The treatment which the gods reserved for another class of _biothanati_ was more uncertain. In the Greek cities, as in Rome, moral reproof and posthumous penalties were anciently attached to suicide. The old pontifical law refused ritualistic burial to persons who had hanged themselves; and instead of funeral sacrifices it prescribed for these dead merely the hanging up of small images (_oscilla_) consecrated to their Manes,[345]—probably a magical, “sympathetic” rite, which was intended to purify their wandering souls by air, as other souls were purified by water and fire. The horrible appearance of men who died by strangulation had given rise to the belief that the breath of life had vainly sought to issue from their tightly closed throats.[346] A rich inhabitant of Sarsina in Umbria granted land for a graveyard to his fellow citizens, but excluded from the benefit of his gift those who had hired themselves as gladiators, had died by the rope by their own hand, or had followed an infamous calling.[347] This association shows how loathsome this kind of death was. Funeral colleges founded under the Empire introduced into their rules a clause stipulating that if anybody had for any motive whatsoever put himself to death, he should lose his right to burial.[348] This provision seems to have been inspired less by the fear that fraud would be practised on this society of mutual insurance against supreme abandonment, than by the conviction that funeral honours cannot deflect the curse which weighs on the suicide and renders his company undesirable for other dead.