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GREEK AND ROMAN GHOST STORIES
by
LACY COLLISON-MORLEY
Formerly Scholar of St. John's College, Oxford
Author of "Giuseppe Baretti and His Friends," "Modern Italian
Literature"
Oxford
B. H. Blackwell, Broad Street
London
Simpkin, Marshall & Co., Limited
MCMXII
This collection was originally begun at the suggestion of Mr. Marion
Crawford, whose wide and continual reading of the classics supplied more
than one of the stories. They were put together during a number of years
of casual browsing among the classics, and will perhaps interest others
who indulge in similar amusements.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE POWER OF THE DEAD TO RETURN TO EARTH 1
II. THE BELIEF IN GHOSTS IN GREECE AND ROME 13
III. STORIES OF HAUNTING 19
IV. NECROMANCY 33
V. VISIONS OF THE DEAD IN SLEEP 45
VI. APPARITIONS OF THE DEAD 54
VII. WARNING APPARITIONS 72
I
THE POWER OF THE DEAD TO RETURN TO EARTH
Though there is no period at which the ancients do not seem to have
believed in a future life, continual confusion prevails when they come
to picture the existence led by man in the other world, as we see from
the sixth book of the _Æneid_. Combined with the elaborate mythology of
Greece, we are confronted with the primitive belief of Italy, and
doubtless of Greece too--a belief supported by all the religious rites
in connection with the dead--that the spirits of the departed lived on
in the tomb with the body. As cremation gradually superseded burial, the
idea took shape that the soul might have an existence of its own,
altogether independent of the body, and a place of abode was assigned to
it in a hole in the centre of the earth, where it lived on in eternity
with other souls.
This latter view seems to have become the official theory, at least in
Italy, in classical days. In the gloomy, horrible Etruscan religion, the
shades were supposed to be in charge of the Conductor of the Dead--a
repulsive figure, always represented with wings and long, matted hair
and a hammer, whose appearance was afterwards imitated in the dress of
the man who removed the dead from the arena. Surely something may be
said for Gaston Boissier's suggestion that Dante's Tuscan blood may
account to some extent for the gruesome imagery of the _Inferno_.
Cicero[1] tells us that it was generally believed that the dead lived on
beneath the earth, and special provision was made for them in every
Latin town in the "mundus," a deep trench which was dug before the
"pomerium" was traced, and regarded as the particular entrance to the
lower world for the dead of the town in question. The trench was vaulted
over, so that it might correspond more or less with the sky, a gap being
left in the vault which was closed with the stone of the departed--the
"lapis manalis." Corn was thrown into the trench, which was filled up
with earth, and an altar erected over it. On three solemn days in the
year--August 25, October 5, and November 8--the trench was opened and
the stone removed, the dead thus once more having free access to the
world above, where the usual offerings were made to them.[2]
These provisions clearly show an official belief that death did not
create an impassable barrier between the dead and the living. The
spirits of the departed still belonged to the city of their birth, and
took an interest in their old home. They could even return to it on the
days when "the trench of the gods of gloom lies open and the very jaws
of hell yawn wide."[3] Their rights must be respected, if evil was to be
averted from the State. In fact, the dead were gods with altars of their
own,[4] and Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, could write to her
sons, "You will make offerings to me and invoke your parent as a
god."[5] Their cult was closely connected with that of the Lares--the
gods of the hearth, which symbolized a fixed abode in contrast with the
early nomad life. Indeed, there is practically no distinction between
the Lares and the Manes, the souls of the good dead. But the dead had
their own festival, the "Dies Parentales," held from the 13th to the
21st of February, in Rome;[6] and in Greece the "Genesia," celebrated on
the 5th of Boedromion, towards the end of September, about which we
know very little.[7]
There is nothing more characteristic of paganism than the passionate
longing of the average man to perpetuate his memory after death in the
world round which all his hopes and aspirations clung. Cicero uses it as
an argument for immortality.[8]
Many men left large sums to found colleges to celebrate their memories
and feast at their tombs on stated occasions.[9] Lucian laughs at this
custom when he represents the soul of the ordinary man in the next world
as a mere bodiless shade that vanishes at a touch like smoke. It
subsists on the libations and offerings it receives from the living, and
those who have no friends or relatives on earth are starving and
famished.[10] Violators of tombs were threatened with the curse of dying
the last of their race--a curse which Macaulay, with his intense family
affection, considered the most awful that could be devised by man; and
the fact that the tombs were built by the high road, so that the dead
might be cheered by the greeting of the passer-by, lends an additional
touch of sadness to a walk among the crumbling ruins that line the Latin
or the Appian Way outside Rome to-day.
