If the meaning of the word _biothanati_ was thus restricted in the Latin world, the old ideas which it called forth have had a singular vitality in folk-lore, especially among the Greeks. The Greeks believe even today that such as perish by a sudden and violent death became _vrykolakes_.[356] Their bodies can again be reanimated, can leave the grave, and can travel through space with extreme rapidity as vampires and become so maleficent that mere contact with them causes loss of life. Suicides and victims of unavenged murders are particularly fearful. It was the custom as late as the eighteenth century to open the grave of a dead man suspected of being a _vrykolakas_, and if his body had escaped corruption, thus proving his supposed character, it was cut into pieces or burnt in order to prevent it from doing further harm. So lively did the belief remain that the _biothanatus_ could not detach himself from his body, and that his existence, which had been too soon interrupted, was prolonged in the tomb. VI THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND As soon as belief took shape in an underground kingdom where gathered the shades which were separated from the body and from the grave, the idea also arose of a perilous journey which the soul must make in order to win to this distant abode. Such an idea is common to many peoples of the world. In California, the Mojave Indians are said to believe that the departed have to find their way through a complicated maze in search of the happy hunting grounds, which only the good souls can reach, while the wicked wander painfully and endlessly. We know what minutely detailed rules are contained in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, rules to which the deceased had to conform in order that they might travel safely to the Fields of the Blessed. The Orphic tablets, discovered in tombs in Italy,[357] have preserved fragments of another guide to the Beyond. For instance, the tablet of Petelia, which goes back to the second or perhaps the third century B. C., begins thus: “Thou shalt find to the left of the house of Hades a well-spring, and by the side thereof standing a white cypress. To this well-spring approach not near. But thou shalt find another by the lake of Memory, cold water flowing forth, and there are Guardians before it. Say ‘I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven. But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know yourselves. And so I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly the cold water flowing from the lake of Memory.’ And of themselves they will give thee to drink from the holy well-spring; and thereafter among the other heroes thou shalt have lordship....”[358]