"I touch the sacred altars, touch the flames,
And all these powers attest, and all their names,
Whatever chance befall on either side,
No term of time this union shall divide;
No force nor fortune shall my vows unbind,
To shake the steadfast tenor of my mind."
The ancient poets and orators denounce perjury in the strongest terms, and speak of the offence as one of a most odious character.
THE FUTURE STATE.
The future state in which the Greeks believed was to some extent one of rewards and punishments. The souls of most of the dead, however, were supposed to descend to the realms of Ha'des, where they remained, joyless phantoms, the mere shadows of their former selves, destitute of mental vigor, and, like the spectres of the North American Indians, pursuing, with dreamlike vacancy, the empty images of their past occupations and enjoyments. So cheerless is the twilight of the nether world that the ghost of Achilles informs Ulysses that it would rather live the meanest hireling on earth than be doomed to continue in the shades below, even though as sovereign ruler there. Thus Achilles asks him—
"How hast thou dared descend into the gloom
Of Hades, where the shadows of the dead,
Forms without intellect, alone reside?"
And when Ulysses tries to console him by reminding him that he was even there supreme over all his fellow-shades, he receives this reply:
"Renowned Ulysses! think not death a theme
Of consolation: I would rather live
The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread
Of some man scantily himself sustained,
Than sovereign empire hold o'er all the shades."
—Odyssey, by COWPER, B. XI.
But even in Hades a distinction is made between the good and the bad, for there Ulysses finds Mi'nos, the early law-giver of Crete, advanced to the position of judge over the assembled shades— absolving the just, and condemning the guilty.
High on a throne, tremendous to behold,
Stern Minos waves a mace of burnished gold;
Around, ten thousand thousand spectres stand,
Through the wide dome of Dis, a trembling band;
Whilst, as they plead, the fatal lots he rolls,
Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.
—Odyssey, by POPE, B. XI.
The kinds of punishment inflicted here are, as might be expected, wholly earthly in their nature, and may be regarded rather as the reflection of human passions than as moral retributions by the gods. Thus, Tan'talus, placed up to his chin in water, which ever flowed away from his lips, was tormented with unquenchable thirst, while the fruits hanging around him constantly eluded his grasp. The story of Tantalus is well told by PROFESSOR BLACKIE, as follows: