Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/34

 28 ANCIENT BELIEFS. BOOK U wishes, receiving my libations." These powerful gods- did not give material aid only; for Electra adds, " Givti- me a heart more chaste than my mother's, and purer hands."' Thus the Hindu asks of the manes "that in his family the number of good men may incivase^ and that he may have much to give." These human souls deified by death were what the- Greeks called demons, or heroes.^ The Latins gave them the name of Lares, Manes, Genii. " Our ances- tors believed," says Apuleius, "that the Manes, when they were malignant, were to be called larvce / they called them Lares when they were benevolent and prQpitious," ^ Elsewhere we read, "Genius and Lar is the same being; so our ancestors believed."* And in Cicero, "Those that the Greeks called demons we call Lares."* This religion of the dead appears to be the oldest that has existed among this race of men. Before men had any notion of Lidra or of Zeus, they adored the dead ; they feared them, and addressed them prayers. It seems that the religious sentiment commenced ia this way. It was perhaps while looking upon the dead that of dead men. The language of the inscriptions, vrliicU is that of the common people among the Greeks, often employs it in this sense. Bocckh, Co7-p. inscript., Nos. 1C29, 1723. 1781, 1784, 1786, 1789, 3398. Ph. Lebas, Monum. de Moree, p. 205. Vide Theognis, ed. Welcker, V. 513. The Greeks also gave to one dead the name of duiftwv. Eurip. Ale, 1140, et Schol. ^sch., Pers., 620. Pausanias, VI. 6. ■* Censorinus, 3. Lar familiaris by 6 xur' oixlav iQwg. (^Antiq. Rom., IV. 2.)
 * ^sch., Choeph., 122-135.
 * The primitive sense of this last word appears to have boeu
 * Servius, ad yEn., III. 63.
 * Cicero, Timauz, 11. Dionysius Hnlicarnasseus translate*