CHAPTER III
BELIEFS AS TO THE FUTURE LIFE
The group of vase-paintings with which we dealt in the last chapter raises a curious question. In all, or almost all, of them the locality is clearly implied by the presence of a stele in the background. The offerings which they represent were made, it seems, at the tomb itself. Is it not, however, a strange thing that wealthy and educated Athenians should suppose the souls of the dead to have nothing better to do than to rest beside the tomb, and there await the offerings of survivors? Did they not believe in a region of the dead, a kingdom of Hades, where the bad were punished and the good received the recompense of their merits? And if so, how could the souls of the departed be at the same time in Hades, and in the neighbourhood of the graveyard? In order to find a solution for these difficulties we must give some account of the views of ordinary Greeks, at different periods of the national history, in regard to the life after death, and the condition of the departed.
We must begin our examination of Greek belief as to the future life by turning to the Homeric poems. The outlines of the psychical doctrine which these contain has been traced with masterly hand by Dr. Erwin Rohde[31], whose conclusions agree well with all that we have of late learned from history and archaeology as to the Homeric age and literature.
It is only superficial theorizing which will find in the Homeric poems the ordinary barbaric views as to the nature of the soul and the future life. Primitive elements there may be in the Homeric beliefs on these subjects; but these primitive elements are mostly of the nature of a survival. The Homeric poems belong to a race of singular gifts and remarkable intellectual capacity, a small clan or aristocracy which had by the force of inborn genius penetrated to views in all matters of practical wisdom which must be considered decidedly advanced. Like the Vedas of India and the Zend Avesta, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the flowers of special developments of civilization, of the culture of pure-blooded clans, which had worked their way forward, amid surrounding barbarism, to a comparatively civilized survey of the world and of mankind.
The notion which is the common property of barbarous peoples, that the dead dwell among the living, and constantly interfere for good and for evil in their affairs, that they must be appeased by constant sacrifices and receive their share of all increase,—this notion has indeed left traces in the Homeric poems, but they are slight. It rather shows through the psychology of Homer than regulates or inspires it.
The intellectual aristocracy of Homer has in this matter a strong bias towards scepticism. It is really remarkable how nearly the Homeric theories of the soul correspond with the facts recorded by that cautious and sceptical body of inquirers, the Psychical Society.
The psyche to Homer is not in the least like the Christian soul, but is a shadowy double of the man, wanting alike in force and in wisdom. It has no midriff, but lives as dreams live; appearing to the living in visions, sleeping or waking, but without power. While the body of a dead man remains unburnt or unburied, his ghost wanders about the place of death: when the body has received due meed of funeral rites, the spirit departs to the land of shades, never to return, nor to vex the survivors.
The realm of Hades appears in the more antique parts of the poems of Homer as a land where shades dwell under the rulership of King Hades and august Persephone, living a life which is a sort of reflex and corollary of the past. Orion, the mighty hunter, still pursues in that land the spectres of wild beasts over the meadows of asphodel. Agamemnon still deplores his sad fate, Ajax will not be reconciled to his enemy Odysseus, Achilles lives on the memory of his past exploits, and rates the life of the greatest heroes in Hades as beneath that of the meanest serving-man on earth. Even these shadowy passions do not stir the hearts of the dead until they have drunk of the blood of the sacrifice, and their vital force is thus in some degree renewed. To Teiresias alone, says Circe, has Persephone granted that even after death he shall have living sense, while the rest flit like shadows.
It is quite clear that this view, which removes the dead to Hades, and deprives them of all sense and power, is not to be reconciled with some of the customs of Homeric cultus, especially with the offering of victims, animal and human, at the tombs of heroes. This, however, is not strange: cultus has infinitely greater power of persistence among men than mere speculative beliefs; and among peoples of all religions we find a want of harmony between the religious belief and the religious custom which needs explanation. Homer does not fear the dead; but the burial customs described in his poems must have arisen at a time when the dead were greatly feared, and regarded as meddlesome in human affairs.
And this marked inconsistency which we find in the Homeric age persists throughout Greek history. The customs of the cultus of the dead are, as we have seen, persistent among all Greek tribes, though more fully appreciated by some than others, and remain in force down to the very decline of Paganism. But at the same time speculation as to the world of spirits and the condition of the departed went on, on lines almost independent of custom and cultus. If the dead were safe in Hades they could not also live in their tombs; why then take offerings thither? If their life was the life of dreams and of shadows, why did they need food, both animal and vegetable, and abundant drink? This is sufficiently obvious to us. Yet Greek belief in all ages must have found some means of reconciling theory and cultus, and of preventing the course of speculation as to the state of the departed from interfering with the practical piety of the worship of ancestors.