No religious ceremony was more universally performed in the most diverse regions of the Empire than this cult of the grave. At every hour of every day families met in some tomb to celebrate there an anniversary by eating the funeral meal. Peoples remained strongly attached to practices the omission of which would have seemed to them dangerous as well as impious, for the spirits of the dead were powerful and vindictive.
It is therefore not surprising that these practices persisted in the Christian era in spite of the efforts of the clergy to suppress them. St. Augustine reprimands those who, like pagans, “drink intemperately above the dead”—these are his words—“and who, while serving meals to corpses, bury themselves with these buried bodies, making a religion of their greed and their drunkenness.”[[130]]
In the East, however, ecclesiastical authority tolerated a custom which it could not uproot, contenting itself with forbidding the abuse of wine and recommending a moderation the absence of which might often be deplored. Ecclesiastical authority also insisted that a part of the feast should be given to the poor, thus giving a charitable character to the old pagan practice.[[131]] Therefore in many countries, and especially in Greece and in the Balkans, the habit has survived to this day, not only of placing food on tombs, but also of eating there on certain anniversaries, with the idea that the dead in some mysterious way share and enjoy the meal.
In Rome, in historical times, the funeral repast might be taken not at the tomb but in the house. Among the feasts celebrated by the confraternities in honour of some dead benefactor, on the dates fixed by his last will, many were held in the meeting-place of the guild. But the belief continued in the real presence of him whose “spirit was honoured,”[[132]] and whose statue or picture often adorned the banqueting hall.
From the earliest period, the spirit of the dead was indeed not regarded as inseparable from his remains or as a recluse cloistered in the tomb. He dwelt there but could issue thence, although for long it was believed that he could not go far away but remained in the neighbourhood of the burial place. He was brought back to it by the necessity of taking food, which was no less indispensable to him than to men. He returned, therefore, to it, as a dweller returns to his home, to repair his energies and to rest. This idea that the soul wandered around its “eternal house” often caused pains to be taken to surround this house with a garden. Sometimes such a garden was planted with a practical object: it was a vineyard, an orchard or a rose-garden which supplied the wine, fruit or flowers necessary for the offerings to the dead.[[133]] But elsewhere a mere pleasure-garden, with shady groves, bowers, pavilions and sparkling fountains, surrounded the burial place. The care which the living took to fix, by their will, its extent and its planting is a measure of the intensity of their conviction that their shade would take pleasure in refreshing itself in this quiet haunt. There, about the tomb, it would enjoy the delights which would afterwards be transported to the Elysian Fields, as we shall see later.
The cult of the grave has not ceased in these days; the ancient rites have not been discontinued. Tombstones are still surrounded with flowers; they are decked with wreaths; in Italy lamps are kept burning over them. But the reasons which established these customs have disappeared; for us they are no more than a way of betokening our care for the beloved, of piously showing our intimate feelings by outward signs and marking the duration of our regrets and our memories. They are survivals which have lost all the concrete and real meaning which they had in the far-off days when men believed that a being like themselves sojourned in the place in which bones or ashes were deposited.
The dead were not then cut off from the society of the living; the connection between them and their surroundings was not broken; the continuity between the hour which preceded and that which followed their decease was not interrupted. It has often been remarked that in this respect ancient ideas were profoundly different from ours. Those lost to sight did not then cease to partake of the life of their families; they remained in communication with their friends and their kin, who met together in their new dwelling, and an effort was made to render their isolation less hard to bear by bringing them into touch with many people. Our dead rest in peaceful and remote graveyards where no noise or din may trouble the tranquil mood of afflicted visitors. The Romans placed their dead along the great roads, near the gates of towns, where there was press of passers-by and the rolling of chariot-wheels. Their wish was not, when they buried them beside the most frequented highways, to recall their destiny to mortals, although philosophers have thus explained the custom.[[134]] On the contrary, they wanted to cause those who were no more to forget their own destiny. “I see,” says an epitaph,[[135]] “and I gaze upon all who go and come from and to the city.” “Lollius has been placed,” we read elsewhere,[[136]] “by the side of the road in order that all passers-by may say to him, ‘Good day, Lollius.’”
The inscriptions in which the dead speak, addressing those who stop before their monuments, are innumerable. They console such as continue to love them, thank those who are still busy on their behalf and express wishes for their happiness, or else they impart to their successors the wisdom acquired by experience of life. Often they take part with them in a dialogue, answering their greetings and wishes: “May the earth be light on thee!”—“Fare thou well in the upper world”;[[137]] or else: “Hail Fabianus.”—“May the gods grant you their benefits, my friends, and may the gods be propitious to you, travellers, and to you who stop by Fabianus! Go and come safe and sound! May you who crown me with garlands or throw me flowers, live for many years!”[[138]]