revealed; for the custom has continued without intermission or sensible alteration down to this day.
In the Mycenaean age the dead were supplied with a store of food at the time of the funeral, but there is no evidence to show whether the gifts were renewed subsequently[1]. I incline to suppose that they were; for the belief of later ages in some sort of bodily existence after death has already been traced back to the Pelasgians; and the custom of later ages therefore of continuing to supply the dead with bodily necessaries was probably derived from the same source. But in any case the Mycenaean custom of providing food for the dead at the time of the funeral is sufficient proof that the dead were thought to have bodily needs, and therefore also bodily existence.
The Achaeans of the Homeric age seldom presented the dead man with gifts of food at the funeral, and never apparently afterwards. The only gift, if such it can be called, which was commonly burned along with the dead body was the warrior's own armour; but it is so natural, quite apart from any religious motive, for a soldier's body to be laid out arrayed in its wonted accoutrements and to have, as it were, a military funeral, that little importance can attach to it. Other gifts were rare. The funeral of Patroclus is quite exceptional, and, like the return of Patroclus' soul with its urgent petition for burial, seems wholly inconsistent with the Homeric presentment of after-death existence. The soul being doomed to a shadowy impotent semblance of life could have no part in physical needs or pleasures[2]. Nor does Homer enlighten us as to the purpose of the abundant gifts, which included not only food but slaughtered dogs and horses[3]; he speaks only of
- ↑ Rohde (Psyche I. cap. 1) contends that the discovery of an altar, of the type used in the worship of Chthonian deities, superimposed upon one Mycenaean grave, proves both that offerings to the dead were continued after the interment and also that the offerings were of a propitiatory character. On this slight foundation he rears the edifice of his theory that a vigorous soul-cult flourished in Mycenaean and earlier ages. Accordingly he views all gifts to the dead, including those made at the time of the funeral, as offerings intended to propitiate departed souls, although he is forced to admit that from the Homeric age onwards there is no evidence that fear of the dead was a feature of Greek religion; the offerings made, on his view, to the soul of Patroclus were merely, he holds, a 'survival,' a custom no longer possessed of any meaning. The accident of an altar belonging to some Chthonian deity having been found above the grave of some man seems to me insufficient basis for any theory.
- ↑ The blood which in the Odyssey is used to attract the souls of the dead and is given to Teiresias to drink forms, I imagine, part of a magic rite, which has no connexion with the present point.
- ↑ I omit the twelve Trojan prisoners; the slaughter of these is clearly stated to have been an act of revenge. See Il. XXIII. 22 f.
