ancient world, going back in Italy beyond the foundation of Rome. The
prehistoric cemeteries of the first iron age have yielded a number of
cinerary urns exactly reproducing the various types of huts which
sheltered the tribes who then peopled the peninsula. The burial places
of the Etruscans are often on the plan of their dwellings, and Roman
epitaphs leave no doubt as to the persistence of the conviction that the
dead inhabit the tomb. The diffusion of Oriental cults revived archaic
beliefs on this point as on many others. The name “eternal house”
(_domus aeterna_), borrowed from the Egyptians and the Semites, often
occurs in funeral inscriptions of the imperial period.[107] One text
even specifies that this is “the eternal house in which future life must
be passed.”[108] The tomb is thus no mere passage through which the soul
goes on its way to another region of the world; it is a lasting
residence. “This,” says an inscription, “is our certain dwelling, the
one which we must inhabit.”[109] In the _Aeneid_, a cenotaph is raised
to Polydorus, whose body had been lost, and his “soul” is installed
there by a funeral ceremony,[110] for the shade which has no sepulchre
wanders, as we shall see, about the earth. But when a fine monument is
given to a dead man, he is happy to be able to offer hospitality there
to passers-by and invites them to stay on their way. Sometimes he is
imagined as in a bedchamber, where he sleeps an endless sleep,[111] but
this is not the primitive nor the dominant idea. This idea, on the
contrary, was that his rest was at least not unbroken, since he had many
requirements. It was necessary not only to ensure him a roof but also to
provide for his support, for he had the same needs and tastes beneath
the ground as he had upon it. Therefore the clothes which covered him,
the jewels which adorned him, the earthen or bronze vessels which decked
his table, the lamps which afforded him light, would be placed beside
him. If he were a warrior he would be given the arms he bore, if a
craftsman the tools he used; a woman would have the articles necessary
to her toilet, a child the toys which amused him; and the amulets, by
the help of which all that was maleficent would be kept away, were not
forgotten. “It is against common sense,” says Trimalchio in Petronius’
romance,[112] “to deck the house of the living and not to give the same
care to the house which we must inhabit for a longer time.” In fact, the
larger number of the articles of furniture and household use preserved
in our museums come from tombs, which, in the climate of Egypt, have
sometimes been able to yield up to us, intact, some precious volume
intended for a mummy’s bedside book.
But the tombs have kept for us only a small part of the offerings made
to those who were leaving this world, for often their wardrobe and
implements were delivered with them to the flame of the pyre in the
belief that somehow they would find them again in the Beyond. Lucian
relates that a husband loved his wife so dearly that at her death he
caused all the ornaments and the clothes which she liked to wear to be
buried with her. But seven days after her death, as, stretched on a
couch, he was silently reading Plato’s _Phaedo_, seeking therein solace
for his grief, his wife appeared, seated herself beside him, and
reproached him for not having added to his offering one of her gilt
slippers which had been left behind a chest. The husband found it there,
and hastened to burn it in order that the poor woman might no longer
remain half barefooted.[113]
Above all, the dead must be offered food, for the shade, like the human
body which it replaces, needs nourishment for its subsistence. Its
feeble and precarious life is quickened and prolonged only if it be
constantly sustained. The dead are hungry; above all they are thirsty.
Those whose humours have dried, whose mouths have withered, are tortured
by the need to refresh their parched lips. It therefore is not enough to
place in the tombs the drinks and dishes, the remains of which have
often been found beside skeletons; by periodic sacrifices the Manes must
be supplied with fresh food also. If they are left without nourishment
they languish, weak as a fasting man, almost unconscious, and in the end
they would actually die of starvation. This is why the flesh of victims
was, in funeral sacrifices, wholly destroyed by fire, none of it being
reserved for those present. People always retained the conviction that
the offerings burnt on the altar or the libations poured into the grave
were consumed by him for whom they were intended. Often there is in the
tombstone a circular cavity, the bottom of which is pierced with holes;
the liquid poured into it went through the perforated slab and was led
by a tube to the urn which held the calcinated bones. It is
comprehensible that an unbeliever protested against this practice in his
epitaph. “By wetting my ashes with wine thou wilt make mud,” he says,
“and I shall not drink, when I am dead.”[114] But how many other texts
there are which show the persistence of the ancient ideas! “Passer-by,”
says a Roman inscription, “the bones of a man pray thee not to soil the
monument which covers them; but if thou be benevolent pour wine into the
cup, drink and give me thereof.”[115]
If the dead ask for fresh water, with which to quench their insatiable
thirst, they are above all eager for the warm blood of victims. This
sacrifice to the dead was at first often a human sacrifice of slaves or
prisoners, and barbarous immolations of this kind had not entirely
disappeared even in the historic period. When, after the taking of
Perugia, Octavius, on the Ides of March (that is, on the anniversary of
the slaying of Julius Caesar), caused three hundred notables of the town
to be slaughtered on Caesar’s altar,[116] this collective murder,
inspired by political hatred, perpetuated an old religious tradition.
