218 
plii^y's natural HISTOET. [BookVIL 
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.^^ The 
term ''sepultus ''^^ 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 SOTJL. 
After burial come the different quiddities as to the existence of 
the Manes. All men, after their last day,^^ 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 
^ 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 
Oicero, 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. 
*o 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 ia 
which it was regai'ded by the latter of these philosophers. 
