Its lot was supposed to be analogous to that of the unfortunate who had been deprived of burial (ἄταφοι, _insepulti_) of whom we spoke in our first lecture.[314] It circled about the corpse, which it could not abandon, or fluttered here and there near the place of burial or on the spot where the body which it had occupied had been assailed. Excluded from the abode of the shades these wandering souls flitted near the earth or on the surface of the waters, miserable and plaintive. The fear of never being able to penetrate into the kingdom of blessed shades seems to have inspired the following prayer, which occurs in a metrical epitaph of Capri:[315] “You who dwell in the country of Styx, beneficent demons, receive me too into Hades, me the unfortunate who was not borne away in accordance with the judgment of the Fates, but by a hasty and violent death provoked by unjust anger.” These brutally disincarnated souls became like the swift and harmful spirits with which the air was filled: like them they belonged to the train of Hecate, the goddess of enchantment, and like them were subject to the power of magicians. At Lesbos, Gello, a young virgin carried off before her time, became a phantom which killed children and caused premature deaths.[316] The leaden tablets, which were slipped into tombs in order to injure an enemy, and the magic papyri of Egypt bear a large number of incantations in which these mischievous demons are invoked. In the same way a series of conjurations, dating from the third century and found in the island of Cyprus, appeal to the spirits of the dead thrown in the common ditch, “who have met their death by violence, or before their time, or who have been deprived of burial.”[317] In general the sacrifice of newly born children, and the use of their vital organs and bones, was, and not without reason, a most frequent charge against sorcerers. Formulas preserved on papyrus recommend as powerful means to work a charm “a baby’s heart, the blood of a dead maiden, and the carrion of a dog.”[318] Witches were believed to steal children in order to use the entrails in their occult operations, a ritualistic murder analogous to that attributed by popular belief, in some countries, to the Jews. Cicero, Horace in an epode, Petronius in his romance,[319] and other authors bear witness to the extent to which this opinion was entertained. The epitaph of a young slave of Livia, wife of Drusus, relates his misfortune. Before he was four years old he was cut off by the cruel hand, the “black hand” of a witch, who practised her noxious art everywhere. “Guard well your children, ye parents,” adds the epitaph.[320]