THE GREEK MIXD IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 



277 



id other cases, such as : " Earth sent thee forth 

 to light, Sibyrtius, and earth holds thy remains, 

 but ether, the source of thy soul, has received it 

 again." 



But the vulgar notions with regard to the 

 future state were certainly borrowed from Homer, 

 sucked in by the many with their mothers' milk, 

 or at least imbibed at school, where Homer occu- 

 pied the place taken by the Bible in our church- 

 schools. The Greeks generally were inclined to 

 regard Homer as infallible, and so, when they 

 thought of the future state at all, pictured it ac- 

 cording to his teaching. Hence they made it a 

 shadowy realm under the goverment of Hades 

 and Persephone, a poor, washed-out copy of the 

 brilliant life on earth. The dead go to the cham- 

 ber of Persephone, or, as it is sometimes phrased, 

 the chamber of the blessed. " The bones and 

 the flesh of our sweet son lie in earth, but his 

 soul is gone to the chamber of the holy." It is 

 clear, from some other inscriptions, that in that 

 chamber rewards were supposed to await the 

 good, and punishments the bad. Thus one man 

 writes on the grave of his nurse : " And I know 

 that, if below the earth there be rewards for the 

 good, for thee, nurse, more than for any, is honor 

 waiting in the abode of Persephone and Pluto." 

 The suggestive if is again repeated elsewhere. 

 " If there is with Persephone any reward for 

 piety, a share of that was bestowed on thee in 

 death by Fate." The expression in both in- 

 stances seems to be rather of a wish or longing 

 than of a sure and certain hope. 



Indeed, this wavering tone never becomes full 

 and confident until we come down to the times 

 of Christian inscriptions, when a sudden and 

 marvelous change takes place. To the Christian 

 the place of interment is no longer a tomb, but 

 a sleeping-place. When he speaks of ether and 

 heaven as receiving the soul, the words have 

 quite another ring. Though Christian epitaphs 

 at Athens be somewhat beyond my province, I 

 cannot avoid introducing one or two, if merely for 

 the sake of contrast. The following charmingly 

 combines the genial backward glance of the 

 Greek with the forward glance of the believer : 



" Look, friend, on the sacred beauty of Askle- 

 piodote, of her immortal soul and body, for to both 

 Nature gave one undefiled beauty, and, if Fate 

 seized her, it vanquished her not; in her death 

 she was not forsaken, nor did she abandon her 

 husband though she left him, but now more than 

 ever watches him out of heaven, and rejoices in 

 him and guards him." 



Or take another : 



" His body is hidden here in earth, but his soul 

 is escaped to heaven (aieijp) and returned to its 

 source, for he has obtained the reward of the best 

 of lives. 



Sometimes one catches a note of a still higher 

 strain : " There, whence pain and moans are ban- 

 ished, take thy rest." I think no one can deny 

 that these epitaphs are quite equal to the pagan 

 ones in literary taste and felicity of language, 

 while in sentiment tbey mark a striking advance. 

 It would have been natural to expect that the 

 religion of Isis, which, among all ancient faiths, 

 clung most closely to the belief in a future life, 

 and which owed to that circumstance its great 

 influence among the later Greeks, would have left 

 in the epitaphs some traces of a surer hope and 

 trust in what was beyond the grave. But such 

 is not the case, and a still more remarkable omis- 

 sion is to be noticed. The great Eleusinian mys- 

 teries were celebrated annually, within a few 

 miles of Athens. The whole population must 

 have known more or less of the meaning of the 

 ceremonies ; and there were probably few adult 

 Athenians who had not been initiated. But it 

 has always been supposed that the resurrection 

 of the dead and the life to come were the chief 

 matters on which light was thrown during the 

 celebration. It has been thought that the anal- 

 ogy between the sowing of wheat and the burying 

 of the dead, that analogy which the Apostle Paul 

 works out in full detail, was then insisted on. 

 Cicero speaks of the mysteries of Eleusis as some 

 of the noblest productions of Attic soil, and de- 

 clares that they impart not only directions for 

 leading a better life, but also a better hope in 

 death. Polygnotus painted on the walls of the 

 Lcsche at Delphi the punishments suffered in 

 Hades by those who neglected to have them- 

 selves initiated in the mysteries. Yet in all the 

 Attic epitaphs which have come down to us we 

 discern not a trace of any such doctrine as we 

 should have been disposed, from such indications, 

 to attribute to the college of priests who con- 

 ducted the mysteries. When the next world is 

 at all spoken of, it either appears as the Homeric 

 realm of Hades and his bride Persephone, or else 

 is mentioned in the vague language of the phi- 

 losophers as ether and heaven. The conclusion 

 seems inevitable. We are strongly warned again? t 

 attributing too much influence over the ordinary 

 mind, or any very lofty and spiritual teaching, to 

 the mysteries. The wise men, like Cicero and 

 Plutarch, may have found in them deep meaning 

 and profound consolation, readinjr into them the 

 results of their own philosophy and faith ; just as 



