218 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTOEY. [BookVIk 



ever, still observed the ancient rites, as, for example, the Cor- 

 nelian family, no member of which had his body burnt before 

 Sylla, the Dictator ; who directed this to be done, because, 

 having previously disinterred the dead body of Caius Marius, 

 he was afraid that others might retaliate on his own. 38 The 

 term. " sepultus " 39 applies to any mode whatever of disposing 

 of the dead body; while, on the other hand, the word "hu- 

 matus " is applicable solely when it is deposited in the 

 earth. 



CHAP. 56. (55.) THE MANES, OE DEPAETED SPIEITS OP THE SOUL. 



After burial come the different quiddities as to the existence of 

 the Manes. All men, after their last day, 40 return to what they 

 were before the first ; and after death there is no more sensa- 

 tion left in the body or in the soul than there was before birth. 

 But this same vanity of ours extends even to the future, and 

 lyingly fashions to itself an existence even in the very mo- 

 ments which belong to death itself : at one time it has con- 

 ferred upon us the immortality of the soul ; at another trans- 

 migration ; and at another it has given sensation to the shades 

 below, and paid divine honours to the departed spirit, thus 

 making a kind of deity of him who has but just ceased to be a 

 man. As if, indeed, the mode of breathing with man was 

 in any way different from that of other animals, and as if there 

 were not many other animals to be found whose life is longer 

 than that of man, and yet for whom no one ever presaged any- 

 thing of a like immortality. For what is the actual substance 

 of the soul, when taken by itself? Of what material does it 

 consist ? Where is the seat of its thoughts ? How is it to 



38 "We have the same remarks, respecting the antiquity of the custom 

 of interring the body, the continued adoption of it by the Cornelian family, 

 and the supposed notion of Sylla, in ordering his own body to be burnt, in 

 Cicero, De Leg. B. ii. c. 22, from whom it is probable Pliny may have 

 borrowed them. B. 



39 We have no English term that will preserve the distinction which 

 Pliny makes between the two modes of disposing of the body after death. 

 B. 



40 He views the state after death in the same light as Democritus and 

 Epicurus, utterly denying the immortality of the soul ; though it cannot 

 be said that he looks upon life in the same cheerful, laissez-faire manner ill 

 which it was regarded by the latter of these philosophers. 



