Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/347

Rh to favour the interpretation given it in the Latin. Polyxena, when doomed to die, and bewailing in the following line the circumstance of dying a virgin death,

is shortly after addressed by Hecuba, her mother, in these words,

In Euripides also Electra thus speaks to Orestes,

was used in contradictinction to, the former being applied to those who died in their youth, and the latter to those who died a violent death. It was believed that persons who died in either way were upon their deaths not received into Elysium, but obliged to do penance elsewhere, till they had completed that period, which fate had originally assigned to them, but the completion of which their premature deaths had prevented. They were thought to pass into a state between life and death, having no fixed place of destination, but compelled for a certain time to wander as ghosts. Apuleius alludes to this ancient belief in the following passage, where, when Charite is about to kill Thrasyllus, she says, "Nec mortis quiete recreaberis, nee vitæ voluptate lætaberis; sed incertum simulacrum errabis inter orcum et solem." . Lib. viii.

The ghost of Dido is represented to have appeared to Æneas in the Lugentes Campi,