Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/362

 but that horror is at least mitigated if underlying the practice there was some deep religious motive, if a genuine faith in the possibility of direct intercourse with heaven exalted above the sacredness of human life the sacred privilege of sending a messenger to present the whole people's petition before their god.

But while it is easy to perceive that such a motive is in harmony with that belief in the possibility of the communion of man with God which is so pronounced a feature in the religion of the ancient Greeks no less than in that of their descendants, it is a far harder task actually, to prove that this motive was the one acknowledged justification for human sacrifice. Ancient literature is extremely reticent on the whole subject; the very fact of the existence of the rite is known chiefly from late writers, Plutarch, Porphyry , and Tzetzes ; and anything like a discussion of the motives which underlay it is nowhere to be found. This reticence however was prompted, we may suppose, simply and solely by the patent barbarity of the act; it in no way impugns the latent beauty of the motive. Rather the persistence in a rite which did violence to men's humaner feelings and moral sense proves the strength of the appeal which the motive for it must have addressed to their religious convictions. There was no place for shame in the belief that death was the road by which alone a human messenger could gain immediate access to the gods; but if a messenger were required to go at regular intervals, the regular occurrence of deaths required murder. This, I think, was the cause of shame and reticence.

Now if this very simple analysis of the feelings which almost barred the discussion or even mention of human sacrifice by ancient authors is correct, we should expect to find that, where death occurred naturally and not by human intervention, the conception of the dying or the dead as messengers to the unseen world would find ready and unembarrassed expression. And especially is this to be expected among the Greeks with whom grief has never imposed a check upon garrulity, but rather the loudness of the lamentation has always been the test of the poignancy of the sorrow. It is therefore in funeral-dirges and such-like that we must look for the expression of this idea.