The soul, though now set free, keeps up some connexion with the body it once inhabited. It is for its use and pleasure {166} that an ample provision of household implements and vessels is laid beside the corpse (though no longer the whole of the dead man's possessions as once was usual); and graves since opened have restored such things in large numbers to our gaze.[63\5] But the Greeks never seriously believed that such a phantasmal existence could be prolonged to eternity. Elaborate expedients for the perpetual preservation of the corpse (by embalmment and other means, such as were employed in the case of bodies buried in the Mycenæan shaft-graves)[64\5] were unknown in these later times--except as a peculiar archaism in the burial of Spartan kings. § 2 Once the body is buried, the soul of the dead enters the invisible company of the "Better and Superior".[65\5] This belief, which Aristotle regarded as of primeval antiquity in Greece, emerges very clearly in the cult-observance of these post-Homeric centuries from the obscurity which the Homeric age had imposed upon it. The soul of the dead has its special cult-group composed naturally enough of the descendants and family of the dead, and of them only. There even survived a dim memory of the time when the body of the dead was buried inside the house, which thus became the immediate centre of his cult.[66\5] That must quite certainly have been during an age which knew little or nothing of the almost painful sensitiveness to the idea of ritual "purification" such as prevailed in later times. At least, we have no reason for supposing that the Greeks (like many so-called "savage" peoples among whom the custom prevails of burying the corpse within the dead man's own hut) deserted the house that had now become haunted, and left it to the undisturbed possession of the ghost of the dead man buried there.[67\5] To bury the dead within the walls of the city, at least, was **considered unobjectionable in later times by certain Dorian states.[68\5] Even where religious scruples and the practical convenience of city life combined to fix the place for burials outside the city walls, families kept their graves together often in a single extensive plot with a wall built round it.[69\5] Where a country estate belonged to a family, this generally also included the graves of its ancestors.[70\5] Wherever it was situated, the grave was holy, as being the place where later generations tended and worshipped the souls of departed members of their family. Grave columns indicated the holiness of the spot;[71\5] trees and sometimes a complete {167} grove surrounded the grave, as they did so often the altars and temples of the gods.[72\5] These were intended to serve as pleasant retreats for the souls of the beloved dead.[73\5]