No one of the moderns has caught the pagan feeling towards death better
than Giosuè Carducci, a true spiritual descendant of the great Romans of
old, if ever there was one. He tells how, one glorious June day, he was
sitting in school, listening to the priest outraging the verb "amo,"
when his eyes wandered to the window and lighted on a cherry-tree, red
with fruit, and then strayed away to the hills and the sky and the
distant curve of the sea-shore. All Nature was teeming with life, and he
felt an answering thrill, when suddenly, as if from the very fountains
of being within him, there welled up a consciousness of death, and with
it the formless nothing, and a vision of himself lying cold, motionless,
dumb in the black earth, while above him the birds sang, the trees
rustled in the wind, the rivers ran on in their course, and the living
revelled in the warm sun, bathed in its divine light. This first vision
of death often haunted him in later years;[11] and one realizes that
such must often have been the feelings of the Romans, and still more
often of the Greeks, for the joy of the Greek in life was far greater
than that of the Roman. Peace was the only boon that death could bring
to a pagan, and "Pax tecum æterna" is among the commonest of the
inscriptions. The life beyond the grave was at best an unreal and
joyless copy of an earthly existence, and Achilles told Odysseus that he
would rather be the serf of a poor man upon earth than Achilles among
the shades.
When we come to inquire into the appearance of ghosts revisiting the
glimpses of the moon, we find, as we should expect, that they are a
vague, unsubstantial copy of their former selves on earth. In Homer[12]
the shade of Patroclus, which visited Achilles in a vision as he slept
by the sea-shore, looks exactly as Patroclus had looked on earth, even
down to the clothes. Hadrian's famous "animula vagula blandula" gives
the same idea, and it would be difficult to imagine a disembodied spirit
which retains its personality and returns to earth again except as a
kind of immaterial likeness of its earthly self. We often hear of the
extreme pallor of ghosts, which was doubtless due to their being
bloodless and to the pallor of death itself. Propertius conceived of
them as skeletons;[13] but the unsubstantial, shadowy aspect is by far
the commonest, and best harmonizes with the life they were supposed to
lead.
Hitherto we have been dealing with the spirits of the dead who have been
duly buried and are at rest, making their appearance among men only at
stated intervals, regulated by the religion of the State. The lot of the
dead who have not been vouchsafed the trifling boon of a handful of
earth cast upon their bones was very different. They had not yet been
admitted to the world below, and were forced to wander for a hundred
years before they might enter Charon's boat. Æneas beheld them on the
banks of the Styx, stretching out their hands "ripæ ulterioris amore."
The shade of Patroclus describes its hapless state to Achilles, as does
that of Elpenor to Odysseus, when they meet in the lower world. It is
not surprising that the ancients attached the highest importance to the
duty of burying the dead, and that Pausanias blames Lysander for not
burying the bodies of Philocles and the four thousand slain at
Ægospotami, seeing that the Athenians even buried the Persian dead after
Marathon.[14]
The spirits of the unburied were usually held to be bound, more or less,
to the spot where their bodies lay, and to be able to enter into
communication with the living with comparative ease, even if they did
not actually haunt them. They were, in fact, evil spirits which had to
be propitiated and honoured in special rites. Their appearances among
the living were not regulated by religion. They wandered at will over
the earth, belonging neither to this world nor to the next, restless and
malignant, unable to escape from the trammels of mortal life, in the
joys of which they had no part. Thus, in the _Phædo_[15] we read of
souls "prowling about tombs and sepulchres, near which, as they tell us,
are seen certain ghostly apparitions of souls which have not departed
pure ... These must be the souls, not of the good, but of the evil,
which are compelled to wander about such places in payment of the
penalty of their former evil way of life."
Apuleius[16] classifies the spirits of the departed for us. The Manes
are the good people, not to be feared so long as their rites are duly
performed, as we have already seen; Lemures are disembodied spirits;
while Larvæ are the ghosts that haunt houses. Apuleius, however, is
wholly uncritical, and the distinction between Larvæ and Lemures is
certainly not borne out by facts.
The Larvæ had distinct attributes, and were thought to cause epilepsy or
madness. They were generally treated more or less as a joke,[17] and are
spoken of much as we speak of a bogey. They appear to have been
entrusted with the torturing of the dead, as we see from the saying,
"Only the Larvæ war with the dead."[18] In Seneca's _Apocolocyntosis_,[19]
when the question of the deification of the late Emperor Claudius
is laid before a meeting of the gods, Father Janus gives it as his
opinion that no more mortals should be treated in this way, and that
"anyone who, contrary to this decree, shall hereafter be made,
addressed, or painted as a god, should be delivered over to the
Larvæ" and flogged at the next games.
Larva also means a skeleton, and Trimalchio, following the Egyptian
custom, has one brought in and placed on the table during his famous
feast. It is, as one would expect, of silver, and the millionaire
freedman points the usual moral--"Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for
to-morrow we die."[20]
The Larvæ were regular characters in the Atellane farces at Rome, where
they performed various "danses macabres." Can these possibly be the
prototypes of the Dances of Death so popular in the Middle Ages? We find
something very similar on the well-known silver cups discovered at Bosco
Reale, though Death itself does not seem to have been represented in
this way. Some of the designs in the medieval series would certainly
have appealed to the average bourgeois Roman of the Trimalchio
type--e.g., "Les Trois Vifs et les Trois Morts," the three men riding
gaily out hunting and meeting their own skeletons. Such crude contrasts
are just what one would expect to find at Pompeii.
