people have consistently accorded to their dead; the dissolution of the body, it might be supposed, was desired and hastened in order that the soul might be freed from its last link with this material world and pass away winged and unburdened towards things ethereal.
But such an explanation savours too much of philosophy and too little of popular religion. 'The rehearsal of death,' that is of the severance of soul from body, was according to Socrates the proper occupation of the philosopher; and death itself was welcome to him as a final release of the soul, the true self, from the fetters of physical existence. But the very emphasis which the whole of the Phaedo gives to this idea, the insistence of Socrates that his real self is that which converses with his friends and seeks to convince them of his views, and not the corpse which they will soon be burying or burning as seemeth them good[1], suggest, if anything, that in the popular religion the severance of soul from body was not desired, and the true self was not conceived as a thing apart from body. At any rate the reason for desiring dissolution must be sought from more popular sources.
I return therefore to a passage[2] on which I have already touched more than once, the earliest passage of extant literature, in which a dead man is represented as craving the dissolution of his body. Why was it that the soul of Patroclus desired so urgently the last rites for his body? Was it for the benefit of his soul only? Popular religion, as we have seen, did not reckon death a final severance of soul and body; for the soul might return and re-animate the body. Was then dissolution believed to complete the severance, annihilating the body and emancipating the soul? Did the future happiness of the soul depend upon such emancipation? Did Patroclus, in the case before us, crave dissolution in order that his soul, finally severed from his body, might find happiness?
Homer certainly peoples the lower world with souls only, severed from their former bodies. It is clearly the soul only of Patroclus which will pass the gates of Hades, when once his request for the burial of his body has been fulfilled; for it is 'the souls, the semblances of the dead[3],' who bar his entrance thereto
