BOOK MI. Liv. 187-LV. 189 



LIV. Cremation was not actually an old practice at cremation, 

 Rome : the dead used to be buricd. But cremation '"'^'""^ "^- 

 was instituted after it became known that the bodies 

 of those fallen in wars abroad were dug up again. 

 All the same many families kept on the old ritual, for 

 instance it is recorded that nobody in the family of 

 the Cornehi was crematcd before Sulla the dictator, 

 and that he had desired it because he was afraid of 

 reprisals for having dug up the corpse of Gaius 

 Marius. [But burial is understood to denote aiiy 

 mode of disposal of a corpse, but interment means 

 covering up with earth ".] 



L\ . There are various problems concerning the BcUefin 

 spirits of the departed after burial. All men are in ^'^ 

 the same state from their last day onward as they were 

 before their first day, and neither body nor mind 

 possesses any sensation after death, any more than it 

 did before birth — for the same vanity prolongs itself 

 also into the future and fabricates for itself a lifc 

 lasting even into the period of death, sometimes 

 bestowing on the soul immortality, sometimes trans- 

 figuration, sometimes giving sensation to those 

 below, and worshipping ghosts and making a god of 

 one who has already ceased to be even a man — ^just 

 as if man's mode of breathing were in any way 

 different from that of the other animals, or as if 

 there were not many animals found of greater 

 longevity, for which nobody prophesies a similar 

 immortaHty ! But what is the substance of the soul 

 taken by itself? what is its material? where is its 

 thought located ? how does it see and hear, and with 

 what does it touch ? what use does it get from these 

 senses, or what good can it experience without them ? 

 Next, what is the abode, or how great is the multitude, 



633 



