Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/442

 free' the dead is to be interpreted in the light of Apollo's warning to Orestes that, if he fail in his duty to his murdered sire, he will himself in death be 'damned to incorruption.' The language employed is indeed vaguer and more allusive; the word [Greek: eleutheroun], 'to set free,' might suggest many ideas besides bodily 'freeing' or dissolution; yet it may be noticed that this is the very word which the above-quoted nomocanon de excommunicatis uses interchangeably with the more common [Greek: lyein] in this very sense. Only for us, who have not in our hearts the same faiths and fears quick to vibrate in response to each touch of religious awe, is a commentary needed; for a Greek audience the suggestion contained in [Greek: eleutheroun], above all in its implied contrast with [Greek: panôlethros], fully sufficed.

Thus then we have found two passages of Euripides containing imprecations almost identical in form with the curses that may be heard from the lips of modern Greek peasants; we have found a similar passage in Sophocles which has hitherto proved a difficulty to commentators simply because they have tried to pervert the meaning of the word [Greek: apoikizô], when its normal sense will make the phrase a parallel to those of Euripides and of modern Greece; and finally in the Choephori of Aeschylus—here again by reading a word in its proper sense—we have found religious sanction claimed for the belief which underlies these imprecations—the belief that the fate to be most dreaded by mankind after death is incorruptibility and resuscitation.

It remains to examine the supposed causes of this dreaded fate, and to see whether the three causes which, when we discussed the modern classes of men liable to become vrykolakes, appeared to be Hellenic—namely, lack of burial, violent death, and parental or other execration or any sin deserving it—actually figure as causes in ancient Greek literature.

It will be convenient to consider the last-mentioned first.

An instance of formal execration has already been provided. No better example than the curse called down by Oedipus upon his son could be desired. But it was suggested above that in certain other cases, even where no actual imprecation had been uttered, men were accounted accursed; and indeed it would be an absurdity that a son who acted undutifully towards his father