THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

I
I
INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL. 507
508 INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL,
soul wrought by the consumption of its fleshly tenement on the
otherwise cut off suddenly in their sins. This is the doctrine
pyre, this will confirm the conclusion at which we have set
already
forth by the ghost of Hamlet's father :
arrived, that the Acheans brought the custom of cremation
" Cut off even in the blossoms of my
with them from central sin,
Europe.
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneal'd ;
Let us now clearly understand the views concerning the
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
relation of the soul to the body after death, held With all
respectively
my imperfections on my head.''
by those Greeks, who simply buried, and the Acheans who
Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 5.
burned their dead.
Nor was
The Greeks of the fifth century B.C. held that the spirits of
it
only the souls of those who had perished in
the wicked who had died in their sins kept constantly around
their sins that clung close to the bodies in which they had once
the grave in which been housed.
lay their carnal remains^
The Greek vase-paintings constantly represent the soul
Plato in the FJtaedu gives us what was probably in the
main the of the dead in
primary theory of ghosts, although at the same time
close proximity to the tomb. This then was
the ordinary doctrine at Athens, where inhumation, as we saw,
he engrafts on it the theory of Ideas. Philosophy (says he)
partially liberates the sovd even in a man's generall}^ prevailed down to late classical times.
lifetime, purifying
his mind. This is evidently no new But idea of Plato in the stories relating to the remains of famous heroes,
himself, for
he compares the action of Philosophy to that of the there is more definite evidence of the ancient belief respecting
the soul's domicile in the case of one who had been simply
Orphic
mysteries which puriiied the mind fi'om the contagion of body
inhumed.
and sense. If such purification has been fully achieved the
Sophocles
mind of the ])hilosopher is at the moment of death has left us a valuable piece of testimony in the
thoroughlysevered
from the body, and passes clean Oedipus
away by
itself into
at Culonus^. Oedipus on his expulsion from Thebes
had been
commerce hospitably received in Attica, he dies tliere, and his
with the Ideas.
place
On the contrary the soul of the ordinary man, which has
of sepultun.' is to be concealed in order that the Thebans
imdergone no purification and remains may not be able to in close carry his bones away, and thus dejn'ive
implication
Athens of
with the body, cannot get completely separated even at the
a champion worth '
many shields.' The danger
here
moment of death, but remains encrusted and weighed down
contemplated had befallen the Tegeans in their struggle
by bodily accom])animents, so as to be unfit for those with the Spartans. The latter had been continually discomfited
regions
to which mind until they sent to Delphi and incpun'd of the oracle "what
itself naturally belongs.
Such impui'e souls are the ghosts or shadows which wallow
god they must propitiate to prevail iii the war against the
Tegeans." I'hc answei- of the Pythian priestess was that before
round tombs and gi'avi's
: and which are visible because they
have not departed in a state of ])urity, but i-ather they could prevail they must remove to Sparta the bones of
charged
Orestes, the son of Agamemnon. A second oi"acle told them
full of the niatei'ial and coi-poi'eal. They are thus not tit for
that ''level and smooth is the plain where
separate existeiu;e, and Arcadian Tegea
return into frt-sh bodies of (lifft.'i-enl
standeth : there
species of men all-teeming Kai'th doth harbour the son of
or animals.
Ati'cides ;
Identical with this is the nHMliae\al and modern
bring thou belief that
liiin to thy city, and then be Tegea's
ghosts ai'e the master'-."
of those who ha\t' been
sj)irits
murdered or
sqq.
-
I'liito, I'han/n HI, S2. Ilcrod. I. ()7 (Huwiinson's trans.).