Fights of gladiators, whose blood drenched the soil, originally formed
part of the funeral ceremonies by which the last duty was paid to the
remains of an illustrious personage. It is said that these sacrifices
were intended to provide him who had gone to the other world with
servants and companions, as the offering of a horse gave him a steed, or
else that, in case of violent death, they were meant to appease the
shade of a victim who claimed vengeance. And doubtless these ideas,
which correspond to conceptions already evolved, contributed to keeping
this cruel custom in force. But originally the object of this sacrifice,
as of the sacrifice of animals, was essentially to ensure the duration
of the undefinable something which still inhabited the tomb.
Among all the peoples of antiquity the blood was looked upon as the seat
of life;[117] the vapour which rose from the warm red liquid, flowing
from a wound, was the soul escaping therewith from the body; and
therefore when blood was sprinkled on the soil which covered the remains
of a relative or a friend, a new vitality was given to his shade. With
the same motive women were wont to scratch their faces with their nails
in sign of mourning.[118] This ancient conviction that fresh blood was
indispensable to the dead, was maintained in some countries with
surprising tenacity. In Syria, as late as the seventh century of our
era, Christians insisted, in spite of episcopal objurgations, on
immolating bulls and sheep on tombs, and in Armenia, where these
practices were sanctioned by the national clergy, the faithful remained
persuaded that the dead found no happiness in the other life unless the
blood of victims had been made to flow for them on the days fixed by
tradition.[119]
Other libations performed in the funeral rites of the Greeks, as of the
Romans, were intended to produce the same effect, the libations, namely,
of wine, milk and honey. The use of wine has been explained as that of a
substitute for blood, as wine is red. Servius even interprets the purple
flowers which Aeneas threw on the tomb of his father Anchises by the
same association of ideas, as an “imitation of blood in which is the
seat of life.”[120] Many proofs could be cited of the fact that wine has
often taken the place of the liquid which flows in our veins, but its
use in connection with the dead can be explained also by its own virtue.
It is the marvellous liquid which gives divine drunkenness and which in
the mysteries ensures immortality to such as are, thanks to this sacred
draught, possessed by Bacchus.[121] In the same way it vivifies the
Manes to whom it is poured out. Similarly _melikraton_, a mixture of
milk and honey, is the food of the gods, and when the dead absorb it,
they too become immortal.
Such is the first meaning of these offerings, one which was never quite
forgotten. Their object is the infusion of new vigour into the enfeebled
shades who slumber in the tomb. This intention can also be discerned in
the fact that the same offerings are used in magic, which often
preserved ideas abolished or superseded in religion. In order to evoke
the phantoms, the necromancers dug a ditch and poured blood, wine, milk
and honey into it. These liquids had an exciting effect on the spirits
of the dead, arousing them from their torpor, and the wizard took
advantage of it to question them.
Precautions lest the dead should ever suffer from lack of nourishment
were multiplied. In order that they might be fed on other days than
those of sacrifices, all over the ancient world it was customary to
place food on their tombs—eggs, bread, beans, lentils, salt, flour, with
wine. Hungry vagrants did not always respect their offerings but would
help themselves to the proffered viands.
