Orestes was of course a notable local thief, but the point of the joke is the ill-omened character of a hero. The scholiast says that ‘heroes are irascible and truculent to those they meet and possess no power over what is beneficial.’ He cites Menander as his authority, but adds on his own account that this explains the fact that ‘those who go past hero-shrines keep silence.’ So easy is it to read a bad meaning into a reverent custom. So possessed are scholiasts and lexicographers by the Olympian prejudice that, even when the word they explain is dead against a bad interpretation, they still maintain it. Hesychius[882], explaining κρείττονας, ‘Better or Stronger Ones,’ says ‘they apply the title to heroes, and they seem to be a bad sort of persons; it is on this account that those who pass hero-shrines keep silence lest the heroes should do them some harm.’ Among gods, as among mortals, one rule holds good: the king can do no wrong and the conquered no right. ASKLEPIOS AND THE HEROES OF HEALING. Heroes, like the ghosts from which they sprang, had of course their black angry side, but, setting aside the prejudice of an Olympianized literature, it is easy to see that in local cultus they would tend rather to beneficence. The ghost you worship and who by your worship is erected into a hero is your kinsman, and the ties of kinship are still strong in the world below. ‘In almost all West African districts,’ says Miss Mary Kingsley[883], ‘is a class of spirits called “Well-disposed Ones” and this class is clearly differentiated from “Them,” the generic term for non-human spirits. These “Well-disposed Ones” are ancestors and they do what they can to benefit their particular village or family fetish who is not a human spirit or ancestor.’ So it was with the Greek; he was careful not to neglect or offend his local hero, but on the whole he relied on his benevolence: ‘When a man dies we all begin to say The sainted one has passed away, he has ‘fallen asleep,’ Blessed therein that he is vexed no more. And straight with funeral offerings we do sacrifice As to a god and pour libations, bidding Him send good things up here from down below[884].’ The cult of heroes had in it more of human ‘tendance’ than of demonic ‘aversion.’