Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/22

 16 ANCIENT BELIEFS. BOOK K Aryas of the East ; since the hymns of the Votlas tench another doctrine. Did they believe that the spirit ascended towards the sky, towards the region of light ? Not at all ; the thought that departed souls entered a celestial home is relatively recent in the West ; we find it expressed for the first time by the poet Pho- cylides. The celestial abode was never regarded aa anything more than the recompense of a few great men, and of the benefactors of mankind. According to the oldest belief of the Italians and Greeks, the soul did not go into a foreign world to pass its second ex- istence; it remained near men, and continued to live under ground.' They even believed for a very long time that, in this second existence, the soul remained associated with the body; born together, they were not separated hy death, and were buried together in the grave. Old as this belief is, authentic evidences of it still remain to us. These evidences are the rites of sepul- ture, which have long survived this primitive belief, but which certainly began with it, and which enable us to understand it. The rites of sepulture show clearly that when a body was buried, those ancient peoples believed that they buried something that was living. Virgil, who always describes religious ceremonies with so much care and precision, concludes the account of the fimeral of Polydorus in these words: "We enclose the soul in the grave." The same expression is found in Ovid, and in Pliny the Younger; this did not correspond to the ideas which these Avriters had of the soul, ' Sub terra censebant rcliquam vitam agi mortuorum. Cicero, Tusc.,l. 10. Euripides, ylZc, 1G3; //cc, passim.