DISCOVERY 



Immediately after its departure from the body the 

 spirit "hovers near" until the due performance of 

 funeral rites enables it to join the company of the 

 dead. During the interval between death and funeral 

 it can revisit mortals, but not afterwards. Thus the 

 spirit of Patroclus appears to AchiUes " in all things 

 like his living self, in stature and fair eyes and \oice, 

 and the raiment of his bodj' was the sam e. " It appears 

 in a dream, but is something more than a dream, 

 though equally insubstantial. ' ' Achilles reached forth 

 his hands but clasped him not ; for like a vapour 

 the spirit was gone beneath the earth with a faint 

 shriek." But once the funeral rites are over there is 

 a gulf fixed between living and dead. " Never more," 

 says this apparition, " shall I come back from Hades, 

 when ye have given me my due of fire." The ghosts 

 seen in the vision of the second-sighted Theoclymenus 

 in the palace of Odysseus seem to be the ghosts which 

 the suitors are shortly to become, and not visitors 

 from the other world.' 



In the next world the life of spirits is a feeble replica 

 of their life on earth, and a phantom Orion eternally 

 pursues his phantom quarr3\ " Rather would I live 

 above ground," laments the spirit of Achilles, " as 

 the hireling of another, with a landless man who had 

 no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the 

 dead that be departed." The " strengthless " dead 

 may shake the nerves of a mortal by their appearance, 

 but they have no effective power, and are easily kept 

 at a distance by the menace of a drawn sword. Their 

 cry is inarticulate and feeble like the faint gibbering 

 of bats. 



Homer's Conxeption of the " Other World " 

 Our knowledge of the Homeric "other world " is 

 mainly derived from the Xlth book of the Odyssey, 

 in which Odysseus journeys to its gateway beyond 

 the outer rim of Ocean which Homer conceived as a 

 stream completely surrounding the world in which we 

 live. Here appropriate libations and sacrifices are 

 carried out, and then the throats of a number of 

 sheep are cut over a trench. The spirits flock up to 

 drink of the blood, and each, as he is allowed to do so, 

 becomes thereby articulate. ' ' The blood is the life 



' " Then the god-like Theoclymenus spake among them : 

 ' Ah, wretched men, what woe is this ye sufier ? Shrouded in 

 night are your heads and your faces and your knees and 

 kindled is the voice of wailing, and all cheeks are wet with 

 tears and the walls and the fair main-beams of the roof are 

 sprinkled vrith blood. And the porch is full, and full is the 

 court of ghosts that hasten hellwards beneath the gloom, and 

 the sun has perished out of the heaven and an evil mist has 

 overspread the world.' So spake he and they all laughed 

 sweetly at him." Odyssey, xx. 350 foil. Butcher and Lang 

 draw attention in their note to the very close and detailed 

 analogies in the recorded stories of second sight in Scotland 

 and Scandinavna. 



thereof," and the draught of blood thus supplies the 

 sjiirits with a temporary life and enables Odysseus to 

 converse with them with profit. 



The hero's object in venturing to the gate of Hades 

 is to obtain knowledge of the future from the spirit 

 of Teiresias, the Theban seer. It is important, however, 

 to notice that the powers of the spirit of Teiresias 

 are due, not to his having " passed over," but to the 

 prophetic gifts which he had enjoyed during life. 

 Spirits of the dead as such have no prophetic powers. 

 Some of them are able to teU Odysseus things which 

 he does not know, but these are without exception 

 memories of their, experience on earth, and so far are 

 they from possessing omniscience or supernatural 

 knowledge of terrestrial affairs, that the spirit of 

 -Agamemnon asks Odysseus for news of his son Orestes. 



Hero Worship 

 The spirit of Teiresias can reveal the future only 

 because the man Teiresias had been a prophet. There 

 are other traces in the Homeric poems of the belief 

 that certain individuals may pass to an existence 

 different from that of ordinary mortals after death. 

 Menelaus was promised that he should not taste of 

 death, but suffer translation to a Paradise which Hesiod 

 afterwards located in the Blessed Western Isles. 

 Cults of such personages may indeed have persisted 

 from the Bronze Age when dead kings and chieftains 

 were certainly the objects of worship, although there 

 is no evidence ^ of posthumous cult at the barrows of 

 Homeric kings. However this may be, in post- 

 Homeric times the worship of the spirits of such out- 

 standing individuals became popular throughout the 

 Greek world. Many of the " heroes," as these semi- 

 divine beings were called, were no doubt legendary 

 persons, but in the view of their worshippers they 

 had aU once lived as mortal men. Such apotheosis 

 after death was in fact extended to historical persons. 

 For example, the famous Spartan general Brasidas 

 was worshipped as a " hero " by the people of Amphi- 

 polis immediately after his death in 422 B.C. The real 

 or supposed tomb of the hero was often, but by no 

 means invariably, the site of his cult. Regular features 

 of hero-worship were divination and healing, and the 

 method normally employed was that of incubation, 

 i.e. the inquirer or patient slept at the sacred spot and 

 was visited during the night by the hero. It is natural 

 that the same confusion between dream and apparition 

 which we noticed in the episode of Patroclus' visit 



- The reader should be re r inded that on Sir William 

 Ridgeway's widely accepted explanation of the Origin of Greek 

 Tragedy, set forth in his book with that title, such e\'idence 

 is plainly afforded by many Greek plays, notably by the 

 Choephorce ("Libation-bearers," i.e. to the tomb of Aga- 

 memnon) of jEschylus, and the Ajax of Sophocles - Ed. 



