[264] “The belief, common later, that the soul of the dead was not admitted immediately to the realm of Hades, but wandered in loneliness on its confines until the body was either burned or buried, is clearly expressed only in this (Patroclus) passage, while possibly in only one other can it be assumed, in all the Homeric poems. The wish for speedy rites sprang from a simpler cause; men did not want to have the bodies of their friends, or of themselves, torn by wild beasts or vultures: nor does this even begin to show that they had inherited old beliefs with regard to the connection between the soul of the dead and the body, which this soul had once inhabited, leading to a certain treatment of the body. That in earlier times, and perhaps by many Greeks of Homer’s age, the soul was thought to maintain a species of connection with the body, and to care for it, cannot be doubted. But caution is necessary that it may not be assumed that the Greeks, who maintained certain customs, inherited also the beliefs on which those customs were originally based” (Seymour, op. cit., p. 462).
[265] Professor G. H. Nuttall, in Parasitology (1913), V. 253.
[266] Burton, Arabian Nights.
[267] Mackail, op. cit., p. 92. Cf. Strabo’s naïve but curiously true phrase about her, “a marvellous creature” (θαυμαστόν τι χρῇμα).
[268] Anth. Pal., VII. 505:
τῷ γριπεῖ Πελάγωνι πατὴρ ἐπέθηκε Μενίσκος κύρτον καὶ κώπαν, μνᾶμα κακοξοΐας.
Translated by T. Fawkes.
[269] In Anth. Pal., VII. 305, this epigram is headed in the MS. Ἀδδαίου Μιτυληναίου, which is obviously wrong, for either Μιτυληναίου should be Μακεδόνος, or Ἀδδαίου is a mistake. Bergk assigns it to Alcæus of Messine—probably with reason, as it is not unlike his style, and his name is more than once confused with Alcæus of Mitylene, the famous lyric poet. (For Alcæus of Messene, see Mackail’s Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (London, 1890), p. 297 f.) Stadtmüller the latest editor of Anth. Pal. conjectures as author Alpheus of Mitylene, but unconvincingly to Mackail and other authorities. Translated by E. W. Peter—The Poets and Poetry of the Ancients, London, 1858.
ὁ γριπεὺς Διότιμος ὁ κύμασιν ὁλκάδα πιστὴν κἠν χθονὶ τὴν αὐτὴν οἶκον ἕχων πενίης, κ.τ.λ.
Cf. Etruscus Messenius, Anth. Pal., VII. 381, 5 f.