isoc. 10, 62, definitely
says).]

[22\2: Cf. Tylor, ii, 85: J. G. Müller, _Ges. d. Americ. Urrelig._,
660 f.; Waitz, _Anthrop._ v, 2, 114; vi, 302, 307.]

[23\2: We are told that Rhadamanthys was once conveyed by the
Phaeacians to Euboea ~epopso/menos Tituo\n Gaiê/ïon huio/n~ (~ê~ 321
ff.). We have no grounds and no right to complete this story by
supposing that this was when Rh. already lived in Elysion. To regard
the Phaeacians as a sort of "ferry-folk of the dead" connected in
some way with Elysion is pure unsupported fancy.]

[24\2: The possessor of ~athanasi/a~ did not necessarily possess
also ~du/namin iso/theon~ (Isoc. 10, 61).]

[25\2: To identify ~Ortugi/ê~, ~o~ 404, with Delos, and ~Suri/ê~
with the island Syros as the older commentators and K. O. Müller,
_Dorier_, i, 381 [? not in _E.T._], did, is impossible on account of
the addition of the words ~ho/thi tropai\ êeli/oio~ alone. These
show that Syrie was far away in the fabulous west, the only possible
place for such a wonderland. It is evident that Ortygia is
originally a purely mythical spot, sacred to Artemis and no more
certainly fixed in one place than the Dionysian Nysa, and for that
reason always to be found wherever the cult of Artemis was
especially popular, in Aetolia, Syracuse, Ephesos, or Delos. Delos
is clearly distinguished from O. in _h. Ap._ 16, and only later
identified with O. (Delos being considered the older name, O.
Schneider, _Nicandr._, p. 22, n.), when Artemis had been brought
into closer connexion with Apollo, and even then not invariably.
Thus in Homer Ortygia _never_ clearly = Delos.] {84}

[26\2: ~A/rtemis de\ autê\n hexarpa/xasa eis Tau/rous metakomi/zei~
(cf. the ~mete/thêken auto\n ho theo/s~ of Enoch, Gen. 5^24) ~kai\
atha/naton poiei=, e/laphon de\ anti\ tê=s ko/rês pari/stêsi tô=|
bômô=|~, Procl., _Chrest._ ap. Kinkel _Epic. Fr._, p. 19: [Apollod.]
_Epit._ iii, 22. Wagn.]

[27\2: ~tou/tô| (tô=| Me/mnoni Êô\s para\ Dio\s aitêsame/nê
athanasi/an di/dôsi~ says Proclus with regrettable brevity (p. 33,
Kinkel).]

[28\2: It cannot be doubted (in spite of Meier, _Annali dell' Inst.
Arch._, 1883, p. 217 ff.) that the story given in ~P~ of Sarpedon's
death and the carrying away of his body, even if it does not belong
to the oldest part of the poem (which I cannot regard as certain),
is nevertheless earlier than the _Aithiopis_ and was the model for
its account of Memnon's death (cf. also Christ, _Chron. altgr.
Epos._, p. 25). But why do Thanatos and Hypnos carry away the body
of Sarpedon (instead of the usual ~thu/ella, a/ella, Ha/rpuia~, or
the winds, Q.S. ii, 550, in the case of Memnon)? Where these two are
found on Attic lekythoi as bearers of the corpse (Robert,
_Thanatos_, 19) they were perhaps intended in some consolatory sense
as in the grave inscriptions ~hu/pnos e/chei se, ma/kar . . . kai\
ne/kus ouk ege/nou~. The Homeric poet, however, can hardly have
meant anything of the sort, but merely invents the indispensable
second bearer to assist Thanatos--an effective touch but not one
that rested on any religious grounds. Hypnos as brother of Thanatos
is also found in the ~Dio\s apa/tê~, ~X~ 231.]

[29\2: ~ek tê=s pura=s hê The/tis anarpa/sasa to\n pai=da eis tê\n
Leukê\n nê=son diakomi/zei~, Procl., _Chrest._, p. 34, Kink. Then he
continues, ~hoi de\ Achaioi\ to\n _ta/phon_ chô/santes agô=na
tithe/asin~. Thus a grave-mound is set up though the body of
Achilles has been translated: evidently a concession to the older
narrative (~ô~ 80-4), which knew nothing of the translation of the
body but gives prominence to the grave-mound. Besides which, the
tumulus of Achilles--a landmark on the seashore of the
Troad--required explanation, and the poet accordingly speaks of the
erection of a cenotaph. It was not considered a contradiction to
erect cenotaphs, not only to those whose bodies were irrecoverable
(see above, Ch. I, n. 88), but also to Heroes whose bodies had been
translated. Thus Herakles, after he has been struck by lightning and
snatched up into the sky, has a ~chô=ma~ made for him, though no
bones were found upon the ~pura/~, D.S. 4, 38, 5; 39, 1. (The tumuli
found in the Troad were not, indeed, originally empty as Schliemann,
_Troy, etc._, pp. 252, 263, supposed; they were not cenotaphs but
merely grave-mounds that had once been filled and belong to a type
frequently met with in Phrygia; see Schuchhardt, _Schliemann's
Excav._ [E.T.], p. 84 ff. Kretschmer, _Einl. Ges. gr. Spr._, 1896,
p. 176.)]

