Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/21

 BOOK FIRST. ANCIENT BELIEFS. CHAPTER I. notions about the Soul and Death. Dowx to the latest times in the his^tory of Greece and Rome we find the common people clinging to thoughts and usages which certainly dated from a very distant past, and which enable us to discover what notions man entertained at first regarding his own nature, his soul, and the mystery of death. Go back far as we may in the history of the Indo- Euio])ean race, of which the Greeks and Italians are branches, and we do not find that this race has ever thought that after this short life all was finished for man. The most ancient generations, long before there were pliilosoi^hers, believed in a second existence after the present. They looked upon death not as a disso- lution of our being, but simply as a change of life. But in what place, and in Avhat manner, was this second existence passed ? Did they believe that the immortal spirit, once escaped from a body, went to ani- mate another? No; the doctrine of metempsychosis was never able to take root in the minds of the Greco- Italians; nor was it the most ancient belief of the 15