Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/23

 CHAP. I. MOTIONS ABOUT THE SOUL AND DEATH. 17 but from time immemorial it had been perpetuated in the language, attesting an ancient and common belief.^ It was a custom, at the close of a funeral ceremon}', to call the soul of the deceased three times by the name he had borne. They wished that he might live hajipy under ground. Three times they said to him Fare thee well. They added. May the earth rest lightly upon thee.* Thus firmly did they believe that the per- son would continue to live under ground, and that he would still preserve a sense of enjoyment and suffering. They wrote upon the tomb that the man rested there — an expression which survived this belief, and which has come down through so many centuries to our time. We slill employ it, though surely no one to-day thinks that an immortal being rests in a tomb. But in those ancient days they believed so firmly that a man lived there that they never failed to bury with him the ob- jects of which they supposed he had need — clothing, utensils, and arms. They poured wine upon his tomb to quench his thirst, and placed food there to satisfy his hunger. They slaughtered horses and slaves with the idea that these beings, buried with the dead, would » Ovid, Fast., V. 451. Pliny, Letters, VII. 27. Virg., jEn., III. C7. Virgil's description relates to the emplorraent of cenotaphs; it was admitted tiiat when the body of a relative <;ould not je found, they might perform a ceremony which exactly reproduced ail the rites of sepulture ; and it was believed that in liiis way, in the absence of the body, they enclosed the «oul in the tomb. Eurip., Helen., lOGl, 1240. Scholiast, ad Find. Puth., IV. 284. Virg., VI. 503; XII. 214. 4G3, Virg,, ^n.. III. G3. Catul., 98, 10. Ovid, Trist., III. 3, 4^; Fast., IV. 852; Mctam., X. C2. Juvenal, VII. 207. Martial, 1, 89; V. 35; IV. 30. Servius, ad jEn., II. G44; III. C8; XI. 97. Tacit., Agric, 4G. 2
 * Iliad, XXIII. 221. Pausanias, II. 7, 2. Eurip,, Ale,