116 ON THE ORIGIN OF CREMATION, 



should exercise all possible diligence that they might regularly 

 provide venison for the table of the god. The Emperor Ju- 

 lian affirms, that " while Hercules was a child, his divine bo- 

 " dy made gradual increase *." The fire, then, was believed 

 to consume the mortal part only ; that the soul, with that por- 

 tion of the corporeal frame which was deemed originally im- 

 mortal, might be received into the celestial regions. Such was 

 the virtue of the flames, that, like those of the phoenix, they 

 removed the infirmities of age, and communicated eternal 

 youth. Hence Theocritus, who gives the same honour to 

 Alexander the Great, and to Ptolemy I agus, as to Hercu- 

 les, says : 



5 Otti <r<p2ouv Kgovidxg lAsXeay i%&\sro yypug- 



Idyll, xvii. vei\ 2-t. 



Or, as it is rendered by our English translator ; 



On each, great Jove reprieve from age bestowM, 

 And caird immortal, rais'd into a god. 



Hercules is, by the tragic poet Seneca, made to give the 

 same account of his apotheosis to his mother Alcmena, in a 

 passage which exhibits the heathen creed on this point more 

 distinctly perhaps than any other now extant, 



Quicquid in nobis tni 



Mortale fuerit, ignis evectus tulit ; 

 Paterna coelo pars data est, flammis tua. 



Hercul. (Et. ver. 1966. 



This wonderful virtue of the funeral pile, was not, however, 

 entirely confined to demigods. For Scylla, who had been 

 slain by Hercules, was raised from the dead, and rendered im- 

 mortal 



* 'Hg<K*A?5 it Xiyirxi 7rcti%i'or yinriott, xxl kxto. puxga* uvra to crZftx to 0««v ui«y«i. 



Jcuav. Imp. Orat. vii. p. 408. ap. Spanhem. Observ. in Calumach. p. 240. - 