[30\2: What became of Odysseus? Proclus is silent on the point, and
we have no means of guessing. According to Hyginus 127 he was buried
in Aiaia; but if nothing more was going to be done with his body why
bring him to Aiaia? Acc. to Sch. Lyc., 805, he was raised to life
again by Kirke, but what happened to him then? (Acc. to [Apollod.]
_Epit._ vii, 37 W., the dead Odysseus seems to remain in Ithaka.--We
have no grounds for altering the words to suit the Telegoneia as
Wagner does, esp. as a complete correspondence with that poem cannot
be obtained.) The death and burial of Od. among the Tyrrhenians
(Müller, _Etruscans_ iii, 281 tr. Gray) belong to quite another
connexion.]

[31\2: The _Aithiopis_ is later than the Hades scenes in ~ô~, and
consequently later still than the Nekyia of ~l~. The prophecy of the
Translation of Menelaos in ~d~ is likewise later than the Nekyia but
to all appearance older than the _Aithiopis_.] {85}

[32\2: The extract from the Nostoi in Proclus, _Chrest._, is
particularly inadequate and evidently gives no full idea of the very
wide and various subject matter of that poem. Thus, too, the notices
of it preserved from other sources give details of its subject
matter (esp. of the Nekyia which was included in it) that cannot be
fitted into the limits of Proclus' outline.]

[33\2: The idea that the Bronze age is really identical with the age
of Heroes is at first sight attractive (see e.g. Steitz, _Die W. u.
T. des Hesiod_, p. 61); one soon finds, however, that it breaks down
on closer examination.]

[34\2: It does not seem to me absolutely necessary to strike out
lines 124 f. (~hoi/ rha phula/ssousi/n te di/kas kai\ sche/tlia
e/rga, êe/ra hessa/menoi pa/ntê phoitô=ntes ep' ai=an~). They are
repeated in lines 254 f., but that is a natural place to repeat
them. Proclus does not comment on them; but it does not follow that
he did not have them before him; and Plutarch, _D.O._ 37, p. 431 B,
seems to allude to l. 125 in its present context.]

[35\2: Plu., _D.O._, 10, p. 415 B, in obvious error, takes Hesiod's
~dai/mones~ for such an intermediate class of beings; he supposes
that Hesiod distinguishes four classes ~tô=n logikô=n, theoi/,
dai/mones, hê/rôes, a/nthrôpoi~. In this Platonist division the
~hê/rôes~ would correspond rather with Hesiod's ~dai/mones~ of the
first age. (What Proclus has to say on Hesiod, _Op._ 121, p. 101,
Gaisf., is taken evidently word for word from Plutarch's commentary
on Hesiod and resembles closely the remarks in the passage cited
from the _Def. Orac._) Modern critics have often failed to notice
the difference between the Hesiodic ~dai/mones~ and the Platonic.
Plato himself is very decided about the difference (_Crat._ 397
E-398 C).]

[36\2: ~êe/ra hessa/menoi~ 125 (cf. 223; ~X~ 282) is a naive
equivalent for "invisible" as Tzet. correctly explains. This is how
it is to be understood regularly in Homer whenever there is mention
of envelopment in a cloud and the like.]

[37\2: These daimones are called ~epichtho/nioi~ in contrast (not to
the ~hupochtho/nioi~ of l. 141, but) to the ~theoi\ epoura/nioi~, as
Proclus on l. 122 rightly remarks. Thus in Homer we have
~epichtho/nioi~ regularly used as an adjective, or, standing alone,
as an equivalent of men as distinguished from gods. Then the
~hupochtho/nioi~ of 141 are brought in to form another and secondary
contrast with the ~epichtho/nioi~.]

[38\2: ~r~ 485 ff. It follows that the descriptions of the visits
paid by gods to the homes of men are of great antiquity; cf. my
_Griech. Roman_, p. 506 ff. Zeus Philios in particular is fond of
visiting men: Diod. Com. ~Epi/klêr.~, Mein. _Com._ iii, p. 543 f.
(ii, p. 420 K.).]

