Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks

by Erwin Rohde

§ 2

Once the body is buried, the soul of the dead enters the invisible company of the “Better and Superior”.[65] This belief, which Aristotle regarded as of primeval antiquity in Greece, emerges very clearly in the cult-observance of these post-Homeric centuries from the obscurity which the Homeric age had imposed upon it. The soul of the dead has its special cult-group composed naturally enough of the descendants and family of the dead, and of them only. There even survived a dim memory of the time when the body of the dead was buried inside the house, which thus became the immediate centre of his cult.[66] That must quite certainly have been during an age which knew little or nothing of the almost painful sensitiveness to the idea of ritual “purification” such as prevailed in later times. At least, we have no reason for supposing that the Greeks (like many so-called “savage” peoples among whom the custom prevails of burying the corpse within the dead man’s own hut) deserted the house that had now become haunted, and left it to the undisturbed possession of the ghost of the dead man buried there.[67] To bury the dead within the walls of the city, at least, was considered unobjectionable in later times by certain Dorian states.[68] Even where religious scruples and the practical convenience of city life combined to fix the place for burials outside the city walls, families kept their graves together often in a single extensive plot with a wall built round it.[69] Where a country estate belonged to a family, this generally also included the graves of its ancestors.[70]

Wherever it was situated, the grave was holy, as being the place where later generations tended and worshipped the souls of departed members of their family. Grave columns indicated the holiness of the spot;[71] trees and sometimes a complete [167] grove surrounded the grave, as they did so often the altars and temples of the gods.[72] These were intended to serve as pleasant retreats for the souls of the beloved dead.[73]

Sacrificial offerings began for the most part at the actual time of the funeral. The custom of pouring libations of wine, oil, and honey at the grave was probably in general use.[74] Even the sacrifice of animals, such as was made at the funeral pyre of Patroklos and even of Achilles, cannot have been unusual at an earlier period. Solon expressly forbade the sacrifice of an ox at the grave.[75] At Keos, permission is just as expressly given for a “preliminary sacrifice to be offered at the funeral in accordance with ancestral custom”.[76] When the funeral ceremony is over, the members of the family, after a solemn rite of religious purification,[77] put on garlands (they had previously avoided this[78]) and begin the funeral feast.[79] This also was a part of the cult of the dead. The soul of the dead man was regarded as being present—even as playing the part of host.[80] It was awe felt for the invisible presence that originally inspired the custom of speaking only praise of the dead at the funeral feast.[81] This feast was an entertainment given in the house of the dead man to the surviving members of his family. The dead man had a meal to himself alone, which was offered at the grave[82] on the third and on the ninth day after the funeral.[83] On the ninth day it appears that ancient usage brought the period of mourning to an end.[84] Where it was extended to a longer period the earlier series of offerings to the dead was prolonged proportionally. Sparta had a period of mourning lasting eleven days.[85] At Athens, in addition to the sacrifice on the third and ninth days, another funeral feast which might be repeated several times,[86] was held on the thirteenth day.[87]

Even after the ceremonies attached to the funeral itself were at last over, the relations of the dead were by no means released from the duty of tending not merely the grave, but the soul of the deceased member of their family. In particular the son and heir had no more sacred duty to perform than the offering of “the customary things” (τὰ νόμιμα) to the soul of his father. These consisted above all of libations to be made to the dead on certain fixed and recurrent festivals. On the 30th of the month there was a traditional feast of the dead.[88] Besides this, every year at the “Genesia”, when the birthday of the dead came round, the occasion was regularly celebrated with sacrifice.[89] The day on which he first entered this life is still of importance to the psyche of the dead man. It is plain that no impassable gulf was fixed between life and [168] death: it almost seems as though life went on quite uninterrupted by death.

Besides these variable feasts of the Genesia, celebrated as they occurred by the individual families, there was at Athens a festival, also called the Genesia, at which the whole citizen body did honour to the souls of their dead relatives on the 5th Boëdromion.[90] We hear also of the Nemesia as a feast of the dead in Athens[91] (probably intended for the averting of the anger of the dead—always a subject of apprehension), and of various festivals of the dead in other Greek States.[92] At Athens the chief festival of all the dead occurred at the close of the Dionysiac feast of the Anthesteria, in the spring, of which it formed the concluding day. This was the time when the dead swarmed up into the world of the living, as they did in Rome on the days when the “mundus patet”, and so still in the belief of our own (German) country people at “Twelfth-tide”. The days belonged to the souls (and their master Dionysos): they were days of “uncleanness”[93] unsuited to the business of city life. The temples of the gods were closed during that period.[94] As protection against the ghosts invisibly present, the citizens employed various old and tried precautionary measures; they chewed hawthorn leaves on their morning walk, and smeared their doorposts with pitch. In this way the ghosts were kept at arms length.[95] Each family made offering to its own dead, and the offerings they made have remained for the most part the appropriate gifts of the dead on their feast-days in many lands down to modern times. A special offering was made to the dead[96] on the last day of the feast, the Chytrai, which was sacred to none of the Olympians, but to Hermes the leader of the dead. To this god—but “for the dead”—were offered cooked vegetables and seeds in pots (which gave their name to this day of the festival).[97] It seems probable that as a sacrifice to the dead honey-cakes were thrown into a cleft of the earth in the Temne of Ge Olympia.[98] Indoors, too, the swarming ghosts entered and were entertained. They were not, however, permanently welcome guests, and finally they were driven out of the house in a manner parallelled at the close of festivals of the dead among many nations of old and modern times.[99] “Begone ye Keres, Anthesteria is over” were the words used in sending away the souls, and it is remarkable that in this formula they were given their primeval name—a name whose original sense had been forgotten by Homer, but not by the language of the common people of Attica.[100]