Lemures and Larvæ are often confused, but Lemures is the regular word
for the dead not at rest--the "Lemuri," or spirits of the churchyard, of
some parts of modern Italy. They were evil spirits, propitiated in early
days with blood. Hence the first gladiatorial games were given in
connection with funerals. Both in Greece and in Rome there were special
festivals for appeasing these restless spirits. Originally they were of
a public character, for murder was common in primitive times, and such
spirits would be numerous, as is proved by the festival lasting three
days.
In Athens the Nemesia were held during Anthesterion (February-March). As
in Rome, the days were unlucky. Temples were closed and business was
suspended, for the dead were abroad. In the morning the doors were
smeared with pitch, and those in the house chewed whitethorn to keep off
the evil spirits. On the last day of the festival offerings were made
to Hermes, and the dead were formally bidden to depart.[21]
Ovid describes the Lemuria or Lemuralia.[22] They took place in May,
which was consequently regarded as an unlucky month for marriages, and
is still so regarded almost as universally in England to-day as it was
in Rome during the principate of Augustus. The name of the festival Ovid
derives from Remus, as the ghost of his murdered brother was said to
have appeared to Romulus in his sleep and to have demanded burial. Hence
the institution of the Lemuria.
The head of the family walked through the house with bare feet at dead
of night, making the mystic sign with his first and fourth fingers
extended, the other fingers being turned inwards and the thumb crossed
over them, in case he might run against an unsubstantial spirit as he
moved noiselessly along. This is the sign of "le corna," held to be
infallible against the Evil Eye in modern Italy. After solemnly washing
his hands, he places black beans in his mouth, and throws others over
his shoulders, saying, "With these beans do I redeem me and mine." He
repeats this ceremony nine times without looking round, and the spirits
are thought to follow unseen and pick up the beans. Then he purifies
himself once more and clashes brass, and bids the demons
leave his house. When he has repeated nine times "Manes exite paterni,"
he looks round, and the ceremony is over, and the restless ghosts have
been duly laid for a year.
Lamiæ haunted rooms, which had to be fumigated with sulphur, while some
mystic rites were performed with eggs before they could be expelled.
The dead not yet at rest were divided into three classes--those who had
died before their time, the [Greek: aôroi], who had to wander till the
span of their natural life was completed;[23] those who had met with
violent deaths, the [Greek: biaiothanatoi]; and the unburied, the
[Greek: ataphoi]. In the Hymn to Hecate, to whom they were especially
attached, they are represented as following in her train and taking part
in her nightly revels in human shape. The lot of the murdered is no
better, and executed criminals belong to the same class.
Spirits of this kind were supposed to haunt the place where their bodies
lay. Hence they were regarded as demons, and were frequently entrusted
with the carrying out of the strange curses, which have been found in
their tombs, or in wells where a man had been drowned, or even in the
sea, written on leaden tablets, often from right to left, or in queer
characters, so as to be illegible, with another tablet fastened over
them by means of a nail, symbolizing the binding effect it was hoped
they would have--the "Defixiones," to give them their Latin name, which
are very numerous among the inscriptions. So real was the belief in
these curses that the elder Pliny says that everyone is afraid of being
placed under evil spells;[24] and they are frequently referred to in
antiquity.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _Tusc. Disp._, i. 16.]
[Footnote 2: Ov., _Fast._, iv. 821; Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 211.]
[Footnote 3: Macrob., _Sat._, i. 16.]
[Footnote 4: Cic., _De Leg._, ii. 22.]
[Footnote 5: "Deum parentem" (Corn. Nep., _Fragm._, 12).]
[Footnote 6: Cp. Fowler, _Rom._ _Fest._]
[Footnote 7: Rohde, _Psyche_, p. 216. Cp. Herod., iv. 26.]
[Footnote 8: _Tusc._ _Disp._, i. 12, 27.]
[Footnote 9: Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, p. 259
_ff._]
[Footnote 10: _De Luctu_, 9.]
[Footnote 11: Carducci, "Rimembranze di Scuola," in _Rime Nuove_.]
[Footnote 12: _Il._, 23. 64.]
[Footnote 13: "Turpia ossa," 4. 5. 4.]
[Footnote 14: Paus., 9. 32.]
[Footnote 15: 81 D.]
[Footnote 16: _De Genio Socratis_, 15.]
[Footnote 17: Cp. Plautus, _Cas._, iii. 4. 2; _Amphitr._, ii. 2. 145;
_Rudens_, v. 3. 67, etc.; and the use of the word "larvatus."]
[Footnote 18: Pliny, _N.H._, 1, Proef. 31: "Cum mortuis non nisi
Larvas luctari."]
[Footnote 19: Seneca, _Apocol._, 9. At the risk of irrelevance, I cannot
refrain from pointing out the enduring nature of proverbs as exemplified
in this section. Hercules grows more and more anxious at the turn the
debate is taking, and hastens from one god to another, saying: "Don't
grudge me this favour; the case concerns me closely. I shan't forget you
when the time comes. One good turn deserves another" (Manus manum
lavat). This is exactly the Neapolitan proverb, "One hand washes the
other, and both together wash the face." "Una mano lava l'altra e tutt'e
due si lavano la faccia," is more or less the modern version. In chapter
vii. we have also "gallum in suo sterquilino plurimum posse," which
corresponds to our own, "Every cock crows best on its own dunghill."]
