In Rome, in historical times, the funeral repast might be taken not at the tomb but in the house. Among the feasts celebrated by the confraternities in honour of some dead benefactor, on the dates fixed by his last will, many were held in the meeting-place of the guild. But the belief continued in the real presence of him whose “spirit was honoured,”[132] and whose statue or picture often adorned the banqueting hall. From the earliest period, the spirit of the dead was indeed not regarded as inseparable from his remains or as a recluse cloistered in the tomb. He dwelt there but could issue thence, although for long it was believed that he could not go far away but remained in the neighbourhood of the burial place. He was brought back to it by the necessity of taking food, which was no less indispensable to him than to men. He returned, therefore, to it, as a dweller returns to his home, to repair his energies and to rest. This idea that the soul wandered around its “eternal house” often caused pains to be taken to surround this house with a garden. Sometimes such a garden was planted with a practical object: it was a vineyard, an orchard or a rose-garden which supplied the wine, fruit or flowers necessary for the offerings to the dead.[133] But elsewhere a mere pleasure-garden, with shady groves, bowers, pavilions and sparkling fountains, surrounded the burial place. The care which the living took to fix, by their will, its extent and its planting is a measure of the intensity of their conviction that their shade would take pleasure in refreshing itself in this quiet haunt. There, about the tomb, it would enjoy the delights which would afterwards be transported to the Elysian Fields, as we shall see later. The cult of the grave has not ceased in these days; the ancient rites have not been discontinued. Tombstones are still surrounded with flowers; they are decked with wreaths; in Italy lamps are kept burning over them. But the reasons which established these customs have disappeared; for us they are no more than a way of betokening our care for the beloved, of piously showing our intimate feelings by outward signs and marking the duration of our regrets and our memories. They are survivals which have lost all the concrete and real meaning which they had in the far-off days when men believed that a being like themselves sojourned in the place in which bones or ashes were deposited.