But for that reason the cult of Heroes cannot be the origin of the belief in an immortality belonging to all human souls by their very nature. Nor can this ever have been its effect. In the beginning, among the hosts that streamed down to Hades, the special individuals who had another fate were a small class apart and favoured above all others--and so it still remained. Though the numbers of the heroic figures might be increased enormously, yet every individual case of the transition of a human soul into the ranks of the Heroes was a fresh and special miracle. Such exceptional cases, however frequently repeated, could never produce a general rule applying without distinction to all men alike. The belief in Heroes in its gradual evolution and extension unquestionably led far away from the course taken by the Homeric belief in the things after death. In fact, it pointed in the opposite direction. But with the belief in Heroes men had not yet arrived at the belief in an immortality proper to the human soul by virtue of its own nature, nor yet (which would be something different again) was a general cult of souls thereby founded. In order that such beliefs might arise after, but not out of, the cult of Heroes, and maintain themselves side by side with an undiminished cult of Heroes, a movement was first necessary that had its origin in different sources. NOTES TO CHAPTER IV [1\4: Porph., _Abst._ 4, 22, p. 268, 23 Nauck.] [2\4: It is not quite clear whether it is legitimate to see in what Paus. 2, 2, 2, says about the graves of Neleus and Sisyphos a first trace of the worship of Hero-relics, as Lobeck does, _Agla._ 284. The oracle verse from Oinom. ap. Eus., _PE._ 5, 28, p. 223 B, in which Lykourgos is warned to honour ~Mene/lan te kai\ a/llous athana/tous _hê/rôas_, hoi\ en Lakedai/moni di/ê|~--is certainly quite late, later than the ~hê/keis ô= Luko/orge~ that was known already to Herod.; earlier however than the second century, cf. Isyllos (_GDI._ 3342), l. 26. Oinomaos got it, like all the oracles that he used in making his ~Goê/tôn phô/ra~ from a collection of oracular sayings, certainly not from (or even indirectly from) Ephoros as has been groundlessly maintained.--Unquestionably the cult of Helen and Menelaos at Therapne was ancient: see Ross, _Arch. Aufs._ ii, 341 ff. Connexion with the legitimate pre-Dorian monarchy was eagerly sought for in Sparta; thus the bones of Orestes and Tisamenos were brought to Sparta and both honoured there as Heroes. The cult of Menelaos in Therapne has nothing whatever to do with his translation to Elysion (Od. ~d~).] [3\4: One Daites ~hê/rôa timô/menon para\ toi=s Trôsi/n~ is mentioned by Mimn. _fr._ 18. Still earlier Alc. seems to refer to the cult of Achilles as a Hero, _fr._ 48 b: ~Achi/lleu, ho\ ga=s Skudi/kas me/deis~ (see Wassner, _de her. cult._, p. 33).]