[Footnote 20: Petr., _Sat._, 34.]
[Footnote 21: [Greek: thhyraze, kêres, oukhet Anthestêria.] Cp. Rohde,
_Psyche_, 217.]
[Footnote 22: _Fast._, v. 419 _ff._]
[Footnote 23: Tertull., _De An._, 56.]
[Footnote 24: _N.H._, 28. 2. 19.]
II
THE BELIEF IN GHOSTS IN GREECE AND ROME
Ghost stories play a very subordinate part in classical literature, as
is only to be expected. The religion of the hard-headed, practical Roman
was essentially formal, and consisted largely in the exact performance
of an elaborate ritual. His relations with the dead were regulated with
a care that might satisfy the most litigious of ghosts, and once a man
had carried out his part of the bargain, he did not trouble his head
further about his deceased ancestors, so long as he felt that they, in
their turn, were not neglecting his interests. Yet the average man in
Rome was glad to free himself from burdensome and expensive duties
towards the dead that had come down to him from past generations, and
the ingenuity of the lawyers soon devised a system of sham sales by
which this could be successfully and honourably accomplished.[25]
Greek religion, it is true, found expression to a large extent in
mythology; but the sanity of the Greek genius in its best days kept it
free from excessive superstition. Not till the invasion of the
West by the cults of the East do we find ghosts and spirits at all
common in literature.
The belief in apparitions existed, however, at all times, even among
educated people. The younger Pliny, for instance, writes to ask his
friend Sura for his opinion as to whether ghosts have a real existence,
with a form of their own, and are of divine origin, or whether they are
merely empty air, owing their definite shape to our superstitious fears.
We must not forget that Suetonius, whose superstition has become
proverbial, was a friend of Pliny, and wrote to him on one occasion,
begging him to procure the postponement of a case in which he was
engaged, as he had been frightened by a dream. Though Pliny certainly
did not possess his friend's amazing credulity, he takes the request
with becoming seriousness, and promises to do his best; but he adds that
the real question is whether Suetonius's dreams are usually true or not.
He then relates how he himself once had a vision of his mother-in-law,
of all people, appearing to him and begging him to abandon a case he had
undertaken. In spite of this awful warning he persevered, however, and
it was well that he did so, for the case proved the beginning of his
successful career at the Bar.[26] His uncle, the elder Pliny, seems to
have placed more faith in his dreams, and wrote his account of the
German wars entirely because he dreamt that Drusus appeared to him and
implored him to preserve his name from oblivion.[27]
The Plinies were undoubtedly two of the ablest and most enlightened men
of their time; and the belief in the value of dreams is certainly not
extinct among us yet. If we possess Artemidorus's book on the subject
for the ancient world, we have also the "Smorfia" of to-day, so dear to
the heart of the lotto-playing Neapolitan, which assigns a special
number to every conceivable subject that can possibly occur in a
dream--not excluding "u murtu che parl'" (the dead man that speaks)--for
the guidance of the believing gambler in selecting the numbers he is to
play for the week.
Plutarch placed great faith in ghosts and visions. In his Life of
Dion[28] he notes the singular fact that both Dion and Brutus were
warned of their approaching deaths by a frightful spectre. "It has been
maintained," he adds, "that no man in his senses ever saw a ghost: that
these are the delusive visions of women and children, or of men whose
intellects are impaired by some physical infirmity, and who believe that
their diseased imaginations are of divine origin. But if Dion and
Brutus, men of strong and philosophic minds, whose understandings were
not affected by any constitutional infirmity--if such men could place so
much faith in the appearance of spectres as to give an account of them
to their friends, I see no reason why we should depart from the opinion
of the ancients that men had their evil genii, who disturbed them with
fears and distressed their virtues ..."
In the opening of the _Philopseudus_, Lucian asks what it is that makes
men so fond of a lie, and comments on their delight in romancing
themselves, which is only equalled by the earnest attention with which
they receive other people's efforts in the same direction. Tychiades
goes on to describe his visit to Eucrates, a distinguished philosopher,
who was ill in bed. With him were a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean,
a Platonist, and a doctor, who began to tell stories so absurd and
abounding in such monstrous superstition that he ended by leaving them
in disgust. None of us have, of course, ever been present at similar
gatherings, where, after starting with the inevitable Glamis mystery,
everybody in the room has set to work to outdo his neighbour in
marvellous yarns, drawing on his imagination for additional material,
and, like Eucrates, being ready to stake the lives of his children on
his veracity.
Another scoffer was Democritus of Abdera, who was so firmly convinced of
the non-existence of ghosts that he took up his abode in a tomb and
lived there night and day for a long time. Classical ghosts seem to have
affected black rather than white as their favourite colour. Among the
features of the gruesome entertainments with which Domitian loved to
terrify his Senators were handsome boys, who appeared naked with their
bodies painted black, like ghosts, and performed a wild dance.[29] On
the following day one of them was generally sent as a present to each
Senator. Some boys in the neighbourhood wished to shake Democritus's
unbelief, so they dressed themselves in black with masks like skulls
upon their heads and danced round the tomb where he lived. But, to their
annoyance, he only put his head out and told them to go away and stop
playing the fool.
