Greek and Roman Ghost StoriesCollison-Morley, Lacy
History
Greek and Roman Ghost Stories
Collison-Morley, Lacy
Ghosts
The story is obviously to be classed with that of Ariadne.
The god-fearing AElian seeks to show that Providence watches over a good
man and brings his murderers to justice by a story taken from
Chrysippus.[91] A traveller put up at an inn in Megara, wearing a belt
full of gold. The innkeeper discovered that he had the money about him,
and murdered him at night, having arranged to carry his body outside the
gates in a dung-cart. But meanwhile the murdered man appeared to a
citizen of the town and told him what had happened. The man was
impressed by the vision. Investigations were made, and the murderer was
caught exactly where the ghost had indicated, and was duly punished.
This is one of the very few stories in which the apparition is seen at
or near the moment of death, as is the case in the vast majority of the
well-authenticated cases collected during recent years.
Aristeas of Proconesus, a man of high birth, died quite suddenly in a
fulling establishment in his native town.[92] The owner locked the
building and went to inform his relatives, when a man from Cyzicus,
hearing the news, denied it, saying that Aristeas had met him on the way
thither and talked to him; and when the relatives came, prepared to
remove the body, they found no Aristeas, either alive or dead.
Altogether, he seems to have been a remarkable person. He disappeared
for seven years, and then appeared in Proconesus and wrote an epic poem
called _Arimispea_, which was well known in Herodotus's day. Two hundred
and forty years later he was seen again, this time at Metapontum, and
bade the citizens build a shrine to Apollo, and near it erect a statue
to himself, as Apollo would come to them alone of the Italian Greeks,
and he would be seen following in the form of a raven. The townsmen were
troubled at the apparition, and consulted the Delphic oracle, which
confirmed all that Aristeas had said; and Apollo received his temple and
Aristeas his statue in the market-place.
Apollonius[93] tells virtually the same story, except that in his
version Aristeas was seen giving a lesson in literature by a number of
persons in Sicily at the very hour he died in Proconesus. He says that
Aristeas appeared at intervals for a number of years after his death.
The elder Pliny[94] also speaks of Aristeas, saying that at Proconesus
his soul was seen to leave his body in the form of a raven, though he
regards the tale as in all probability a fabrication.
The doctor in Lucian's _Philopseudus_ (_c._ 26) declares that he knew a
man who rose from the dead twenty days after he was buried, and that he
attended him after his resurrection. But when asked how it was the body
did not decompose or the man die of hunger, he has no answer to give.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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