[177] See [Appendix ii] (μασχαλισμός).
[178] Xen., Cyr. 8, 7, 17 ff.: οὐ γὰρ δήπου τοῦτό γε σαφῶς δοκεῖτε εἰδέναι ὡς οὐδέν εἰμι ἐγὼ ἔτι, ἐπειδὰν τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου βίου τελευτήσω· οὐδὲ γὰρ νῦν τοι τήν γ’ ἐμὴν ψυχὴν ἑωρᾶτε . . . τὰς δὲ τῶν ἄδικα παθόντων ψυχὰς οὔπω κατενοήσατε, οἵους μὲν φόβους τοῖς μιαιφόνοις ἐμβάλλουσιν, οἵους δὲ παλαμναίους (which means first the criminal and then, as here, the punishing spirit that avenges the criminal deed, exactly like προστρόπαιος, ἀλιτήριος, ἀλάστωρ, μιάστωρ: see Zacher, Dissert. phil. Halens. iii, 232 ff.) τοῖς ἀνοσίοις ἐπιπέμπουσι; τοῖς δὲ φθιμένοις τὰς τιμὰς διαμένειν ἔτι ἂν δοκεῖτε, εἰ μηδενὸς αὐτῶν αἱ ψυχαὶ κύριαι ἦσαν; οὔτοι ἔγωγε, ὦ παῖδες, οὐδὲ τοῦτο πώποτε ἐπείσθην, ὡς ἡ ψυχή, ἕως μὲν ἂν ἐν θνητῷ σώματι ᾖ, ζῇ, ὅταν δὲ τούτου ἀπαλλαγῇ, τέθνηκεν. Then follow other popular arguments for the belief in the continued existence of the soul after its separation from the body.
CHAPTER VI
THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES
The cult of the dead, thus pursued in unhampered freedom, preserved and encouraged certain ideas of the life of the soul after death; of the soul as a conscious and powerful being which though separated from the body has not been parted for ever from the scene of its earthly existence. To the Greeks such ideas had become strange and unfamiliar—strange, at least, to the Ionian Greeks of the Homeric age.
But from such a cult no dogmatic or distinctly outlined picture of the life of the departed soul could have been deduced, nor ever was deduced. Everything in this connexion dealt with the relation of the dead to the living. Families by means of sacrifice and religious acts sought to nourish the souls of their own dead. But the cult was in itself chiefly precautionary (apotropaic) in character, and as a consequence men preferred rather to avoid investigation into the nature and condition of the dead themselves, except in so far as they came into the life of the living.
This is the point at which the cult of the souls and belief in the existence of souls stopped short among many of the so-called “savage” peoples who have no history. Nor can there be much doubt that it had reached this stage of development in Greece, too, before the time of Homer; though temporarily overshadowed, it continued to exist for it was rooted firmly in the united life of the family and its traditional practices.
Such traditional beliefs, however, left the nature of the disembodied soul vague and undefined; they viewed it purely from the standpoint of the living and almost entirely in its relations with this world; and resting on such foundations it is not very surprising if they yielded unresistingly and sank into insignificance once the feeling of the influence exercised by the dead upon the living began to weaken, or if anything happened to cause the decline or discredit of the cult of the dead. When the living withdrew their support and reverence from the departed soul the latter ceased to present any clear picture to the minds of men—it became a mere evanescent shadow—unsubstantial—little more than nothing. This is what [218] happened in the period of Ionic culture, in which Homer lived.
The poetry of that period, however, had of its own accord given rise to aspirations after a fuller and more definite picture of the long, unbounded future in the life to come. These aspirations had been given shape in the pictures of the translation of individual mortals to Elysium and the Islands of the Blest.
Such things, however, were, and continued to be, matters of poetry, not of religious faith. Even the poetical fancy dealt with the marvellous past and with exceptional heroes chosen out long ago by the special favour of the gods; such favour was not extended to include the living generations of men. The desire, once it was awakened, for a more hopeful prospect of the life to come beyond the grave and for something more than the mere negative existence of the ancestors worshipped in family cults, must look to other sources for its satisfaction. Such desires began to be felt by many, but their originating source and the secret forces that set them going must remain for us hidden behind the obscurity that lies over the most important period of Greek development, the eighth and seventh centuries. Nor does it help us very much when historians try to stop the gaps of our knowledge with platitudes or the barren offspring of their own imagination. The existence of such desires and their growing strength is shown by the fact that they were able to create for themselves a means of satisfaction (a peculiarly limited satisfaction it is true) in a direction that immediately occurs to everyone as soon as the subject of future blessedness or belief in immortality among the Greeks is mentioned—the Eleusinian Mysteries.