The Greek and Roman stories hardly come up to the standards required by
the Society for Psychical Research. They are purely popular, and the
ghost is regarded as the deceased person, permitted or condemned by the
powers of the lower world to hold communication with survivors on earth.
Naturally, they were never submitted to critical inquiry, and there is
no foreshadowing of any of the modern theories, that the phenomenon, if
caused by the deceased, is not necessarily the deceased, though it may
be an indication that "some kind of force is being exercised after death
which is in some way connected with a person previously known on earth,"
or that the apparitions may be purely local, or due entirely to
subjective hallucination on the part of the person beholding them.
Strangely enough, we rarely find any of those interesting cases,
everywhere so well attested, of people appearing just about the time of
their death to friends or relatives to whom they are particularly
attached, or with whom they have made a compact that they will appear,
should they die first, if it is possible. The classical instance of this
is the well-known story of Lord Brougham who, while taking a warm bath
in Sweden, saw a school friend whom he had not met for many years, but
with whom he had long ago "committed the folly of drawing up an
agreement written with our blood, to the effect that whichever of us
died first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had
entertained of the life after death." There are, however, a number of
stories of the passing of souls, which are curiously like some of those
collected by the Society for Psychical Research, in the Fourth Book of
Gregory the Great's Dialogues.
Another noticeable difference is that apparitions in most
well-authenticated modern ghost stories are of a comforting character,
whereas those in the ancient world are nearly all the reverse. This
difference we may attribute to the entire change in the aspect of the
future life which we owe to modern Christianity. As we have seen, there
was little that was comforting in the life after death as conceived by
the old pagan religions, while in medieval times the horrors of hell
were painted in the most lurid colours, and were emphasized more than
the joys of heaven.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 25: Cic., _Murena_, 27.]
[Footnote 26: _Ep._, i. 18.]
[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, 3. 5. 4.]
[Footnote 28: Chap. II]
[Footnote 29: Dio Cass., _Domitian_, 9.]
III
STORIES OF HAUNTING
In a letter to Sura[30] the younger Pliny gives us what may be taken as
a prototype of all later haunted-house stories. At one time in Athens
there was a roomy old house where nobody could be induced to live. In
the dead of night the sound of clanking chains would be heard, distant
at first, proceeding doubtless from the garden behind or the inner court
of the house, then gradually drawing nearer and nearer, till at last
there appeared the figure of an old man with a long beard, thin and
emaciated, with chains on his hands and feet. The house was finally
abandoned, and advertised to be let or sold at an absurdly low price.
The philosopher Athenodorus read the notice on his arrival in Athens,
but the smallness of the sum asked aroused his suspicions. However, as
soon as he heard the story he took the house. He had his bed placed in
the front court, close to the main door, dismissed his slaves, and
prepared to pass the night there, reading and writing, in order to
prevent his thoughts from wandering to the ghost. He worked on for some
time without anything happening; but at last the clanking of chains was
heard in the distance. Athenodorus did not raise his eyes or stop his
work, but kept his attention fixed and listened. The sounds gradually
drew nearer, and finally entered the room where he was sitting. Then he
turned round and saw the apparition. It beckoned him to follow, but he
signed to it to wait and went on with his work. Not till it came and
clanked its chains over his very head would he take up a lamp and follow
it. The figure moved slowly forward, seemingly weighed down with its
heavy chains, until it reached an open space in the courtyard. There it
vanished. Athenodorus marked the spot with leaves and grass, and on the
next day the ground was dug up in the presence of a magistrate, when the
skeleton of a man with some rusty chains was discovered. The remains
were buried with all ceremony, and the apparition was no more seen.
Lucian tells the same story in the _Philopseudus_, with some ridiculous
additions, thoroughly in keeping with the surroundings.
An almost exactly similar story has been preserved by Robert Wodrow, the
indefatigable collector, in a notebook which he appears to have intended
to be the foundation of a scientific collection of marvellous tales.
Wodrow died early in the eighteenth century. Gilbert Rule, the founder
and first Principal of Edinburgh University, once reached a desolate inn
in a lonely spot on the Grampians. The inn was full, and they were
obliged to make him up a bed in a house near-by that had been vacant for
thirty years. "He walked some time in the room," says Wodrow,[31] "and
committed himself to God's protection, and went to bed. There were two
candles left on the table, and these he put out. There was a large
bright fire remaining. He had not been long in bed till the room door is
opened and an apparition in shape of a country tradesman came in, and
opened the curtains without speaking a word. Mr. Rule was resolved to do
nothing till it should speak or attack him, but lay still with full
composure, committing himself to the Divine protection and conduct. The
apparition went to the table, lighted the two candles, brought them to
the bedside, and made some steps toward the door, looking still to the
bed, as if he would have Mr. Rule rising and following. Mr. Rule still
lay still, till he should see his way further cleared. Then the
apparition, who the whole time spoke none, took an effectual way to
raise the doctor. He carried back the candles to the table and went to
the fire, and with the tongs took down the kindled coals, and laid them
on the deal chamber floor. The doctor then thought it time to rise and
put on his clothes, in the time of which the spectre laid up the coals
again in the chimney, and, going to the table, lifted the candles and
went to the door, opened it, still looking to the Principal, as he would
have him following the candles, which he now, thinking there was
something extraordinary in the case, after looking to God for direction,
inclined to do. The apparition went down some steps with the candles,
and carried them into a long trance, at the end of which there was a
stair which carried down to a low room. This the spectre went down, and
stooped, and set down the lights on the lowest step of the stair, and
straight disappears."
