Though the burial customs still employed sprang from old fancies like these, we are not to suppose that such notions were in full life in the Roman world of our period. Poets might play with them, and some ignorant folk might still vaguely entertain them. The mere belief in ghosts was doubtless general, and even the learned argued the question of their existence. Here are parts of another letter culled from Pliny already several times quoted. He writes to his friend Sura: "I should very much like to know whether you think that apparitions actually exist, with a real shape of their own and a kind of supernatural power, or that it is only our fear which gives an embodiment to vain fancies. My own inclination is to believe in them, and chiefly because of an experience which, I am told, befell Curtius Rufus." He then speaks of a phantom form which prophesied that person's fortune. "Another occurrence, quite as wonderful and still more terrifying, I will relate as I was told it. There was at Athens a house which was roomy and commodious, but which bore an ill-name and was plague-stricken. In the silence of the night there was heard a sound of iron. On closer attention it proved to be a rattling of chains, first at a distance and then close at hand. Soon there appeared the spectre of an old man, miserably thin and squalid, with a long beard and unkempt hair. On his legs were fetters, and on his hands chains, which he kept shaking. In consequence the inhabitants spent horrible and sleepless nights; the sleeplessness made them ill, and, as their terror increased, the illness was followed by death.... As a result the house was deserted and totally abandoned to the ghost. Nevertheless it was advertised, on the chance that some one ignorant of all this trouble" (note the commercial morality) "might choose to buy it or rent it. To Athens there comes a philosopher named Athenodorus, who reads the placard. On hearing the price and finding it so cheap, he has his suspicions" (the ancient philosopher had his practical side), "makes enquiry, and learns the whole story. So far from being less inclined to hire it, he is only the more willing. On the approach of evening he gives orders for his couch to be made up in the front part of the house, and asks for his tablets, pencils, and a light. After dismissing his attendants to the back rooms, he applies all his attention, as well as his eyes and hand, steadily to his writing, for fear his mind, if unoccupied, might conjure up imaginary sounds and causeless fears. At first there was the same silence of the night as elsewhere; then there was a shaking of iron, a movement of chains. The philosopher refused to lift his eyes or stop his pencil; instead he braced up his mind so as to overcome his hearing. The noise grew louder; it approached; it sounded as if on the threshold; then as if within the room. He looks behind him; sees and recognises the apparition of which he has been told. It was standing and beckoning to