[39\2: ~timê\ kai\ toi=sin opêdei=~ 142. ~timê/~ in the sense not of
simple honour but of practical worship, as frequently in Homer, e.g.
in such phrases as: ~timê\ kai\ ku=dos opêdei=~, ~R~ 251; ~timê=s
aponê/menos~, ~ô~ 30: ~timê\n de\ lelo/gchasin i=sa theoi=sin~, ~l~
304; ~e/chei timê/n~, ~l~ 495, etc. In the same way here, l. 138:
~hou/neka tima\s ouk edi/doun maka/ressi theoi=s~.]

[40\2: Light and dark, i.e. good and bad, ~dai/mones~ are acc. to
Roth, _Myth. v. d. Weltaltern_ (1860), pp. 16-17, distinguished in
Hesiod's daimones of the golden and silver age. Such a distinction,
however, never appears in Hesiod; and it is hardly credible that the
gods and spirits of ancient Greek popular belief (which never really
admitted the categories good and bad) should in this primitive
period have been actually classified in accordance with such
categories. At any rate, Greek readers never found anything of the
kind expressed in Hesiod: {86} the conception of bad daimones is
regularly supported by reference to the philosophers alone (e.g.
Plut., _D.O._, 17, p. 419 A, and the conception is certainly no
older than the earliest philosophic speculation.]

[41\2: l. 141: ~toi\ me\n hupochtho/nioi (epichtho/nioi~ all MSS.
except one, see Köchly's Apparatus; also Tz.) ~ma/kares thnêtoi\
kale/ontai.--phu/lakes thnêtoi\~ was read and explained by Proclus.
This is clearly wrong, and is corrected to ~phu/lakes thnêtô=n~ (as
in l. 123) by Hagen and Welcker. But this transfers from the first
to the second race an expression that we cannot be sure Hesiod meant
to be transferred. Not merely the words but the sense, too, is thus
corrected, without due ground. ~ma/kares~ does not look like a
corruption; it is more likely that ~phu/lakes~ is an accidental
alteration. ~hup. ma/kares thnêtoi=s kale/ontai~ is the reading of
the latest editor: but here to say the least of it the addition of
~thnêtoi=s~ is superfluous. We should rather try to understand and
explain the traditional text and show how the poet came by the
remarkable expression.]

[42\2: When philosophers and philosophizing poets of a later age
occasionally refer to the soul when freed from the body as a
~dai/môn~, the expression has a totally different sense.]

[43\2: Similarly, though the oxymoron is much less daring in his
case, Isocrates, 9, 72, has ~dai/môn thnêto/s~. In order to describe
a daimon who has originally been a mortal later ages boldly invented
the compound ~anthrôpodai/môn~ which corresponds fairly well with
the Hesiodic ~ma/kar thnêto/s~: [Eur.] _Rhes._, 971; Procop., _An._
12, p. 79, 17 D. (~nekudai/môn~ on a _defixio_ from Carthage, _BCH._
xii, 299). Later still a king destined to become a god is called,
even at his birth, by Manetho (i, 280) ~_theo\n broto\n_
anthrô/poisin~.]

[44\2: The silver race was created by the gods of Olympos, like the
golden before them (l. 110; 128); only the third race (l. 143) and
then the fourth (158) by Zeus alone. It might be supposed from this
that the silver age as well as the golden age occurred in the period
before Zeus' rule, ~epi\ Kro/nou ho/t' ouranô=| embasi/leuen~ (l.
111); and in this sense "Orpheus" understood the words of Hesiod
when he ~tou= argurou= ge/nous basileu/ein phêsi\ to\n Kro/non~
(Proclus on l. 126). But it would be very difficult to reconcile l.
138 ~Zeu\s Kroni/dês ktl.~ with this view. Hesiod may then have
placed the silver age in the time when sub Iove mundus erat (as Ovid
explicitly states, _M._ i, 113 f.); but all the same it lay for him
in the far distant past before all history.]

[45\2: ~nô/numnoi~ 154 may quite as well mean "nameless", i.e.
without name or special title, as "fameless" (as it does for the
most part though not invariably in Homer).]

[46\2: See Welcker, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 6, who, however, in the desire
to rule out all possibility of identifying Scherie with Korkyra
asserts too positively that it was a part of the mainland. ~z~ 204
(compared with ~d~ 354) at least comes very close to regarding it as
an island. But it is clear that nowhere is it explicitly called an
island.--It is possible that ~Scheri/ê~, connected with ~schero/s~,
may really mean "mainland" (Welcker, loc. cit.; Kretschmer, _Einl.
Gesch. gr. Spr._, 281): but the question still remains whether the
Homeric poet, who did not invent the name, understood or respected