* * * * *
The institution which is most characterised by the persistence of the
ancient ideas of life in the tomb is however that of the funeral
banquets. These family repasts, which had previously been celebrated
among the Etruscans, took place in Rome on the grave immediately after
the funeral (_silicernium_) and were repeated on the ninth day following
(_cena novemdialis_). In Greece and in the East the ceremony took place
thrice, on the third, ninth and thirtieth or on the third, seventh and
fortieth day. Everywhere it was subsequently renewed every year on the
anniversary of the death and on several other fixed dates, as on that of
the _Rosalia_ in May, on which it was customary to decorate the tombs
with roses. Memorial monuments of some importance are often found to
include, beside the burial chamber, a dining-room (_triclinium_) and
even a kitchen (_culina_). The importance attached to these meals is
proved by several wills which have been preserved, and which make
considerable endowments to ensure their perpetuity. For instance, at
Ravenna a son bequeaths a sum of money to a college on condition that
its members annually scatter roses on his father’s grave and feast there
on the Ides of July.[122] When Aurelius Vitalio had built at Praeneste a
family tomb, surmounted by a room with a terrace, he wrote a letter in
incorrect Latin to the brothers of the society to which he belonged: “I
ask you, my companions, to refresh yourselves here without
quarrelling.”[123] An African settled in Rome similarly writes to his
relatives and friends, “Come here in good health for the feast, and
rejoice together.”[124] And in Gaul a will commands that the burial
vault be furnished and receive a bed with coverings and cushions for the
guests who have to meet on the memorial days.[125]
These funeral repasts go back to a prehistoric antiquity. They are found
in India and in Persia as well as among the European peoples. They are
doubtless as ancient as wedding and festal banquets. Among the Egyptians
and the Etruscans it was even customary to place the representation of a
perpetual feast on the walls of a tomb in order to secure to the dead
person the relief it gave. The shade of a guest might well be pleased
with the likeness of dishes.
It was believed that at funeral feasts the Manes of ancestors came to
sit among the guests and enjoyed with them the abundance of the food and
wines. Lucian tells of repasts of this kind, which he witnessed in
Egypt, at which the dried mummy was invited to eat and drink at the
table of his kin.[126] In Greece, even in the Roman period, those
present at the feast used to summon the dead to it by name. An epitaph
of Narbonne jokingly expresses the vulgar idea as to the participation
of the deceased in the banquet: “I drink and drink again, in this
monument,” says the dead man, “the more eagerly because I am obliged to
sleep and to dwell here.”[127]
Nothing is further from our spiritual ideas as to the holiness of
graveyards than the conviviality occasioned by the cult of the departed;
among the guests crowned with flowers, the drinks went round
(_circumpotatio_) and soon produced a noisy intoxication. Do not think
this was an abuse due to a relaxation of morals and which came into
being in later times. The character of these funeral banquets was such
from the beginning, and such it has remained down to modern times in
many countries. You all know the practice of the Irish “wake” which has
been preserved even in the United States.
For it was long believed that the dead had their part in the merriness
and inebriation of the companions at table and were thus consoled for
the sadness of their lot. “Thou callest,” says Tertullian,[128] “the
dead careless (_securos_) when thou goest to the tombs with food and
delicacies, but thy real purpose is to make offerings to thyself, and
thou returnest home tipsy.” And indeed, as we shall see,[129] these
feasts were no longer of profit to the dead only but to the living also,
because there came to be a confusion between them and the Bacchic
communions in which wine was a drink of immortality.
No religious ceremony was more universally performed in the most diverse
regions of the Empire than this cult of the grave. At every hour of
every day families met in some tomb to celebrate there an anniversary by
eating the funeral meal. Peoples remained strongly attached to practices
the omission of which would have seemed to them dangerous as well as
impious, for the spirits of the dead were powerful and vindictive.
It is therefore not surprising that these practices persisted in the
Christian era in spite of the efforts of the clergy to suppress them.
St. Augustine reprimands those who, like pagans, “drink intemperately
above the dead”—these are his words—“and who, while serving meals to
corpses, bury themselves with these buried bodies, making a religion of
their greed and their drunkenness.”[130]
In the East, however, ecclesiastical authority tolerated a custom which
it could not uproot, contenting itself with forbidding the abuse of wine
and recommending a moderation the absence of which might often be
deplored. Ecclesiastical authority also insisted that a part of the
feast should be given to the poor, thus giving a charitable character to
the old pagan practice.[131] Therefore in many countries, and especially
in Greece and in the Balkans, the habit has survived to this day, not
only of placing food on tombs, but also of eating there on certain
anniversaries, with the idea that the dead in some mysterious way share
and enjoy the meal.
* * * * *
In Rome, in historical times, the funeral repast might be taken not at
the tomb but in the house. Among the feasts celebrated by the
confraternities in honour of some dead benefactor, on the dates fixed by
his last will, many were held in the meeting-place of the guild. But the
belief continued in the real presence of him whose “spirit was
honoured,”[132] and whose statue or picture often adorned the banqueting
hall.
From the earliest period, the spirit of the dead was indeed not regarded
as inseparable from his remains or as a recluse cloistered in the tomb.
