Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/545

 Recent Greek Archceology and Folk-lo7'e. 537

his sacrifice to the ghosts in Hades, digs a trench, and into it he pours the wine and blood for the souls to drink : in these tombs the trench is evidently for a similar purpose: the sacrifice is performed at the tomb, and the liquid is poured into the trench for the benefit of the soul below ; in some cases the remains of such sacrifices have been found beside the tomb. A still more curious fact is connected with the vase which serves as external decoration ; it is noticed that a good many of them have a hole in the bottom, and it is suggested that they thus served a double purpose, both as receptacle for the sacrifices to the dead and also as ornament : the hole in the bottom would allow of the food and drink placed within the vase reaching the shade below. One such vase was found to contain the bones of an ox, and we are reminded that it was Solon who first forbade the sacrifice of an ox to the dead. But though the sacrifice was discontinued, the libation probably lasted down to a considerably later time ; at any rate we have evidence in the fifth century of amphorje of a peculiar shape, with perforated bottom, being used in this way : later, when the beautiful marble stele has come into vogfue, the only reminiscence of the vase is usually a small lekythos or jug laid upon or hung to the stele : the larger vase comes in for a tomb decoration later once more, but it rests upon a stele, and is probably merely decorative, its original signi- ficance being lost.

In the Dipylon graves, then, we have the dead person regarded as something with influence outside the tomb, and to be assuaged with offerings and sacrifices. This is the beginning of the true Greek conception, and is in direct contrast to the Homeric notion, just as the Homeric cus- tom of burial is different from those of later times. In Homer, that is, in epic tradition, something still exists after death, the shadowy double of a man deprived of all the characteristics of life.^ This " Psyche", when once the

^ Rohde, Psyche. Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der CriecJien; cf. J. E. Harrison in Classical Review, 1890, p. 377.

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