Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/556

 no less corporeal, an existence no less material, than that which belonged both to living men and to the gods whom they hoped to resemble even more closely hereafter. The same food as men ate was offered to the gods in sacrifice that they too might eat; why bring it to the dead, if they had no power to eat? The wine that men drank was poured out for the gods in libation, that they too might drink; why waste it upon the soil of the grave, if the dead had no power to drink? A robe such as Athenian women wore was presented to Athene year by year, that she might wear it; why furnish the dead with gifts of raiment, if it must rot unworn? It is impossible to evade the conclusion that the same bodily needs and propensities were ascribed by the Greek folk to the departed as to living men and to deathless gods.

Thus then the people of Greece are shown to have pursued constantly two aims in their treatment of the dead—to ensure the dissolution of the body, and also to provide the body with the necessaries of existence. Unless therefore anyone is prepared to suppose that the Greek people have been constantly actuated by two conflicting motives, the desire to annihilate and the desire to keep alive, dissolution cannot have meant to them annihilation, but rather a modification of the conditions of bodily existence; and that modification can only have meant that the existence of the body in this world indeed ended—for the substance laid in the grave vanished—but continued in another world. But if bodily existence continued in that other world whither the soul too sped, the body and the soul having reached the same place would surely not be imagined to remain separate, but to be re-united. The eagerness for dissolution meant therefore eagerness for the re-union of body and soul.

And there is a good means of testing the popular belief even as regards this last step. If the body and soul were really believed to be re-united as soon as dissolution was complete, the dead man in the lower world would assuredly be as well able to take care of himself as he had been while dwelling in this world, and the obligation of his relatives to provide him with food would cease, although of course they might, voluntarily and without any compulsion of duty, continue their gifts. But it would be at anyand [Greek: choai], like those of other dead men; but since the state and not the]*