"The learned Principal," continues Burton, "whose courage and coolness
deserve the highest commendation, lighted himself back to bed with the
candles, and took the remainder of his rest undisturbed. Being a man of
great sagacity, on ruminating over his adventure, he informed the
Sheriff of the county 'that he was much of the mind there was murder in
the case.' The stone whereon the candles were placed was raised, and
there 'the plain remains of a human body were found, and bones, to the
conviction of all.' It was supposed to be an old affair, however, and no
traces could be got of the murderer. Rule undertook the functions of the
detective, and pressed into the service the influence of his own
profession. He preached a great sermon on the occasion, to which all the
neighbouring people were summoned; and behold in the time of his sermon,
an old man near eighty years was awakened, and fell a-weeping, and
before the whole company acknowledged that at the building of that
house, he was the murderer."
The main features of the story have changed very little in the course of
ages, except in the important point of the conviction of the murderer,
which would have been effected in a very different way in a Greek story.
Doubtless a similar tale could be found in the folk-lore of almost any
nation.
Plutarch[32] relates how, in his native city of Chæronæa, a certain
Damon had been murdered in some baths. Ghosts continued to haunt the
spot ever afterwards, and mysterious groans were heard, so that at last
the doors were walled up. "And to this very day," he continues, "those
who live in the neighbourhood imagine that they see strange sights and
are terrified with cries of sorrow."
It is quite clear from Plautus that ghost stories, even if not taken
very seriously, aroused a wide-spread interest in the average Roman of
his day, just as they do in the average Briton of our own. They were
doubtless discussed in a half-joking way. The apparitions were generally
believed to frighten people, just as they are at present, though the
well-authenticated stories of such occurrences would seem to show that
genuine ghosts, or whatever one likes to call them, have the power of
paralyzing fear.
In the _Mostellaria_,[33] Plautus uses a ghost as a recognized piece of
supernatural machinery. The regulation father of Roman comedy has gone
away on a journey, and in the meantime the son has, as usual, almost
reached the end of his father's fortune. The father comes back
unexpectedly, and the son turns in despair to his faithful slave,
Tranio, for help. Tranio is equal to the occasion, and undertakes to
frighten the inconvenient parent away again. He gives an account of an
apparition that has been seen, and has announced that it is the ghost of
a stranger from over-seas, who has been dead for six years.
"Here must I dwell," it had declared, "for the gods of the lower world
will not receive me, seeing that I died before my time. My host murdered
me, his guest, villain that he was, for the gold that I carried, and
secretly buried me, without funeral rites, in this house. Be gone hence,
therefore, for it is accursed and unholy ground." This story is enough
for the father. He takes the advice, and does not return till Tranio and
his dutiful son are quite ready for him.
Great battlefields are everywhere believed to be haunted. Tacitus[34]
relates how, when Titus was besieging Jerusalem, armies were seen
fighting in the sky; and at a much later date, after a great battle
against Attila and the Huns, under the walls of Rome, the ghosts of the
dead fought for three days and three nights, and the clash of their arms
was distinctly heard.[35] Marathon is no exception to the rule.
Pausanias[36] says that any night you may hear horses neighing and men
fighting there. To go on purpose to see the sight never brought good to
any man; but with him who unwittingly lights upon it the spirits are not
angry. He adds that the people of Marathon worship the men who fell in
the battle as heroes; and who could be more worthy of such honour than
they? The battle itself was not without its marvellous side. Epizelus,
the Athenian, used to relate how a huge hoplite, whose beard
over-shadowed all his shield, stood over against him in the thick of the
fight. The apparition passed him by and killed the man next him, but
Epizelus came out of the battle blind, and remained so for the rest of
his life.[37] Plutarch[38] also relates of a place in Boeotia where a
battle had been fought, that there is a stream running by, and that
people imagine that they hear panting horses in the roaring waters.
But the strangest account of the habitual haunting of great battlefields
is to be found in Philostratus's _Heroica_, which represents the spirits
of the Homeric heroes as still closely connected with Troy and its
neighbourhood. How far the stories are based on local tradition it is
impossible to say; they are told by a vine-dresser, who declares that he
lives under the protection of Protesilaus. At one time he was in danger
of being violently ousted from all his property, when the ghost of
Protesilaus appeared to the would-be despoiler in a vision, and struck
him blind. The great man was so terrified at this event that he carried
his depredations no further; and the vine-dresser has since continued to
cultivate what remained of his property under the protection of the
hero, with whom he lives on most intimate terms. Protesilaus often
appears to him while he is at work and has long talks with him, and he
keeps off wild beasts and disease from the land.
