Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals

by J. C. Lawson

Such a custom would not, so far as I can judge, have encountered any serious ecclesiastical opposition. The Church, it is true, in her earlier days had condemned cremation as a pagan rite, and with the spread of Christianity inhumation became the ordinary rite. But in the case of those who, having been buried, yet returned from the grave, since the Christian rite had proved of no avail, some concession to pagan traditions would have been natural. Many of the clergy, as we have seen, condoned cremation in the case of vrykolakes as a measure of self-defence; surely they would equally have allowed it as an act of charity to more innocent men to whom the earth had denied dissolution and death had brought no repose.

Thus the actual custom of burning dates from the pre-Slavonic era; it is only the motive of the act which is changed. Formerly men felt pity for the revenant, and sought to promote his dissolution in order to release him from a state of suffering; now, as for some centuries past, men feel only horror of the vrykolakas, and seek to promote his dissolution in order to release themselves from a state of peril. Hence no doubt came the more horrible barbarities occasionally inflicted on the corpse; to tear out the heart, to boil it in vinegar, to tear the body to shreds—these are the acts of a panic-stricken and vindictive people eager to torment their foe before annihilating him. But in the old custom of cremation there was nothing inhumane; it was the merciful act of a people who had compassion upon the unquiet dead and gave to them, in solicitude for their welfare, that boon of bodily dissolution by which alone they were finally severed from the living and admitted to the world of the departed.

§ 3. Revenants in ancient Greece.

The Slavonic and the ecclesiastical elements have now been removed from the modern Greek superstition, and the Hellenic residue is briefly this: the human body sometimes remains incorruptible in the earth, and in this state is liable to resuscitation; persons so affected stand as it were halfway between the living and the dead, resembling the former when they walk the earth, and the latter when they are lying quiet in their graves or, if unburied, elsewhere; during their periods of resuscitation they act as reasonable human beings, but their whole condition is pitiable, and the most humane way of treating them is to burn their bodies; disintegration being thus secured, they return no more to this world, but are numbered among the departed. Further the causes of such a condition are threefold—lack of burial, sudden death, and execration or deadly sin deserving of it. The only question which we have left unsolved is that of the agency by which the body is resuscitated. The Devil is now held responsible; but the Devil is a Christian, not a pagan, conception.

My purpose in the present section is, first, to verify by the aid of classical literature the conclusions which have been reached, and, secondly, to solve the one problem which remains.

There is, so far as I know, only one story in ancient literature which contains anything like a full account of a revenant. This is related by Phlegon[1071], a freedman of Hadrian; and the narrator professes to have been an eye-witness of the occurrences which he describes. In his story are embodied most of those very ideas which on wholly other grounds have been argued to form the genuine Hellenic element in the modern superstition concerning vrykolakes, and I shall therefore reproduce it at length. Unfortunately however the beginning of the story is lost, and therewith possibly the cause assigned for the strange conduct of the resuscitated corpse which plays the heroine’s part.

What remains of the story opens abruptly with a weird scene in the guest-chamber of the house of Demostratus and his wife Charito.

Their daughter Philinnion had been dead and buried somewhat less than six months, when one evening she was observed by her old nurse in the guest-chamber, where a young man named Machates was lodged, to all appearances alive. The nurse at once ran to the girl’s parents and bade them come with her and see their child. Charito however was so overcome by the tidings that she first fainted and then wept hysterically for her lost daughter and finally began to abuse the old woman, calling her mad and ordering her out of the room; but the nurse expostulated with spirit, and Charito at last went with her. In the meanwhile however Philinnion and her lover had retired to rest, so that when the mother arrived she could not obtain a good view of her; but from the peep which she got of the girl’s clothes and the shape of her face she thought that she recognised her daughter. Then, feeling that she could not at that hour ascertain the truth of the matter, she decided to keep quiet until morning, and then to rise betimes and surprise the girl if still there, or, failing that, to extort from Machates the whole truth.

But when dawn came the girl had gone away unobserved, and Charito began to take Machates to task, telling him the whole story and imploring him to confess the truth and to keep nothing back. The young man (who seems to have been unaware that Charito had lost a daughter named Philinnion) was much distressed, and at first would only admit that such was indeed the name of the girl whom they had seen; but afterwards he told the whole story of the girl’s visits to him, mentioning that she had said that she came without her parents’ knowledge. To confirm his story, he produced the gold ring which she had given him and her breast-band which she had left behind on the previous night. These were at once recognised by Charito as having belonged to her daughter, and with a loud cry she rent her clothes and loosed her hair and threw herself upon the ground beside the tokens and began making lamentation anew. Her example was soon followed by others of the family as if in preparation for a funeral, and Machates, at his wits’ end how to quiet them, promised to let them see the girl if she should come to him again.

That night accordingly they kept watch, and at the usual hour the girl came, went into Machates’ room, and sat down upon the bed. The young man himself was now anxious to learn the truth; he could not wholly credit the supposition that it was a dead woman who had come so regularly, and who had eaten and drunk with him and lain at his side, and thought rather that the real Philinnion’s tomb had been robbed and the booty sold to the father of the girl, whoever she might be, who visited him. No sooner therefore was she come than he quietly summoned the watchers. The girl’s parents at once entered, and were for a while dumb with astonishment at the sight of her, and then threw their arms round her with loud cries. Then said Philinnion, ‘O my mother and father, it was wrong of you to grudge me three days with this man here in my own home and doing no harm. And so, because of your meddlesomeness, you shall mourn for me anew, and I shall go away again to my appointed place. For it is by divine consent that I have done thus.’ Scarcely had she spoken when she became a corpse and her body lay stretched upon the bed in the sight of all. Confusion and loud lamentation at once ensued, and before long the rumour had got about the town and was reported to the narrator of the story, Phlegon, who appears to have held some official position. To him at any rate it fell to keep order during the night among the excited townsfolk, and early next morning he was present at a crowded meeting in the theatre, at which it was decided to inspect first of all the family vault in which Philinnion had been laid.