Individuals may have found still further opportunities of [169] bringing gifts to their own dead and showing their reverence for them. The cult paid by the family to the spirits of their ancestors is hardly distinguished, except by the greater limitation of the circle of worshippers, from the worship of underworld deities and Heroes. In the case of the souls, however, nature itself united the sacrificers and worshippers (and no one else) with the object of their devotion. If we wish to form some idea of the way in which (under the influence of a civilization that tended to reduce all primitive grandeur to mere idyll) the worship of the dead altered its character in the direction of piety and intimacy—we need only look at the pictures representing such worship (though rarely before the fourth century) on the oilflasks which were used at funerals in Attica and then laid by the side of the dead in the grave. These slight sketches breathe a spirit of simple kindliness; we see the mourners decking the grave monument with wreaths and ribbons; worshippers approaching with gestures of adoration, bringing with them many objects of daily use—mirrors, fans, swords, etc., for the entertainment of the dead.[101] Sometimes the living seek to give pleasure to the spirit of the dead by the performance of music.[102] Gifts, too, of cakes, fruit, and wine are being made—but the blood of the sacrificial animals is never spilt.[103] There was a time when more solemn—and less comfortable—thoughts prevailed;[104] and of these we learn something from the much older sculptured reliefs, found on sepulchral monuments in Sparta, which give the dead a more awe-inspiring attitude. The ancestral pair sit in state and are approached by members of the family (represented as much smaller figures) offering their worship. These bring with them flowers, pomegranates, and sometimes even animals for sacrifice, a cock, a pig, or a ram. Other and later types of such “banquets of the dead” show the dead person standing up (not infrequently by the side of a horse) or lying upon a couch and accepting the drink-offering made to him by the survivors.[105] These reliefs allow us to see at what a distance the departed spirits are supposed to stand from the living: the dead do, indeed, seem now to be “better and stronger” beings; they are well on the road to becoming “Heroes”. Drink offerings such as those we see offered on these reliefs—a mixture of honey-water, milk, and wine, and other liquids, offered in accordance with precise ritual—always formed a regular part of sacrifices made to the dead.[106] Besides these, animals, too, were slain, especially sheep (less often oxen) of black colour. These must be completely burnt, as being intended for the sole enjoyment of the dead—a custom [170] observed at all sacrifices made to the spirits of the underworld.[107]

The whole of this very material cult depended upon the assumption—which was sometimes distinctly expressed—that the soul of the dead is capable of receiving, and is in need of, a physical satisfaction from the gifts made to it.[108] It is consequently, not thought of as deprived of the power of sense-perception. Even in the grave it can feel what is going on in its neighbourhood.[109] It is not a good thing to attract its attention; it is best to pass by the graves of the dead in silence.[110] The common people thought of the dead, according to a famous phrase of Plato’s, as “hovering” suspended over their graves, the site of their cult.[111] The pictures on the Attic oilflasks illustrate this belief, for they represent the souls of the dead flying above the grave-monument, and the diminutive size of these winged figures is evidently intended to represent their somewhat contradictory immaterial materiality, and to express their invisibility for mortal eyes.[112] Sometimes, indeed, the souls become visible, and then, like the underworld gods and the Heroes, they prefer the shape of a snake.[113] Nor are they absolutely bound to the immediate neighbourhood of the grave; they sometimes revisit their old habitations among the living, and not only on those days of the dead in the month Anthesterion. The Greeks, like other people, were acquainted with the custom of allowing what fell to the ground to lie there undisturbed for the spirits that hovered about the house to carry away if they liked.[114] The dead man’s spirit, being thus invisibly present, can overhear if anyone speaks ill of it: either with the idea of defending the helpless, or, on the contrary, to avoid incurring the wrath of invisible but potent spirits, a Solonian law forbade abusive language to be addressed to a dead man. That is the real meaning of the old warning de mortuis nil nisi bene, as popular belief understood it. The descendants of a dead man were bound to prosecute anyone who slandered their ancestor:[115] this also is among the religious duties owed by the living to the soul of the dead.