Not only Protesilaus, but also his men, and, in fact, virtually all of
the "giants of the mighty bone and bold emprise" who fought round Troy,
can be seen on the plain at night, clad like warriors, with nodding
plumes. The inhabitants are keenly interested in these apparitions, and
well they may be, as so much depends upon them. If the heroes are
covered with dust, a drought is impending; if with sweat, they
foreshadow rain. Blood upon their arms means a plague; but if they show
themselves without any distinguishing mark, all will be well.
Though the heroes are dead, they cannot be insulted with impunity. Ajax
was popularly believed, owing to the form taken by his madness, to be
especially responsible for any misfortune that might befall flocks and
herds. On one occasion some shepherds, who had had bad luck with their
cattle, surrounded his tomb and abused him, bringing up all the weak
points in his earthly career recorded by Homer. At last they went too
far for his patience, and a terrible voice was heard in the tomb and the
clash of armour. The offenders fled in terror, but came to no harm.
On another occasion some strangers were playing at draughts near his
shrine, when Ajax appeared and begged them to stop, as the game reminded
him of Palamedes.
Hector was a far more dangerous person. Maximus of Tyre[39] says that
the people of Ilium often see him bounding over the plain at dead of
night in flashing armour--a truly Homeric picture. Maximus cannot,
indeed, boast of having seen Hector, though he also has had his visions
vouchsafed him. He had seen Castor and Pollux, like twin stars, above
his ship, steering it through a storm. Æsculapius also he has
seen--not in a dream, by Hercules, but with his waking eyes. But to
return to Hector. Philostratus says that one day an unfortunate boy
insulted him in the same way in which the shepherds had treated Ajax.
Homer, however, did not satisfy this boy, and as a parting shaft he
declared that the statue in Ilium did not really represent Hector, but
Achilles. Nothing happened immediately, but not long afterwards, while
the boy was driving a team of ponies, Hector appeared in the form of a
warrior in a brook which was, as a rule, so small as not even to have a
name. He was heard shouting in a foreign tongue as he pursued the boy in
the stream, finally overtaking and drowning him with his ponies. The
bodies were never afterwards recovered.
Philostratus gives us a quantity of details about the Homeric heroes,
which the vine-dresser has picked up in his talks with Protesilaus. Most
of the heroes can be easily recognized. Achilles, for instance, enters
into conversation with various people, and goes out hunting. He can be
recognized by his height and his beauty and his bright armour; and as he
rushes past he is usually accompanied by a whirlwind--[Greek: podarkês,
dios], even after death.
Then we hear the story of the White Isle. Helen and Achilles fell in
love with one another, though they had never met--the one hidden in
Egypt, the other fighting before Troy. There was no place near Troy
suited for their eternal life together, so Thetis appealed to Poseidon
to give them an island home of their own. Poseidon consented, and the
White Isle rose up in the Black Sea, near the mouth of the Danube. There
Achilles and Helen, the manliest of men and the most feminine of women,
first met and first embraced; and Poseidon himself, and Amphitrite, and
all the Nereids, and as many river gods and spirits as dwell near the
Euxine and Mæotis, came to the wedding. The island is thickly covered
with white trees and with elms, which grow in regular order round the
shrine; and on it there dwell certain white birds, fragrant of the salt
sea, which Achilles is said to have tamed to his will, so that they keep
the glades cool, fanning them with their wings and scattering spray as
they fly along the ground, scarce rising above it. To men sailing over
the broad bosom of the sea the island is holy when they disembark, for
it lies like a hospitable home to their ships. But neither those who
sail thither, nor the Greeks and barbarians living round the Black Sea,
may build a house upon it; and all who anchor and sacrifice there must
go on board at sunset. No man may pass the night upon the isle, and no
woman may even land there. If the wind is favourable, ships must sail
away; if not, they must put out and anchor in the bay and sleep on
board. For at night men say that Achilles and Helen drink together, and
sing of each other's love, and of the war, and of Homer. Now that his
battles are over, Achilles cultivates the gift of song he had received
from Calliope. Their voices ring out clear and godlike over the water,
and the sailors sit trembling with emotion as they listen. Those who
had anchored there declared that they had heard the neighing of horses,
and the clash of arms, and shouts such as are raised in battle.
Maximus of Tyre[40] also describes the island, and tells how sailors
have often seen a fair-haired youth dancing a war-dance in golden armour
upon it; and how once, when one of them unwittingly slept there,
Achilles woke him, and took him to his tent and entertained him.
Patroclus poured the wine and Achilles played the lyre, while Thetis
herself is said to have been present with a choir of other deities.
If they anchor to the north or the south of the island, and a breeze
springs up that makes the harbours dangerous, Achilles warns them, and
bids them change their anchorage and avoid the wind. Sailors relate how,
"when they first behold the island, they embrace each other and burst
into tears of joy. Then they put in and kiss the land, and go to the
temple to pray and to sacrifice to Achilles." Victims stand ready of
their own accord at the altar, according to the size of the ship and the
number of those on board.
