“The noise becoming louder, seemed to approach his chamber door; and on looking up, he beheld the spectre we have described; which seemed to beckon him with its finger. Athenodorus made sign to his visitor to wait, and continued his writing. The spectre shook its chains anew in the ears of the philosopher; who, perceiving it to be still beckoning, rose, took up the light, and followed it. The phantom walked as if sinking under the weight of its chains; and on reaching the court-yard vanished, leaving Athenodorus picking up herbs and leaves to mark the place of its disappearance.
“On the following day, he sought the magistrates of the city, and begged to have the scene of the adventure examined. On due investigation, a human skeleton, entangled in chains, was found interred on the ominous spot. The bones were carefully collected, and publicly buried; and after receiving the sacred rites of the dead, the spectre never again troubled the repose of the house.”
Pliny does not relate this story as deserving of credence; but offered it to his contemporaries as an ingenious lesson upon the influence of the imagination, serving to inculcate the respect due from the living towards the dead. Honours have been offered to the mortal remains of illustrious men in all times and countries; and a reverence towards the grave may be accepted as an indication of civilization.
Plato affirmed that he saw the souls of the departed flitting about like shadows; a prejudice we forgive the more readily in the man who first revealed the existence of the soul, of which, in the name of Socrates, he consecrated the immortality.
Pausanias relates that whole armies reappeared after death with their arms and baggage.
“Four hundred years after the battle of Marathon,” says he, “the neighing of horses and cries of soldiers were heard upon the scene of action.”
The object of Pausanias was to hold up to the Athenians the example of their illustrious ancestors by immortalizing the heroic combatants of that memorable battle. But he no more heard the neighing of horses on the spot, than Napoleon beheld forty centuries surveying his army from the apex of the Pyramids, as figurately described in his sublime address to his troops.
Unmindful of the moral sense of things, and prone to judge the recitals of antiquity according to the standard of our own ideas, regardless of the changes of time, in our efforts to rectify the errors of our predecessors, we fall into new ones. Due allowance ought to be made for time and place in perusing such recitals as the following:
“St. Spiridion, Bishop of Trimitonte, in Egypt, had a daughter, named Irene, who died a virgin. After her decease, an individual presented himself and claimed a deposit which had been in her custody, unknown to her father, which was vainly sought for by St. Spiridion. Proceeding, however, to his daughter’s tomb, he called aloud her name, and demanded what she had done with the object confided to her? ‘You will find it buried in such a spot!’ replied a voice from the tomb; and proceeding to the place pointed out, the treasure was found.”
St. Martin of Tours, disgusted by the reverence paid in his neighbourhood to a pretended Saint, proceeded to his tomb, and enjoined him to arise. The dead man issued from his grave, confessed that he was a robber justly punished for his crimes, and condemned to eternal punishment.