He dwelt there but could issue thence, although for long it was believed
that he could not go far away but remained in the neighbourhood of the
burial place. He was brought back to it by the necessity of taking food,
which was no less indispensable to him than to men. He returned,
therefore, to it, as a dweller returns to his home, to repair his
energies and to rest. This idea that the soul wandered around its
“eternal house” often caused pains to be taken to surround this house
with a garden. Sometimes such a garden was planted with a practical
object: it was a vineyard, an orchard or a rose-garden which supplied
the wine, fruit or flowers necessary for the offerings to the dead.[133]
But elsewhere a mere pleasure-garden, with shady groves, bowers,
pavilions and sparkling fountains, surrounded the burial place. The care
which the living took to fix, by their will, its extent and its planting
is a measure of the intensity of their conviction that their shade would
take pleasure in refreshing itself in this quiet haunt. There, about the
tomb, it would enjoy the delights which would afterwards be transported
to the Elysian Fields, as we shall see later.
The cult of the grave has not ceased in these days; the ancient rites
have not been discontinued. Tombstones are still surrounded with
flowers; they are decked with wreaths; in Italy lamps are kept burning
over them. But the reasons which established these customs have
disappeared; for us they are no more than a way of betokening our care
for the beloved, of piously showing our intimate feelings by outward
signs and marking the duration of our regrets and our memories. They are
survivals which have lost all the concrete and real meaning which they
had in the far-off days when men believed that a being like themselves
sojourned in the place in which bones or ashes were deposited.
The dead were not then cut off from the society of the living; the
connection between them and their surroundings was not broken; the
continuity between the hour which preceded and that which followed their
decease was not interrupted. It has often been remarked that in this
respect ancient ideas were profoundly different from ours. Those lost to
sight did not then cease to partake of the life of their families; they
remained in communication with their friends and their kin, who met
together in their new dwelling, and an effort was made to render their
isolation less hard to bear by bringing them into touch with many
people. Our dead rest in peaceful and remote graveyards where no noise
or din may trouble the tranquil mood of afflicted visitors. The Romans
placed their dead along the great roads, near the gates of towns, where
there was press of passers-by and the rolling of chariot-wheels. Their
wish was not, when they buried them beside the most frequented highways,
to recall their destiny to mortals, although philosophers have thus
explained the custom.[134] On the contrary, they wanted to cause those
who were no more to forget their own destiny. “I see,” says an
epitaph,[135] “and I gaze upon all who go and come from and to the
city.” “Lollius has been placed,” we read elsewhere,[136] “by the side
of the road in order that all passers-by may say to him, ‘Good day,
Lollius.’”
The inscriptions in which the dead speak, addressing those who stop
before their monuments, are innumerable. They console such as continue
to love them, thank those who are still busy on their behalf and express
wishes for their happiness, or else they impart to their successors the
wisdom acquired by experience of life. Often they take part with them in
a dialogue, answering their greetings and wishes: “May the earth be
light on thee!”—“Fare thou well in the upper world”;[137] or else: “Hail
Fabianus.”—“May the gods grant you their benefits, my friends, and may
the gods be propitious to you, travellers, and to you who stop by
Fabianus! Go and come safe and sound! May you who crown me with garlands
or throw me flowers, live for many years!”[138]
* * * * *
Thus throughout antiquity, in spite of the evolution of ideas as to the
future life, the persuasion always remained invincible that the spirits
of the dead moved about among men. These disincarnate intelligences,
which were, however, provided with light and swift bodies, did not let
themselves be imprisoned in the tomb. They fluttered unceasingly around
living beings, causing them to feel the effects of their presence. There
is here, mingled with the primitive idea that a mysterious being, like
it in appearance, has its place in the ground beside the buried corpse,
the other and equally ancient idea that the soul is a breath exhaled by
the dead at the moment when they expire. To breathe is the first act
which marks the life of a newly born infant and to cease to breathe is
the first sign which betokens the extinction of life. Primitive people
therefore naturally thought that the principle which animated the body
was a breath, which entered it at birth and left it at death. The very
name which denotes the vivifying essence is in most languages witness to
the general predominance of this conception. Ψυχή in Greek is connected
with ψύχω, “to blow”; the Latin _animus_ or _anima_ corresponds to
ἄνεμος, “wind,” and in the Semitic languages _nefeš̱_ and _ruaḥ_ have a
similar meaning. At the moment in which man expired, his soul escaped
through his mouth and floated in the ambient air. The Pythagoreans, when
they taught that “the air is full of souls,”[139] were conforming to an
old belief which is not Greek only but universal. When Virgil[140] shows
us Dido’s sister, at the time of the queen’s suicide, receiving the last
breath which floats on her dying lips, he is lending a Roman custom to
the Carthaginians, the custom of the last kiss which, according to a
widely held belief, could catch on its way the soul which was escaping
into the atmosphere.
