THE WOLF OF THE CAPITOL 79 



that which follows from the curiously common belief that 

 the spirits of bad men and women have power to enter its 

 body and become were-wolves. 



The amount of literature concerning this belief is 

 prodigious ; so also is the record of witch-craft, which is 

 largely due to this idea of the possible escape of one life 

 into other lives. 



To enter into the wordy war as to the original and 

 special connection of this idea with wolves is fruitless. The 

 Greek word for " light " and that for " wolf " may be alike, 

 and the meeting eyebrows of both the animal and the 

 human being which takes its shape may have suggested the 

 butterfly of Psyche, sign of the escaping soul ; but surely a 

 far more simple and natural explanation is to be found in 

 that earliest of all animal records — the domestication among 

 the primeval pastoral races of men of the wolf's brother — the 

 dog. Even now, after untold time, the very sheep-dog, bred 

 and trained amongst his charges, will sometimes revert to his 

 ancient antagonisms, and the biddable peaceable helper of the 

 light turn in the darkness to the semblance of the ravener. 

 Turns to it also secretly, so that the offender has been known 

 to slink back before dawn after washing his bloodstained 

 coat in stream or river, and by slipping his head back into 

 the collar prove his alibi — his absolute innocence of the 

 carnage on the hill pasture. 



But even without this extreme experience, the likeness 

 in body, the unlikeness in soul, of the flock-guardian and the 

 flock ravisher, must, to the simple minds of the shepherdb, 

 have suggested the possibility of their being, as it were, 

 different manifestations of the same thing. The idea of 

 metempsychosis so early developed must have aided the idea. 



