Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/26

 20 ANCIENT BELIEFS. BOOK 1. not bo observed for him. It was a source of constant inquietude. Men feared death less than the privation of burial ; for rest and eternal happiness were at stake. We ought not to be too much surprised at seeing the Athenians put generals to death, who, after a naval victory, had neglected to bury the dead. These gen- erals, disciples of philosophers, distinguished clearly between the soul and the body, and as they did not believe that the fite of the one was connected with the fate of the other, it appeared to them of very little con- sequence whether a body was decomposed in the earth or in the water. Therefore they did not brave the tempest for the vain formality of collecting and burying their dead. But the multitude, who, even at Athens, still clung to the ancient doctrines, accused these gen- erals of impiety, and had them put to death. By tlieir victory they had saved Athens; but by their impiety they had lost thousands of souls. The relatives of the dead, thinking of the lonq-suffering which these souls must bear, came to the tribunal clothed in mourning, and asked for vengeance. In the ancient cities the law condemned those guilty of great crimes to a terrible punishment — the privation of burial. In this manner they punished the soul itself, and inflicted upon it a punishment almost eternal. We must observe that there was among the ancients another opinion concerning the abode of the dead. They pictured to themselves a region, also subterranean, but infinitely more vast than the tomb, where all souls, far from their bodies, lived together, and where re- wards and i)unishments were distributed according to the lives men had led in this world. But the rites of burial, such as we have described them, manifestly dis- agree with this belief — a certain proof that, at the epoch