Pausanias also mentions the White Isle.[41] On one occasion, Leonymus,
while leading the people of Croton against the Italian Locrians,
attacked the spot where he was informed that Ajax Oïleus, on whom the
people of Locris had called for help, was posted in the van. According
to Conon,[42] who, by the way, calls the hero Autoleon, when the people
of Croton went to war, they also left a vacant space for Ajax in the
forefront of their line. However this may be, Leonymus was wounded in
the breast, and as the wound refused to heal and weakened him
considerably, he applied to Delphi for advice. The god told him to sail
to the White Isle, where Ajax would heal him of his wound. Thither,
therefore, he went, and was duly healed. On his return he described what
he had seen--how that Achilles was now married to Helen; and it was
Leonymus who told Stesichorus that his blindness was due to Helen's
wrath, and thus induced him to write the _Palinode_.
Achilles himself is once said to have appeared to a trader who
frequently visited the island. They talked of Troy, and then the hero
gave him wine, and bade him sail away and fetch him a certain Trojan
maiden who was the slave of a citizen of Ilium. The trader was surprised
at the request, and ventured to ask why he wanted a Trojan slave.
Achilles replied that it was because she was of the same race as Hector
and his ancestors, and of the blood of the sons of Priam and Dardanus.
The trader thought that Achilles was in love with the girl, whom he duly
brought with him on his next visit to the island. Achilles thanked him,
and bade him keep her on board the ship, doubtless because women were
not allowed to land. In the evening he was entertained by Achilles and
Helen, and his host gave him a large sum of money, promising to make
him his guest-friend and to bring luck to his ship and his business. At
daybreak Achilles dismissed him, telling him to leave the girl on the
shore. When they had gone about a furlong from the island, a horrible
cry from the maiden reached their ears, and they saw Achilles tearing
her to pieces, rending her limb from limb.
In this brutal savage it is impossible to recognize Homer's chivalrous
hero, who sacrificed the success of a ten years' war, fought originally
for the recovery of one woman, to his grief at the loss of another, and
has thus made it possible to describe the _Iliad_ as the greatest
love-poem ever written. One cannot help feeling that Pindar's Isle of
the Blest, whither he was brought by Thetis, whose mother's prayer had
moved the Heart of Zeus, to dwell with Cadmus and Peleus, is Achilles'
true home; or the isle of the heroes of all time, described by Carducci,
where King Lear sits telling OEdipus of his sufferings, and Cordelia
calls to Antigone, "Come, my Greek sister! We will sing of peace to our
fathers." Helen and Iseult, silent and thoughtful, roam under the shade
of the myrtles, while the setting sun kisses their golden hair with its
reddening rays. Helen gazes across the sea, but King Mark opens his arms
to Iseult, and the fair head sinks on the mighty beard. Clytemnestra
stands by the shore with the Queen of Scots. They bathe their white arms
in the waves, but the waves recoil swollen with red blood, while the
wailing of the hapless women echoes along the rocky strand. Among these
heroic souls Shelley alone of modern poets--that Titan spirit in a
maiden's form--may find a place, according to Carducci, caught up by
Sophocles from the living embrace of Thetis.[43]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 30: _Ep._, vii. 27.]
[Footnote 31: Burton's _The Book-Hunter: Robert Wodrow_.]
[Footnote 32: _Cimon_, i.]
[Footnote 33: II. 5. 67.]
[Footnote 34: _Hist._, v. 13.]
[Footnote 35: Damascius, _Vita Isidori_, 63.]
[Footnote 36: I. 32. 4.]
[Footnote 37: Herod., vi. 117.]
[Footnote 38: _Parallel_, 7.]
[Footnote 39: _Dissert._, 15. 7.]
[Footnote 40: _Dissert._, 15. 7.]
[Footnote 41: 3. 19. 12.]
[Footnote 42: _Narr._, 18.]
[Footnote 43: G. Carducci, "Presso l'urna di P.B. Shelley," in the _Odi
Barbare_.]
IV
NECROMANCY
The belief that it was possible to call up the souls of the dead by
means of spells was almost universal in antiquity. We know that even
Saul, who had himself cut off those that had familiar spirits and the
wizards out of the land, disguised himself and went with two others to
consult the witch of En-dor; that she called up the spirit of Samuel at
his request; that Samuel asked Saul, "Why hast thou disquieted me, to
bring me up?" and then prophesied his ruin and death at the hands of the
Philistines at Mount Gilboa. We find frequent references to the practice
in classical literature. The elder Pliny[44] gives us the interesting
information that spirits refuse to obey people afflicted with freckles.
There were always certain spots hallowed by tradition as particularly
favourable to intercourse with the dead, or even as being actual
entrances to the lower world. For instance, at Heraclea in Pontus there
was a famous [Greek: psychomanteion], or place where the souls of the
dead could be conjured up and consulted, as Hercules was believed to
have dragged Cerberus up to earth here. Other places supposed to be
connected with this myth had a similar legend attached to them, as also
did all places where Pluto was thought to have carried off Persephone.
Thus we hear of entrances to Hades at Eleusis,[45] at Colonus,[46] at
Enna in Sicily,[47] and finally at the lovely pool of Cyane, up the
Anapus River, near Syracuse, one of the few streams in which the papyrus
still flourishes.[48] Lakes and seas also were frequently believed to be
entrances to Hades.[49]