This soul was often imagined as a bird in flight and we will see
elsewhere the conclusions drawn from this naïve conception.[141] Here we
wish merely to indicate how the idea of the aerial soul was combined
with that of the spirit inhabiting the tomb. This shade or simulacrum of
those who were no longer of this world, but who still existed, since
they showed themselves to the living in their previous guise, was a body
like the wind—intangible, invisible, save when it thickened like clouds
or smoke. A multitude of these vaporous beings, innumerable as past
generations, moved unceasingly on the earth’s surface, and, above all,
roamed around the tombs, where they were retained by their attachment to
their bodies. Whether, like the Greeks, men identified them with the
“demons,” or, like the Romans, called them “Manes gods,” “_genii_” or
“_lemures_,” or by other names, the unanimous opinion was that their
power was superior to that of mankind and that they caused it to be felt
by a constant intervention in the affairs of human society.
It was generally held that if the required cult were not rendered them,
they would punish this neglect with wrath, but that they showed their
benevolence to those who deserved it by zeal in serving them.[142] The
dead were capable, like the living, of gratitude as well as of
resentment. The greater had been their power in this world, the more
considerable it remained in the other, and the more advantage there was
in securing their protection or even their co-operation.
Servius reports the existence of the singular belief that souls had to
swear to Pluto never to help those they had left behind them on earth to
escape from their destiny.[143] Such was, then, the extent of their
supposed power. But all the dead were not, like some of the heroes who
had become the equals of the gods, capable of performing prodigious
deeds. Many, gifted with less force, were concerned with lesser
interests; they did no more than protect their family, the domestic
hearth and the neighbouring field, and render small daily services.
“Farewell, Donata, thou who wast pious and just,” says an epitaph,
“guard all thy kin.”[144]
The idea that the ancestors become the tutelary spirits of their
descendants who were faithful to their duty to them, goes back to the
remotest antiquity and probably lies at the foundation of the cult of
the Lares.[145] But the field of action of these genii was multiple,
since they were a multitude, and their functions underwent a further
development when they were considered to be the equivalents of the
demons of the Greeks. “The souls of the dead,” Maximus of Tyre[146]
tells us, “mingle with all kinds of men, with every destiny, thought and
pursuit of man; they support the good, succour the oppressed and punish
the criminal.” Plotinus, recalling the universal custom of paying cult
to those who have gone, adds: “Many souls which belonged to men do not
cease to do good to men when they have left the body. They come to their
aid especially in granting them revelations.”[147]
The wish is therefore entertained to see in dreams those who have left
an empty place in the family dwelling or the marriage couch. A woman
whom a murder has separated from her young husband prays the most holy
Manes to be indulgent to him and to allow her to see him again during
the hours of the night.[148] But it was not only in dreams that men
hoped to descry again those who were lost to sight. “If tears are of any
avail,” says another epitaph, “show thyself by apparitions
(_visis_).”[149] Is it a question here also of nocturnal apparitions?
Perhaps; but the belief that the spirits of the dead returned to the
earth and made themselves visible to people who were wide awake met with
very little incredulity among the ancients. It was not only the common
man who accepted it; most thinkers upheld this opinion. Lucian[150]
shows us a meeting of philosophers in which no one doubts “that there
are demons and phantoms and that the souls of the dead do wander on
earth and show themselves to whom they please.” A single fact will
suffice to prove how general was this conviction. The sober historian
Dio Cassius[151] relates that in his time, more precisely in the year
220 A. D., a demon (who was evidently a flesh and blood impostor)
appeared in the Danubian countries in the form of Alexander the Great.
He was followed by four hundred Bacchantes carrying the thyrsus and the
nebris. This troop went through all Thracia without doing any harm to
the inhabitants, who hastened to give them shelter and food, and not a
single official dared oppose their passage. Arrived near Chalcedon, the
pseudo-Alexander made a strange sacrifice one night, burying a wooden
horse, and thereupon immediately disappeared.